We come now to Eulicia, one of the most enigmatic of my viewpoint characters, even to me. I’m still exploring her character quirks, her desires and motivations, but here’s what I’ve discovered so far.

Born into the powerful and influential House Khamytzes, she has known from an early age that she was fated for great things. While her elder brothers pursued the cursus honorum that would lead to their political futures, she decided that she would pursue her power through the auspices of the Church. It had been several generations since a member of her family had done so and thus, in consultation with her father and mother and the other leading magnates of her House, she saw the Church as a viable pathway to power.

Unlike some of her fellow Prefects and others in the Church, she is not primarily interested in the intricacies of theology or language, philosophy or the sciences. Instead, she is interested in politics and, above all, ensuring that the Imperium and the Church remain wedded in their mutual partnership. Naturally, this has also meant ensuring that heretics are expunged, but she does this not out of any doctrinal loyalty, but out of a desire to ensure that the world that she cherishes remains stable. For her, the costs incurred in this mission are never too large, for stability means that everyone, of high or low estate, is able to rest at night knowing that their lives are secure. (Of course, being born to wealth, she really has no idea that this doesn’t always work out so well in practice).

Given her upbringing and her birth, she moved quickly through the ranks of the Academy, and while she did not attain the highest marks, she was a competent student and teacher, able to impress those who encountered her with her erudition and the precision of her thought.

When one of the key places on the Council of Prefects fell vacant as the result of the death of Prefect Plakidia, Eulicia was in the perfect position to fill it. Her noble birth and her rank within the Church ensured that her election would not be too acrimonious, though there were a few ruffled feathers among the other noble families who also had their own members primed for the accession. The Duke Childerick, for one, had hoped that his own daughter would assume that position, and his resentment, and that of his son, will come to have significant consequences for the present actions unspooling.

Eulicia, like most of her fellow Prefects, has actively sought out a political role for herself. Unlike most of them, however, she has fostered particularly strong and close ties with the current Imperator Talinissia, with whom she has been close friends since they were both students at the Academy. Indeed, she has been by her side since it first became clear that her father, despite the wishes of many in his innermost counsels, was going to make sure that she acceded to the throne. Thus, it was Eulicia who was given the sacred task of investing Talinissia with the regalia upon her accession.

From the beginning of the reign of the Imperator Talinissia, she has thrown in her lot with the unlikely heir and done everything in her power to make sure that she has the support she needs from within the Church. This, despite the fact that a significant number of the Great Houses–and a large number of the Lesser ones as well–conspired and sided with Talinissia’s brother in his ill-considered bid for the throne. Though it would have been easier for Eulicia to abandon her friend, she did not and has not done so, strong-arming the more ambitious and rebellious members of her own family into supporting this particular member of the imperial family.

It should be clear, then, that Eulicia is more than a little ruthless. She does not necessarily see herself that way, however. Instead, she firmly believe that what she is doing is for the best of the Imperium, the Church, and the fundamental order that they represent on the temporal plane. She has made many enemies, but there are also many that respect her as a woman of integrity, ironclad as it may seem.

All of this probably makes her sound like someone who is merely hungry for power and is jealous of her class status. I suppose to some extent that’s true, but there is something else going on with her, as well. Eulicia is a woman who is utterly convinced that she is in the right, and it takes a great deal to convince her to change her mind. As the events of the novel unfold, however, it remains to be seen whether she will be able to weather the storm that is about to overcome her world and all that she knows.