WMG / Princess: The Hopeful

The Queen of Mirrors has no real plan or agenda. She is simply insane.

The Fall of the Kingdom, its total obliteration from human memory and the slow decline into Darkness that has followed, has, over the millennia, completely broken her mind. Each of her "True Heirs" has been nothing more than an unfortunate dupe, a desperate attempt to try and continue to fight a war that has been long since lost. Even the philosophy of Mirrors, an exaggerated caricature of the ideals of the Kingdom is a sign of how far she is gone, and the Brats' selfishness is a result of their mad patron projecting her monomania onto them.

The Twilight Queens once were or are somehow otherwise connected to the Radiant Queens of Wands, Pentacles and Cups

There are three known Twilight Queens and it's known that there were at one point atleast three more Invocations in existence, which implies that there were atleast three more Queens. If the Theme Naming holds on those would be the aforementioned Radiant Queens.

• This has been confirmed. The Alhambra section covering lost invocations includes a description of what each Twilight Queen's invocation used to be before the fall.
  • Doubly confirmed and made canon with the supplement, which shows how the Twilight Courts once were before the Fall.

The Queen of Mirrors saw the Fall of the Kingdom before it happened.

She tried to warn the other Queens, but they refused to listen out of distrust.

• This make sense if you consider what a mirror does. It shows you your self, and if you don't like what you see you can blame the mirror. Particularly if you did not like the mirror in the first place.

The Queen of Swords is based on Sayaka.

Hot headed lover with a sword motif. Confirmed according to the "inspiration" section at the bottom of the description of each of the queens.

• Other characters match somewhat as well.
  • Mami has a flower as a motif, wears a traditional folk dress and values harmony and simple pleasures like food and conversation, making her reasonably similar to Queen of Clubs.
  • Madoka values kindness and responsibility, her attire is somewhat idealized and whimsical. Queen of Hearts indeed.
  • Kyoko is pragmatic and mischievous, not to mention a loner and a perpetual drifter Walking the Earth. She'd make a fitting Queen of Spades.
  • Homura is shy, rational and technologically minded. Her symbol is already a four-sided diamond. She would be the Queen of Diamonds, if the events of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion didn't turn her into a direct inspiration for the Queen of Tears instead.
• Note that the setting as a whole predates Puella Magi Madoka Magica; while it has undergone many revisions, as such, it may very well be that the archetypes themselves were designed before the authors acquainted themselves with the series. Once they did, however, the ongoing influences are indisputable. The Dethroned, for instance, were remarkably similar to Witches before those ever hit public knowledge, but the authors decided to enhance the similarity further by an explicit reference.
• Normally I refrain from commenting on this page, but since this is about Princess' development rather than the game itself I'll make an exception. The Queens were mostly complete in their current iteration before I watched Madoka but after the series was released. Swords was predominately my work but other Queens might have more direct influence. Sometime after the Queens were written (after Season 1 but before the films) we added Madoka characters to the inspirations where we thought they fit, such as Homura's obsession with protection Madoka at any cost and the Queen of Tear's obsession with protection Alhambra at any cost. Dethroned were explicitly inspired by Madoka Witches, though we also gave them the powers of the Yamiko Queen from Sailor Nothing. — The Kings Raven.

The Queen of Mirrors is the youngest of the Queens.

One of her titles is "The Child Queen" and her philosophy does seem to have an element of childish naivete to it.

The Queen of Tears is the Oldest of the Queens and was their de facto leader before the Fall.

Or at the very least, First Among Equals.

The Queen of Mirrors HERSELF is the True Heir

It seems ironic that the Queen of Mirrors is constantly hiding. After all, that's completely unlike her followers each of whom strives to be as conspicuous as possible. However, remember that Specchio is designed to reflect the user's brilliance back at them. If the Queen of Mirrors sees a hero who can right every wrong and save the world, the only person she could possibly be seeing is herself.

The Queens are high-ranking Spirits, or something resembling them

The Queen of Tears claims that the Queens were once intensely powerful humans. The Immortals book shows a way to become a quasi-spirit being, so it's not too far-fetched that the Queens mastered a similar magic, transforming themselves into semi-spiritual beings tied to their Invocations. The Queen of Storms has simply chosen to fully shed her physical form in order to more closely embody her Invocation.

Rasputin was a princess the whole time

Rasputin being a supernatural being is a reoccurring idea in World Of Darkness, but no supernatural creature fit the bill 100%. Vampires can't be out in daylight, which rasputin often traveled during in his early years, He wouldn't have used his powers to help simple mortals had he been a mage, Werewolves would have a hard time justifying staying in such high profile, and demons, changelings, mummies, and prometheans are all too disconnected or concerned with bigger issues to join up with the czar's inner circle, especially when he remained at such risk(prometheans wouldn't risk disquieting a whole nation, a demon in that situation is too high profile for the god machine to not notice, and so on and so forth). Princesses show not only magic powers related to healing and future vision(both being stated powers of rasputin's) but also incredible strength and resilience compounded by a magical form. But the question does remain: what type was he? which court did he follow?

