From Blackraven Keep's highest tower, Queen Alania Borey cuts a regal figure – her lithe form draped in cascading purple and ebony silks. Yet those piercing eyes betray the regret and simmering rage lurking behind that beatific facade. For the young monarch's ascension to the obsidian throne of Oxland was neither peaceful nor willing.

Born the only daughter of the mighty Iron Duke Borey, Alania's path once seemed resolutely charted - groomed for the life of a noblewoman in her father's famed cavalry regiment. She distinguished herself early with a precocious battle prowess, commanding squadrons by her 19th year. But fate's cruel shears severed those dreams during the Marbrand Rebellion. Captured by rebels owing fealty to Rissenica dukes hungering to annex Oxlands, Alania was imprisoned for years, enduring endless nights of torment at her captors' hands.

By the time Alania's uncle King Feredic negotiated her release through controversial territorial concessions, Alania had been irreparably reshaped into another woman entirely. No longer the bright-eyed prodigy, she emerged from the Marbrand depths a haunted, shattered damsel conditioned to despair and helplessness. Drinking heavily to numb the endless mental anguish, Alania descended into bitter resentment towards her ruling uncle.

When wind carried whispers of Feredic's increasingly unpopular peace overtures with Rissenica, opportunistic powerbrokers moved against the king. In a bloody coup, Feredic was deposed by militaristic nobles who recognized the value in installing his niece as Oxland's new ruler. Too damaged to effectively rule, she would remain a helpless puppet while they solidified power.

Now draped in the black mantle of the Raven Crown, the haunted young monarch remains captive in truth if not by chains. Alania is all too aware her secured ascendance was no triumphant victory, but merely an collapse from one prison of trauma into another gilded cage of powerlessness. Courtiers and militaristic jarls rule through the pretty figurehead, content to let Oxland's queen perform smiling royal duties while making every crucial decision on her behalf.

However, a flicker of Alania's old spike still simmers behind that gaze. Her nights are plagued by terrifying memories of the Marbrand pits, fueling an inner furnace of hatred towards the jarls and Rissenicans who destroyed her life. While none suspect it, Alania has neither forgiven nor accepted her reduced status. She thirsts for the day she can shed her masquerade and seize control over both the kingdom and her destiny once more.