By Veracity O’Madden
He was a wise king — full of years and their trials and teachings. His kingdom was exceedingly well populated and his folk far flung — to the effect that his wisdom was known in many lands; lands wonderful and exotic, and too, that wisdom was known through many generations – generations who bore his name, told his tales, and sang his songs.
His stature was measured, not by span and cubit, but in word and welcome — words of grace and welcomes to all. His birth was in a time long past, a time full of the songs and tales of heroes and heroines, a time of letters, literature and languages. His lineage was of commoners and kings and his father bore the name of a hero of those distant times, a hero known for distant travels and the tales and tongues of wondrous peoples.
This lordly patriarch was wed at a tender age to a renowned lady of great beauty who too had an adventurous spirit and promised to bear to him children of his spirit and courage. She was the matriarch of a kingdom of generals, gentlemen and gentlewomen, adventurers, scholars, saints and singers of great songs of great deeds.
His Castle was raised high by his own hands and the hands of his many sons — each of them a warrior of renown. In his younger days he himself had followed a dark lord on a mission of great daring and adventure — a mission to protect the distant borders of the Great Land and to do battle with a notorious brigand and his band of cutthroats and killers. His sons too soldiered in land far from home and on missions of great danger, requiring great courage, something they had in abundance in their veins. They returned full of tales strange and wonderful, stories of exotic peoples, fantastic lands and great and powerful seas.
His Castle was set on a hill on the shore of a great sea and to it would come each year lords and ladies to recount to him their tales of adventure and to hear from him stories from old.
His daughters married well and into clans close and distant. Their beauty and gentleness of heart brought them love, affection, and admiration from all who were graced by their presence and their kind words. Sons and daughters bore their king grandsons and granddaughters who bore great generations after them.
These are the tales of that king, his children, their children, and their children’s children — to generations uncounted and unsung. Tales of daughters and sons, husbands and wives, kings, queens, princesses and princes, warriors, scholars, adventures — heroes and heroines.