Aesling O’Briar

Aesling O’Briar, The Sleeping Beauty, was the last Queen of Neverland and the last of that kingdom’s monarchs before The Anarchy. Serving first as Queen Consort during the reign of her husband, she was eventually named Queen Regent. And yet, her time upon the Thorny Throne was not a pleasant one. Her husband was dead, her twin daughters soon abdicated to avoid a political crisis over which of them had been born first, and the nephew who was next in line was a cruel, little bastard.

Supernatural Abilities

After 100 years trapped in the Undercurrent, Aesling emerged with the ability to manipulate the dreams of other sapient beings.

Appearance & Personality

Aesling was a pretty, flirtatious, and unfailingly kind woman. A blonde in her youth, her hair went prematurely gray during the succession crisis which followed her husband’s death. And yet, as exhausting as her life became over the years, she maintained the athletic body she developed during the time between when she woke from the witch’s 100-year curse and when she was finally able to escape from the briar-covered castle where she’d been trapped for over a century.

Biography

Warning: Here there be spoilers.

Early Life

She was born on the first day of the year 19 CE, in the city of Nova Meskera, as Aesling Thidos. Her biological mother was the famous Bekiskapan general Kester Thidos, and Aesling might have grown up a warrior maiden like her mother before her—if not for a raid by the so-called Monster Hordes during the second year of her young life.

During that raid, the two other women of her mother’s triad were killed. And in the aftermath, seeking vengance and a life free of war for Aesling, Aesling’s mother re-enlisted in the Bekiskapan military. If Kester served a further nine years, Aesling would never have to see battle at all. And so, Aesling was taken in by her adoptive parents, the O’Briars.

Her life after that might’ve been entirely uneventful—aside from her biological mother’s heroic death at the Battle of Frankburg Bridge—if not for her adoptive parents’ slight of a halfling witch. But when her parents decided not invite the “troublemaker” of the local coven to Aesling’s third birthday celebration—an important occasion in the life of a Bekiska—the girl’s fate was forever altered. She was cursed to one day prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and then to fall down dead.

The 100-Year Sleep

On the evening of her eighteenth birthday, Aesling pricked her finger as promised. But for mysterious reasons, she did not die. Instead, she fell into a cursed sleep. Because the curse was halfling-made, and the goddesses of this place had promised that halflings and anything halfling-made could stay in Eden forever, Aesling was not sent back out into the universe when reality was rebooted into its next iteration. Instead, she slept on. She slept on and on.

Then, in the years after the second iteration of reality collapsed and refugees from all across creation once again found themselves in Eden, Aesling woke and married Ingvar—the exiled prince of Neverland.

Together, they took down his tyrannical father, restored justice to the country, and became king and queen.

Life as the Queen

Life as the spouse of a Neverlandian royal was not an easy affair, but Aesling weathered this well. While her husband was away trying to keep the peace in their often-lawless kingdom, sometimes for months on end, Aesling did her best to raise her twin daughters as an essentially single mother.

Following her husband’s death, a struggle for the throne overtook the rest of Aesling’s life. The tragic ends met by Aesling and her daughters led, eventually, to an even more chaotic period in Neverlandian history. It was only with the ascension of Aesling’s descendant Frieda Jacobs to the throne of a united Wonderland that some semblance of order would return.