Queen Maya

Queen Maya was the founder and first monarch of the Kingdom of Maisraln. In legend and official history, Maya was a scholar and historian who had used her political skill to bloodlessly unite the Five Empires of Maisraln under a central throne that was invested with the lost dignity of the original Five Emperors. In reality, though she had been able to establish her kingdom relatively bloodlessly, the new polity had little continuity with the decayed tribal proto-kingdoms that would later be romanticised as "empires", and at least by the 400s, none of Maya's supposedly brilliant scholarly writings seemed to have survived. The beginning of her reign became the year zero.

Maya was a culture hero in Maisraln. Popular veneration tended to depict her as a warrior and a powerful mage; formal Veremei histories and political texts presented her as an exemplarly scholar-queen and stateswoman who had relied on intelligence rather than might; and the in-jokes of the royal court and the elite bureaucratic class subverted the Veremei interpretation and imagined Maya as a witty, charismatic manipulator who had tricked the Five Empires into accepting a central control that was not entirely in their interests.