• Definitely within the Court of Mirrors (especially given he was before the Release happened). Specchio charms are the best at Self-Buffing (for strength and resilience) and they're also one of the only post-Fall holders for scrying/prophecy charms.

Princesses and Beasts

To the Beasts, Princesses are extremely intriguing: Like them, they struggle with their dualistic nature as a human and as a being intristically linked to human emotions, embodying Humanity's hopes in contrast to its fears. They are usually treated as friendly enemies, usually with more sympathy than Heroes. Some Children consider them a lost family representing benevolent monsters (e.g. the Abgal, nymphs or angels), while a few fringe humanistic positions hold them as Beasts who were able to reverse their Hunger.The Hopeful, however, almost universally consider Beasts among their enemies, beings whose very nature of spreading fear and misery hurtful to them.No comment on the rumours that there is a special animosity between Princesses and Makara.

• I like the idea, but what about Princesses and Heroes? Also, does that mean Princesses trigger Kinship?
  • Princesses are still fundamentally human, so the closest group they'd be like are the Mages. And whatever kindship they'd have would be like the equivalent of a mob princess who ran away to become a cop out of disgust for her family's business.
  • Following that logic, it'd make sense for them to trigger Kinship, but some abilities have malus for it. For example:
    • Thicker Than Water only grants an Average First Impression instead of Good (much like for Mage and mortals with supernatural abilities), and this automatically moves to Hostile if the Princess witnesses the Beast committing an act of evil before the interaction, or if it's a Princess of Storm;
    • Family Resemblance and Passing Resemblance work fine (the family tie still allows Beasts to identify Princesses and pose as them); At high Sapiency, the latter allows them to switch to a fake transformed form, though unlike the real thing it doesn't grant them any additional dot or ability; it just allows them to pretend they can transform.
    • Mother's Kiss works, but requires some form of roll from the Princess (perhaps a Sensitivity roll or a Breaking Point?) to represent her being uncomfortable with the dark power rushing through her.
    • I am not sure what to do with Family Dinner though, since technically Princesses do not hunt nor feed on humans (except arguably Princesses of Tears), and having Beasts feeding from watching Princesses help people would just seem weird, not to mention an easy way out of the whole "having to hurt mortals to survive" thing. They probably could feed by watching them hunt Creatures of Darkness, or watching Princesses of Tears suck Light from the real world.
    • Word of God had said that Princesses have only as much Kinship to Beasts as Mages do.
• The way I see it, now that the Insatiable have been revealed (for those not in the know, the Insatiable are Beasts with no Humanity, Horror forms that look like they came from the mind of Lovecraft, feed by LITERALLY eating/killing humans, are ALWAYS hungry, and like to possess Beasts because the have no Lair of their own!), Beasts probably think of the Darkness as an Insatiable that somehow acquired a lair and now loves nothing more than killing people with sorrow and misery. In a word, they hate it even though they can form Kinship, because even (some) living nightmares can have standards! — Mangaholic 13
• Another (potentially horrific) avenue for thought, and possible discussion, is just what sort of Nightmares could the Begotten derive from Queens, their Courts, Princes, Princesses, the Sworn, Beacons and Shikigami, both Radiant and Twilight. The reason for the Horrific comment is that anything that the Beasts could find in Radiant Nobles that’s legitimately scary is ~Legitimately Scary!~ Especially since they (the Children, that is) feed on fear. — Terror Cooper

If Friendship is Magic was a Princess the Hopeful campaign, Twilight would be the True Heir

She's supremely talented, has a grand destiny, and is individually more powerful than most of the country combined. However, her lack of egotism is due to the fact that she was picked up by the setting's Queen of Hearts.

• Twilight seems more like a Seeker of Diamonds to me.
  • Princess Celestia is stated to be an inspiration for the Hearts archetype. There's also nothing preventing Twilight from choosing her own path.

For [My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic] I would say

• Twilight Sparkle: Seeker of Diamonds, Embassy to the Arcane.
• Applejack: Champion of Wands.
• Fluttershy: Mender of Clubs.
• Rainbow Dash: Troubadour of Swords with the dual calling merit for Champion.
• Pinky Pie: Grace of Spades.
• Rarity: Troubadour of Hearts
• Princess Celestia: The Queen of Hearts
• Princess Luna: Grace of Swords, with an unfortunate diversion into Mirrors a while back.

The Queen of Storms is a fallen Empress.

