Queen Merilda III

"You have done a great service for me and perhaps saved the entire Kingdom. As promised you shall be handsomely rewarded for your deeds.... On second thought, this is an excessive amount of gold, especially during wartime. I hereby declare a 20% tax on such payments."  Queen Merilda III to The Faultless Arrow  Her Majesty Merilda the Third, Queen of Rubia, Sovereign of the Western Territories, Defender of Pelor’s Light is an anomaly in many ways. Her father, King Eckbert never meant her to succeed him he wanted her to be married to one of the Cascadian princes or one of the rulers of the Free Cities thus forging a strong alliance and that is the role she was being prepared for. Meanwhile Eckbert was planning to marry Claudia Augustus, the sister of the future Emperor Marius who could provide him with a male heir with a claim to the Imperial Throne (Merilda's mother died a few years before). In the end he could not realize his plans as he was ambushed while leading a punitive expedition into the Land of the Cleavers.

Merilda ascended to the throne 15 years ago at the age of 16. She quickly realized that she has neither the taste nor the patience for day-to-day governing so she delegates most of these decisions to Vilgefortz, his Royal Advisor. Instead she focuses on goals that are close to her heart (e.g. stopping the Cleaver orc raids, ending famine in Rubia, building colonies on Two Sisters), on which she spares no expanse.

Due to the circumstances of her father's death she has a very negative view of orcs which led her to legalize their enslavement.