Martha Isabella of Lagrave

Martha Antonia Maria Isabella of Lagrave (8 Resp. 1405 - 11 Resp. 1460) was a rafian Queen-Consort and member of the lagravian royal family. She was the wife to king Adonis II of Rafia, the outspoken love of her life, a feeling which was well known to be reciprocated on the king's part. She advocated for the civil rights of non-human races and was known to have great effect on swaying the king's decisions whenever his mind was not made up. She is also remembered as a great patron of the arts, especially painting, sculpture, music, and the often overlooked artistic gardening, and for being an environmentalist spearheader for the conservation of dwindling or overhunted animal species in Rafia.

Early life

Martha was born in 1405, as first daughter (and second child) of Arthur of Lagrave, Duke of Raveneye and lagravian Prince-of-the-Blood and Constance, the Countess of Neumont; she was the niece to the King of Lagrave, Frederick IV, with whom she was close during her infancy. She was educated by her mother, a deeply naturalistic woman, which incited in the young princess the morals of helping nature. Her status as a lagravian Junior-Princess-of-the-Blood made her hand in marriage highly desirable as taking it would mean a grant of favourable relations with Lagrave. The newly independent westportian House of Gallouis, and subsequently it's head, the recently widowed Prince Louis of Westport, was considered, but such a freshly established royal house was deemed yet too unstable to marry into lagravian royal blood. The rafian king Maurice I offered up his eldest living child, Adonis, to marry the princess, but was at first rebuked as the prince-royal of Rafia was deemed too young by Martha's father, as he was only a single year older than Martha herself. Her hand was ultimately to be offered up to the Prince-Royal of Low Foliria, but this deal was cancelled due to some border disputes between that state and Lagrave, so Arthur acquiesced to marrying his daughter off to then prince-royal Adonis, who would in future years go on to be crowned King Adonis II of Rafia.

Marriage

Prince Adonis was granted permission to begin courting her in 1420, which he did when they were introduced that same year, in Davelsgarten, a private garden owned by the Rafian crown in the south of the country. She almost immediately became infatuated with the boy, and came to write of him in a letter addressed to her cousin Catharina d'Adria the following:

I thank God for His providence, truly He is a kind father. If the boy I met there is to be my husband, I shall with certainty be the happiest of wives. Dear cousin, how you will envy me!

He, in turn, took his time with developing romantic ties to the young princess, but soon enough he too was entirely stricken by how unlike all other women his age he'd ever met she was. By the end of the year, the princess was taken to Rafia permanently to marry the prince-royal. They were married on Proventatio the 25th 1420 in the Cathedral of Saint Basil the Divine in Albillan.