Adelaide

Adelaide, Queen of Fatherland, was the first and last queen regnant of that place. The granddaughter of the extraordinarily longlived Wilhelm II, she was 49 before she became heir apparent and 53 when she finally ascended to the throne. But unlike her father, Felix the Patient, Adelaide was a fretful, anxious woman who spent every day of her adult life worrying over when it would be her turn to rule—about when she’d have to give up her personal passions and devote her life to service instead.

Born Adelaide Wolff in 188, she was climbing things almost as soon as she could walk. And while most of her early ascents were fairly risk-free, the passion for mountain climbing that she developed as a teenager was worrisome to the Fatherlandian establishment from the start. As she grew older and her passion for the peaks did not diminish, rumors swirled that she’d picked such a dangerous hobby because she was secretly hoping for an accident. She was secretly hoping, they said, to die and never have to be queen.

After climbing all of the highest peaks in the Melancholy Mountains by time she was 27, Adelaide decided to settle down just a smidge and start herself a family. Though she’d hoped to take up with the elven climber she’d made so many ascents with, her normally understanding and open-minded parents begged her to reconsider. The xenophobic public of the Edenian South would not understand, they told her. And so, she married a strudel pipe repairman instead—the first handsome fellow she saw on her return to the capital city of Frankburg.

Then, after she’d popped out a couple of kids—an heir and a spare, and all that—she left her husband in charge of the household and went back to her quest to summit all of the mountains in Eden. It was a quest which only ended when she became queen, and a quest she undertook alongside her long, lost elven lover—because she deserved some pleasure in her life, gods damn it.