Shiara De la Glace, from Ever After, a roleplay on RPG

There are only a very few who have ever seen the Snow Queen, and there are no portraits or paintings of her likeness at all. Despite this, everyone in Grimmesland seems to know what she's rumored to look like. The Snow Queen is tall and statuesque, as tall as any man and taller on some occaisons. No one ever claims to know her age, she seems neither young nor old, ageless. Her form is extremely thin and severe, as if she were not much more than flesh and bones. She has a flat chest and long arms and fingers, making her seem strange and alien-seeming. She dresses to accentuate her form, with long, white, glittering gowns that often have very low backs, showing off the outline of her spine and pattern of her ribs. The gowns lay snugly against her skin, skin that is palest white with the faintest hint of blue, as if she were just beginning to catch hypothermia.

Her lips and the tips of her fingers and ears are more clearly blue. She never wears makeup or gaudy jewels. The only adornment she has which designates her as the Snow Queen is her scepter. It doesn't take her appearance for people to know her status. Her hair is long enough to brush her shoulders and shifts in hue from platinum blonde, to metallic blue, to white depending on what angle you see it from. She has large, silver eyes, with the iris rimmed in black. They are always open and watching, rounded by thick, black eyelashes and black eyebrows, the only real smear of color on her face. She has a habit of standing or sitting very still for hours at a time and icicles sometimes form from her wrists and elbows, only to break away once she moves again. She does not wear furs or coats the way her guests do. She embraces the cold as an extension of herself. She doesn't leave her palace often, only a few times a year, but when she does, the cold comes with her, spreading winter across each section of Grimmesland that requires it.

Personality

Shiara is as her mother, the last Snow Queen, was before her, and as her grandmother was and her great-grandmother all the way back to the beginning of memory in Grimmesland. She is not cruel, she is unconcerned. She is not calculating, she is efficient. She is not cold, she is frozen. Shiara can spend days without saying a word and when she finally does speak, her voice is soft and she does not waste words. Still, those that have heard her speak regard her word as law, at least within her realm of Permafrost. The Snow Queen has become a much more strict ruler since the ascencion of the Queen of Hearts, setting more rigid rules for those who come to her seeking sanctuary. She does not ever turn anyone away, but there is a (true) rumor that there is a room hidden deep within her palace, filled with the frozen forms of men and women who have defied her. Once again, she is not cruel or sadistic in her punishments, but she is firm.

Shiara keeps herself well-informed of the events that take place in Grimmesland through a well-estabished network of spies and an enchanted mirror kept in her personal throne room. She surveys these events dispassionately, interfering at random intervals that most would call inconsequential, either personally or by sending out her snowflakes to take care of it. Still, Shiara feels she understands the workings of Grimmesland far better than any other. Power is alluring, beautiful, and intoxicating, like a fist full of fire. But Shiara understands that the world would perish even if her beloved snow were to rule unchecked. So, she works alone and without a master to maintain the status quo. She does not ask opinions or for advice. She does what she has to to maintain a healthy balance in Grimmesland.

Shiara keeps her lands open and available to any person seeking sanctuary, partly out of tradition and mostly because it allows her a way to more directly understand and control what goes on in Grimmesland. Within her ever-frozen domain, called Permafrost, there is very little that she does not know about. She is almost all-powerful here, coming and going as she pleases like mist, watching through the eyes of her snowflakes, through the mirror, or through her own eyes normally hidden from view.

Despite all of this, the Snow Queen actually interferes very little in the affairs of other peoples. She spends the majority of her time in her throne room, watching her mirror or traveling the lands bringing about winter in the other parts of the country.

Equipment

Scepter of the Snow Queen: Shiara's scepter is made of glass, about the size of a person's arm with a perfectly formed snowflake at one end and frosted lattice work down its length. Within it is the core of the power the Snow Queen wields, and so it never leaves her grip. She uses it to direct ancd control the ice and chill. She can created flying icicles honed to a fine point, bursts freezing air, and on rare occaisions she uses it to completely freeze her victims, basically killing them.

Enchanted mirrorr: This mirror is simple and unadorned, a large piece of glass with jagged, unrefined edges. The mirror can show her anything in any part of Grimmesland that is not a private dwelling. She cannot see into houses or private rooms in inns.

Snowflakes: The snowflakes are the Snow Queen's greatest pride. They are girls that usually range in age from about nine years old to fifteen or sixteen, though there have been sightings of snowflakes as young as three and as old as timeless-looking adults. They all have sking with varying degrees of pallor, ashy blonde hair and blue eyes and all were stolen from their homes and given the power to become the Snow Queen's personal attendants. There are always around 25 of them in all, though no one knows this and most people tend to think that there are coutless snowflakes under her control. They are not immortal and indeed, the girls tend to die after about six or seven years in her service, but they are always being replaced and there are always strong ones who are more compatible with the cold and live longer.

These little girls often have very different demeanors than their mistress. They are playful, affectionate, and mischievious. They can be found all over Permafrost and in any region where the Snow Queen is spreading winter. They are no where near as reclusive as the Snow Queen and are normally the only indication that she is near for the inhabitants of Grimmesland. The people are used to the snowflakes and it's become a traditon for them to leave sweets out for them during fall and the first part of winter in order to avoid pranks from them.

The snowflakes, while they seem gentle and adorable, are deadly in their own right. They share the power that their mistress has, but with less restraint. On rare occaisions, the Snow Queen will send one of the stronger ones to deal with a situation. They have lured people out onto half-frozen ponds and drowned them, gotten people lost in the woods during blizzards, destroyed houses, anything to get the job done. They are unaffected by the cold and are often seen in clothes that look much more appropriate for summer. They seem to appear and disappear stealthily out of nowhere. A small group of the snowflakes, ones who prove themselves stronger and more likely to live than the others, sit in audience with the Snow Queen while she watches her mirror, learning how to know when to interfere. One of them will eventually take Shiara's place, though no one will ever know who until that snowflake takes up the scepter.

History

The Snow Queen is almost a fairy tale even in the land of fairy tales. There has always been a Snow Queen, and all Snow Queens from the beginning of Grimmsland history have looked (or rumored to look, since they have always been so reclusive) exactly the same. Combine that with the fact that no one ever knows when a new Queen takes the throne, and it's easy to tell why most people assume that the Queen is immortal. Along with Snow Queen, Shiara and her predecessors have been called the Unchanging Queen, because of the way each has been exactly like the other from the beginning of time.

Shiara took up the scepter when she was almost 20, though she looked around sixteen, after having been a snowflake for about nine years. Before that, she lived in a small farming village with a mother and father that she has forgotten by now. She ran away one winter night after glimpsing the Snow Queen and following her deep into the woods. She was hopelessly lost and would have died of hypothermia, except that the Queen took her and made her a snowflake. When that Snow Queen finally died years later, she was compelled to go to the body and pry the scepter from her dead hands. Her happy, care-free demeanor melted away immediately and she took on the role of the unchanging Snow Queen.

Shiara was there when Asmilde came with her mother, fleeing the destruction of their estate. At the time, she had seen no reason to interfere and so had left the two of them to sort out their business all alone. Years later, when it became clear that the woman who now called herself the Queen of Hearts was a formidable opponent, Shiara made the decision to wait for a more opportune time to interfere. As long as Permafrost is not threatened, she is willing to wait to correct what she knows is her greatest mistake.