Even without seeing her, you can feel the Queen of the Regnan Federation of City-States enter a room. She moves unhurriedly, somehow connecting with each of her countryfolk whom she passes like a ray of light, and each person she touches glows brighter.

She is young, though her gaze is wizened by struggle and experience. She is tall, but not thanks to heels or hair. Her dark skin is clear like a cloudless sky, and her black eyes as rich and luminous as Alduir's stars. There are people in the world whom one meets—or doesn't quite meet, but passes—who leave a wake as they go, and that wake is felt by others who share the waters of life with them. These can be the bitter hag at the end of the street, or the kindly-faced fellow buying greens at market; they can be a parent, or a teacher, or merely a passerby, and you always remember them, because they touch you without touching you.

And sometimes, they can be a queen.

Her blue mantle drapes elegantly over the trailing white of her gown, the silver embroidery on the one a glinting mirror-image of the black trim on the other. She wears no jewel, no pearl, no cloth-of-gold—and she wears no crown. Crowns are the playthings of other rulers, forged with all the care of a blade or a gun to remind others of whom the wearer is, and of the distance between them. There is a distance between one and Alessandra di Corio, but not the gap of wealth or of power or of class; rather, a space filled with sweet sadness, like that between an innocent child and the mother who silently bears life's burdens to protect that innocence. She needs no crown, for one would know her through any disguise.

Some women are queens because of a crown. Others are queens because they could never have been anything else.