Geneva Zylpeiros du Galilea

Queen (a.k.a. Genie (close friends), Eva (parents))

Content Warning: Genocide & Slavery

Queen Geneva Zylpeiros du Galilea was the first Queen of the Zylpeiros Empire. She was the mother of Mistier Zylpeiros du Geneva and grandmother to Queen Izisi Zylpeiros du Johanna. Geneva is best known for her valiance in leading the slave revolt which overthrew the Alustorn Kingdom and established the beginnings of an empire and its Zylperian culture.

Personal History

She was born a in a small farming village located in the heart what is now known as The Flood Wastes. Although she was Gafir's daughter, and thus a Astris, her parents raised her and her two twin brothers strictly according to the local Awassi culture that predominated in the area they lived.
During the Astris Genocide, Geneva survived only by the skin of her teeth. Uri's gaze had seemed to see right through her after she watched aer murder one of her brothers, and yet ae moved on with a murmur that would haunt her nightmares:

It's Awassi enough, it can live.

Then, and only then, did Geneva understand why her parents had insisting on raising her apart from her Astris peers: appearances matter. Her meticulously maintained identity as an Awassi had saved her life where her brother's disregard killed him.
Since the ships had wisely sset sail at the news of Uri's arrival on Kivria, Geneva and other refugees were forced to escape the flooded lands and try their luck either in the lawless southern desert or the neighboring Alustorn Kingdom just to the north.
Geneva chose the north, and discovered slavery rather than salvation.
From the start, Geneva did what she had been trained to do: fit in. She learned what her owners expected of her and other slaves, and acted accordingly. She also, however, exploited a niche that no one slave or free person could fill: she had the power and training to heal even the severest of injuries. By adapting her presentation, Geneva became a prized possession, never sold or even physically hurt by her otherwise ruthless captors.
Generations went by, and continued to live while most of her compatriots died. Eventually, she stopped paying attention to the calendar. After all, her enslavement was nothing but long stretches of boredom only interrupted by brief bouts of pure terror. She helped others escape, but could never find the bravery within her to try herself.
She eventually reached such an old age that her wool began to fall out (also a stress response), and when she requested a coat, she was met with a month's worth of hard labor from this newest generation of her owners who had never needed her healing hands before. This labor was swiftly cut short when the owner's son fell from a horse and, naturally, the family remembered why they had allowed her to exist so long in the family.
She was never given the coat she requested despite her good deed healing the son. The threadbare blanket, gifted by a foolish half-mouflon slave ram-lamb, was easy enough to pin into a cloak.
The ram continued to be foolish and gift her trinkets, to her consternation.
Then, one day, the ram urgently requested her help when his father got tangled in a barbed wire fence.
Maybe not so foolish after all, Geneva thinks, as she rushes out under the cover of darkness into the pasture. Finally, she pushes past her indifferent mask that had protected her for so long to ask for his name: Elaith X du Esther. The two of them got to exchanging pleasantries, then real conversations, and then suddenly, they were courting one another.
Everything went wrong, or perhaps everything went right for the couple when Geneva became pregnant and then gave birth to the child of the Henin son of her owner. Elaith lost all tact and nearly killed the man, despite her pained pleading to the contrary (despite her wish that he'd succeed). While she was in the middle of healing the son, salvation finally came in the form of Oz. A Yashelin - and a friendly one at that!
Oz joined her in healing the son in exchange for a place to stay for the night. While they healed the unconscious man, Geneva whispered her entire life's story her in a moment of what is quite possibly the one and only time she had ever been fully honest about who she was outside of her exterior. No dissembling would win Oz over more than the abject honest truth.
Oz turned around and purchased both her and Elaith. For the first time since her capture, she leaves a free ewe... and so does her ram, who took weeks to stop cowering behind Geneva. He never stopped babbling about his parents and his friends, however, despite how badly Geneva wanted to leave that nightmare behind her.
Within his babbling, both Oz and Geneva heard the message: fight for everyone's freedom, not just ourselves.
And so, what began as a mission to help the current slaves escape became a full slave rebellion that would later come to topple the Kingdom of Alustorn for good, with Geneva at the helm. She threaded through the ranks of former slaves and other allies with the ease of a flowing river and exploited her talent as a chameleon until eventually, she became the Queen of an empire named in her honor.
While it was exhilarating at first, Geneva found herself torn in millions of directions once it came to rule said empire. At her core, she wanted to please everyone she met via her projected image and, as such, court and political gossip got under her skin to the point of what felt to her like madness.
Thankfully, Geneva mostly managed to control the damage of such a shortcoming in the political realm, though it drove her family up the wall. Therefore, she is remembered as a wise and devoted ruler to her people.

Pronouns

she/her

Sex

Ewe

Eyes

Muddy red

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Red wool, dark skin

Belief/Deity

Cetwoar Pantheon