The Birth of Queen Merewald

Once upon a time, an orphan girl with a heart as pure as the night sky wandered into the forest. She had no money and no place to call home, but the woods welcomed her as one of their own (at least once she learned to wrestle the bears, boars and wererabbits that came for her with an alarming frequency). A few years passed without much incident (other than epic battles between the girl and the forest's apex predators, but nobody wants to hear about those). When the girl was 16, she stumbled upon the ruins of an old castle by a clearing in the woods. She knew nothing about who had lived there, how long ago they had been gone, or (most importantly) why they had been gone, but a ruined castle was still a castle, so she claimed it as her own. 
As the sun lowered in the sky, the girl heard a voice calling for her from within the ruins. Cautiously and silently as a cat, she wandered further inside the ruins, where the throne room once stood. Most of the room was still intact, with just a few holes in the walls. The ceiling, however, had caved already, covering the space in debris from the upper floor. As the girl entered the room, the old throne emitted a golden light. It floated in the air above the debris and the dust, new and sparkly-looking, as if it had just been built.  
'Merewald,' it called. 'You are our chosen queen. Come take your place and make our land great again!'
The girl raised an eyebrow. Her name was not Merewald. She did not trust that floating throne. 'Who are you?' she asked instead. 
'I'm the key to your glorious life,' the throne answered. 'Come, sit on me and rule the world!' 
'You sound like a pervert.' The girl's opinion didn't change. 'How can I be sure this is not a trick?'
'The only way I can show you my power is if you sit on me and activate it.' Did the throne sound offended? 'Please, my dear Merewald, the time has come for you to meet your destiny!'
'That's not my name. I'm not the person you're looking for.'
'A name, a name, my kingdom for a name!' This time, the throne shook in anger. 'Look, the book said an orphan girl named Merewald would wander by one day and inexplicably have the power to unlock the magic that has been sealed within me for the last 400 years. Who are you to question the book?' As the incorporeal voice of the throne said the word "book", a thunder clapped in the background, even though the sky until then had been completely clear. 'I've been here for all this time and you're not even the first Merewald to wander by. There was one Merewald who sat on me and got immediately burned alive. Another Merewald got electrocuted. And another Merewald turned into a wererabbit.'
'You do realise you're giving me a list of reasons to never approach you, right?' Despite her words, the girl stepped closer. 'I don't care for a prophecy in your book.'
'How dare you? Come sit on me right now! Or else...'
'Or else what? You'll keep floating in a dusty room?'
'Or else I won't turn into a handsome prince and fall in love with you and marry you and have you help me rule this land for all eternity! Argh, why can't you just do as you're told? Now the surprise reveal is ruined!'
'I'm sorry?' She wasn't. 'But that never would've worked out anyway. I'm not into guys.' 
'Fine, I can turn into a princess instead! Just please sit on me and free me from centuries of torment and hardship!'
The girl took another step forward. 'What torment and hardship? You're a stone throne floating in the air claiming to be able to turn into an attractive human being. And you're also creepy in your obsession with having a teenage girl sit on you. You know that there are places out there that would have you arrested for it, right?'
'Don't change the subject! You have no idea how horrible it is to be here by myself, with nothing to do and nobody to speak to for 400 years! Oh, the torture! Such a nice, young and vivacious soul like mine, incarcerated and disguised as a perverted bum-rest, wasting my life and potential away, depriving the world of my company...'
'Fine.' The girl sighed so audibly it echoed in the demolished castle. 'Who are you, really? What are you doing sealed inside a throne in a ruined castle in the middle of nowhere? Tell me your story, and I'll see about freeing you.'
'Really? Is that all I needed to convince you? If I knew that, I would've dropped the theatrics a lot sooner...'
'Don't push your luck. Annoy me and I'll turn around and run.' Though even as she said that, she took yet another step closer to the floating throne. 
'As you wish.' The floating throne shone with blinding white light. When the girl's eyes finally got used to it, she was no longer standing inside a ruined castle, but in a beautiful throne room, decorated with glistening tapestries and soft rugs. The air smelled of a succulent, meaty banquet a lone orphan girl would never had experienced in real life. Two fireplaces kept the room warm, and servants and fine-dressed nobles waltzed around the room to an unsung melody that nonetheless seemed to be in everyone's lips and feet. 
'This was the castle in its former glory days. Our land was prosper, we were rich, and we had the world at our fingertips.' A young boy, tall and thin and awkward and dressed in commoner clothes, spied the throne room's activities from behind a pillar. A servant passed by with a food tray and almost tripped over him. 'But I, an orphan alone in the world with a magical gift I could not make sense of, was jealous of it all. I wanted to be king. I wanted the power, the money, the prestige.'
'So you infiltrated the castle, killed everyone, and somehow got punished for it?'
'If only it was that easy.' The incorporeal voice sounded like it was rolling its eyes. 'I had a grand, yet ultimately impractical plan of earning the queen's trust, becoming her favourite, and then plotting a coup against her when she least suspected it. What I didn't count on was that I wasn't the only person with a plan to grab all the power for myself.' The throne room was overtaken by a shadow. A man in ugly black clothes entered the room and took an ivory flute from his pocket. He threatened the queen with it, and as he began to play, a dark energy swirled around the room, sucking away the souls of the people inside. 'I had no other option but to use my own flute to attack that evil guy. We fought, and I eventually defeated him, but at a high cost...'
The boy came out of hiding, holding his own flute. It was made of worn wood, but the boy played it with great skill. The magic melody overpowered that of the evil flute player, the darkness was cast away, but the boy too fell unconscious. 
'I had to take away my own soul, you see, in order to escape that magic. My soul-less body turned to dust. The queen felt sorry for me, and had my wandering soul bonded to the throne, so I could help her rule. But my soul didn't like its new vessel, and a flare of uncontrolled magic destroyed everything in its wake.' Another blinding light took the girl back to the ruins of the current throne room. 'Now I'm waiting for the one who will be able to free me, give me a body, and enable me to rule the world. Mwahaha!'
The girl took her hand to her temple, and another step forward. 'You just confessed to being a text-book case of super-villain who once had to do a good deed to save his own skin. Why do you expect me to help you?'
'Because I'll turn into a really pretty girl if you do? And then we can be the most powerful couple who will rule the entire world?'
'I thought you were a boy?'
'That was before I spent 400 years as an over-glorified, genderless chair. I don't think I remember what it is like to have a gender anymore. I'll be whatever you want me to be.'
The girl took another step forward. She was within hands reach of the throne. 'But my name is not Merewald.'
'And I'm a soul trapped inside an immovable object. Nobody is perfect.' 
'How did you know a Merewald would come to free you anyway?'
'I read it in a book, don't you remember my first lines?'
'But how did you read a book if you were a throne all this time?'
'The same way you survived in the forest by yourself all those years.' The throne must have realised the girl's sour look. 'What? If you get to point out my inconsistencies, I get to point out yours too.'
'Fair enough.'
She sat on the throne.
At first nothing happened. Merewald considered it the most anti-climatic ending to such a promising adventure. 
But then the castle rebuilt itself, stone by stone, plank by plank, tapestry by tapestry. None of the dead nobles or servants came back to life (which was probably for the best), and the smell of freshly-prepared food remained in Merewald's imagination. But the fact remained that there she sat, on a throne in a room inside a castle where before there had only been ruins. 
And in front of her stood a girl - tall and thin an awkward and not wearing any clothes at all, who nonetheless smiled to Merewald and offered her hand. 'Let's take over the world,' she said.
'All in due time, my friend.'
Merewald took the girl's hand.
And the rest, as they say, is history.