Fanmix: Empress Chenelo

[rocky41_7]

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i. Exploration Amy Turk, Julia K ii. Les Sylphides VII. Waltz No. 7 in C-sharp Minor Ludwig van Beethoven, Berliner Philharmoniker iii. Mal di Luna Summer Watson iv. Little Bird The Weepies v. Shenandoah Hayley Westenra vi. Hope in the Air Laura Marling vii. Concerto for Flute and Harp, K.299; 2nd Movement Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields viii. Wasting My Young Years London Grammar ix. La Folia - Madness Antonio Vivaldi, Apollo's Fire x. Paradise Coldplay xi. The Tower Ramin Djawadi xii. Henry in Solitude Trevor Morris xiii. Greenpath Christpher Larkin xiv. Noble Maiden Fair Emma Thompson xv. The Journey Home John Doan xvi. Women of Ireland Joanie Madden xvii. Sacred Stones Sheila Chandra xviii. The Sixth Station Joe Hisaishi xix. Lullaby for a Stormy Night Vienna Teng xx. A Day Without Rain Enya xxi. Snow Loreena McKennitt xxii. When the Sun Rises in the West Ramin Djawadi

Track explanations and headcanons under the cut. Photo credit to Alice Alinari on Unsplash.

1. Exploration - Chenelo at home in the Barizheisei court. Her father, Great Avar Maru, wants his second daughter to be an empress and many in the Ethuveraz want more trade between the Ethuveraz and Barizhan. With the help of the Barizheisei, the Corazhas push recently-widowed Emperor Varenechibel towards a marriage alliance between them.
2. Mal di Luna - Marriage to Varenechibel. On the day of her wedding the Barizheisei spare no expense to make 16-year-old Chenelo one of the most visually memorable royal brides in their house's history, including a spectacular hand-laced veil to hide the underbite not uncommon in the Barizheisei royal house. Nevertheless, when the time comes, Verenechibel hesitates so long in giving his vows the goblins begin to shift in their seats, worrying he has changed his mind and will reject her at the altar. The relief Chenelo feels when they exchange their vows will turn to wistful irony in later years, for his last-minute change of heart might have spared her a great deal.
Shenandoah - Chenelo misses her home. She has never traveled to the Elflands before her marriage and no one is particularly keen to help her see and understand her new home.
3. Hope in the Air - Alone in the Untheileneise court, wed to a man who plainly did not and does not want her and with her letters home infrequently returned (and never from her father), Chenelo begins to feel she had been sacrificed by her father and her homeland, the lamb to bind them closer to the Untheileneise no matter how little the Untheileneise actually wanted her. As a dutiful daughter of the house, Chenelo feels this is a poor payback for her loyalty.
4. Wasting My Young Years - The joy of Chenelo's youth is slowly drained away by the stress and loneliness of the court. When the extent of Varenechibel's displeasure with his goblin bride becomes clear, the rest of the court is disinclined to show her any favor either, choosing instead to either ignore her or treat her with petty cruelty. Varenechibel’s sons and their families act as if she does not exist, and many of lower rank in the court take delight in tormenting an empress who seems ill-equipped to fight back. “The Hobgoblin” becomes a common nickname to address her in the court, sometimes to her face. The more Chenelo tries to make peace with them, the more dismissive and cutting their behavior becomes.
5. Concerto for Flute - Chenelo spends a great deal of time in the gardens of the palace, where she can wander alone and not have to hear the unfavorable comparisons to the late Empress Pazhiro being made about her. Outside of the chapel, where she can be found praying for hours a day, this is the most reliable place to find her.
6. Paradise - Chenelo continues to dream of a more hopeful future, even if it feels increasingly unrealistic. The discovery of her pregnancy gives her more confidence, as she feels certain that this, at least, is something of her duty she has done right--she can bear an heir for Varenechibel, even if he already has heirs and spares aplenty. However, when her announcement over dinner is met with Varenechibel throwing his wine glass at the wall and stalking out of the room without a word, she grasps that there is nothing she can do to please him or win his favor. Alone with the palace guards and servants--for she had requested a private dinner with her husband that night--she weeps for her failure.
7. The Tower - Exile from the Untheileneise court. The last effort Chenelo makes to connect with Varenechibel is to inquire as to his thoughts on names for the baby. When he tells her it doesn't matter, because the child will never inherit, and he doesn't care what she calls it, Chenelo gives up on the idea that even this might someday please her husband. Days after an uneventful birthing, Varenechibel's head of staff informs her she is to be confined at Isavorë. Misunderstanding this as a confinement merely during her recovery from the birth, Chenelo politely goes. If she had understood the truth--that Varenechibel was setting her aside, that he never meant for her to return to court--she would have fought harder to stay, but by the time she realized what had happened, she was miles away from the court and isolated from anyone who might have the political power to aid her. She had spent less than a year at the Untheileneise court.
8. Henry in Solitude – Alone in Isavorë. As weeks turn to months, and Maia’s first birthday approaches, Chenelo begins to understand there will be no messenger from Varenechibel welcoming her back to his side. There are no visitors to Isavorë, and the servants maintain a polite distance in the face of Chenelo’s best efforts to befriend them. She realizes they have been relegated along with her, that she has damned them with her own fate, and she despairs of failing everyone around her. Desperate, she writes to her father back home in Barizhan, but this letter goes unanswered with all the rest. She fears this will be the end of efforts to mend relations between Barizhan and the Ethuveraz, and she is as painfully lonely as she has ever been.
9. Greenpath - Settling in at Isavorë. As an honored daughter of the royal house of the Barizheisei, it had been impressed on Chenelo how critical it was that she win over the Untheileneise court, and she had worked as hard as she could to be charming and knowledgeable of their history and culture and open to adopting the customs of her new home, and this rejection cuts to the core to think of how she had failed in her duty. However, away from Varenechibel's constant disapproval and cutting indifference, away from the cruelty of the court, Chenelo had the freedom to do as she liked. One of her first decisions after deciding to make Isavorë more of a home is on how to arrange the gardens to please her, and so that a child might find them a suitable playground.
10. Noble Maiden Fair - Lullaby with Maia. While Chenelo privately does consider that without her pregnancy, life in the court might have gone smoother for her, and she might have had more time to win allies, or at least not to alienate Varenechibel, she cannot bring herself to regret her newborn son--nor is she sorry he will grow up far away from either royal court. Although a wet nurse and a governess are provided for her use, Chenelo chooses to raise Maia largely by herself, in part simply to occupy herself—Isavorë does not provide a wealth of entertainment options.
11. Sacred Stones – In Isavorë, Chenelo is free to engage in the piety and religiosity that earned her scorn in the Untheileneise court. She passes on these thoughts and meditations to her son, Maia.
12. The Sixth Station - Chenelo continues trying to write her family and the few acquaintances she made at the Untheileneise court, but even those rare responses never even entertain the idea of coming to visit her. Her older sister replies with a scolding letter, chiding Chenelo for trying to rely on her old family rather than making allies among the Utheileneise. Spurned by her family, Chenelo spends even more time at prayer, and burns through candles at quite the rate. She continues to hope that Varenechibel will relent, and allow her and Maia to return to court, in spite of its unlikeliness—and privately, the even less likely event that her father will invite her to return to Barizhan with her son.
13. Snow – Long winter nights in Isavorë. Although Chenelo has found some peace away from Varenechibel and his family and allies, it is still a deeply isolated place. Although she has her son for company, Chenelo longs for adult friends and connections which she believes are impossible with the servants who were exiled to Isavorë with her and whom, she feels, resent her for their position, though they are never cruel. There are no similarly-aged friends with whom Maia might play—someone in Varenechibel’s staff made an effort to send primarily unwed or widowed servants—and the effort of keeping up the appearance of her spirits for his sake weighs on Chenelo. She spends long hours looking out at the horizon.
14. When the Sun Rises in the West – Death of Chenelo. After a long wasting illness, a thin shadow of the version of her who had arrived in Isavorë, her formerly plump figure worn away to almost nothing, Chenelo passes away. Only in the final weeks of her illness does she speak at all to Maia of her marriage to Varenechibel and her time at court, though she claims she does not regret it, as it gave her Maia, and the precious years they spent together. When it becomes clear to her that she will not survive her illness, she is consumed with fear for Maia, seeing that with her gone, he will have no protectors, and his father has never even troubled to meet him. She writes a letter to Varenechibel on Maia’s behalf to plead that her son be given just a minor position in court, nothing to compete with his older half-siblings, or be permitted to maintain the Isavorë estate, but Varenechibel’s staff who come to collect Maia from Isavorë throw the letter out without ever delivering it to the emperor, presuming it will only irritate him to receive it. Chenelo is 26.