The Queen of Storms has loads of personal power, able to survive in the Dark World and constantly purging it, becoming her own Invocation and even able to create her Sworn, the Stormwracked, as long as they have enough belief in her philosophies. In both versions, it lists the possibility of becoming an Empress and possible criteria to include your invocation being believed in by all of humanity rather than by a small country's population. For reference, this sorta uses the Dream Version in terms of mechanics, like a Queen who fails to meet their criteria become stronger than average nobles instead.

But think of the implications of what it takes to become an Empress. In the Fall, the Queen of Storms was listed to be the last queen to fall. In her story, she became more than human and took in the last survivors of the Fall, making them into a part of herself. Given that an Empress is believed to need her invocation to be believed by "all of humanity", given the Darkness had wiped out bloody swathes of humanity in the Fall, it's not hard to believe that the rest of humanity (even if it was a small percentage) would believe in the Queen of Storms philosophies, making her ascension into an Empress much more plausible than it sounds.

However, the Queen of Storms is stated to be only marginally more powerful than a normal Queen, rather than the amount of strength an Empress is said to have. But consider this: a Queen who loses their people to love them or decreases below Inner Light 5, they simply become a stronger than average Princess. What if the same mechanic applies to Empresses? But instead of becoming a stronger than average Princess, due to being an Empress they go the first step down and revert to being a stronger than average Queen.

Perhaps limitations that normal queens face are different for Empresses, such as being able to remain a Queen even if not fitting their criteria. Or being able to directly create Sworn from those who believe their invocation enough. Maybe even the ability to simply not be able to Dethrone as well, given that the Queen of Storms has been said to have lost her fundamental humanity.

Joan of Arc was a Princess

Most likely a courtless one, seeing how her attitude doesn't really match the Twilight Queens, and Radiant Queens were imprisoned at the time. Still, she works as an example of person who brought light and hope back to the world (in her case, by saving France in their Darkest Hour), and her impressive martial and strategic skills could be thanks to her either transforming or using charms.

Other Invocation possibilities

Come up with ideas for new Invocations, whether a lost Invocation, a what-if scenario where one of the Radiant Queens became Twilight, or using Dream's Queen creation mechanic (or the Minor Courts fan-fan-splat). As for the associated Radiant Queens, the Swiss-German suites are up for grabs, so Bells, Acorns, Roses and Shields.

• Carta. Power over paper. Lets you be a Paper Master like from Read or Die.
  • This is a cool idea, possibly linked to Creativity and Utility (symbolic of paper's potential uses) if Radiant or Solitude and Isolation (symbolic of a single sheet in an endless pile of papers) if Twilight. — Mangaholic 13
• Cenere. Power over ash/slag/cinder. Anarchists who feel that civilization has weakened humanity/is currently a tool of the Darkness, and they seek to bring it down. Very Lunar from Exalted or Red Lotus from Legend of Korra. Either formerly the Queen of Clubs or the Queen of Hearts.
• Ombra. Power over shadows, but not in an evil manner (unlike darkness, shadows aren't the absence of light, they are the darkness cast by light). Thematically associated with redemption.
• Sfregio. Power over scars/blood. Yandere-types. The Queen of Swords who betrayed everything to save someone she loved only to be rejected because she did so many terrible things, and she snapped (think like Darth Vader). A bit like Tears in terms of philosophy, but much, much more personal.
• Sognare/Illusione. Power over dreams and illusions. An alternate idea for Swords going Twilight who, upon losing the Kingdom, decided it was better to have never loved at all and destroying connections or emotions in order to achieve the goals the Princess wants. The drawback could be gaining galemarks to represent the Princess choosing her ideals and hopes over what she already has. Their emotion would be Desire, the more flighty and less deep version of Love.
• Rumore. Power over sound. Potentially a court that deals in averting poor communication and reaching an understanding between different viewpoints. To go with the card theme, perhaps a Court of Jokers? Their emotion would be Joy.
• Gravità. Power over gravity. Potentially a court that deals with existentialism and embracing anything you love even if it kills you. To go with a tarot theme, the Court of Fools? Their emotion would be Anticipation.
• Veleno. Power over poison. A Twilight Queen (or King in this troper's mind for inverse Smurfette Principle) who decided that upon the Fall, the world was hopelessly lost and it's useless to stop the Darkness. So they feel they should simply learn to live with the world the Darkness has become a part of. Potentially linked to vice, selfishness and shutting out hopeful influences. The drawback would be either Belief Compromises (Vocation) or Sensitivity rolls (Dream) upon using the charms to represent giving up hopes and getting used to seeing the pain of others respectively. Their emotion would be Acceptance.
  • This sounds more like stuff you'd get while Dethroned.
    • Somewhat intentional. The troper was going with the idea of the Twilight Courts fitting the grieving process, and the Veleno Court would symbolize a very grimdark version of acceptance.
    • Poison is something that occurs naturally in the world. Many plants and animals evolve poison to avoid being eaten. I think a better way of using Veleno that matches up with the Well-Intentioned Extremist nature of the Twilight Courts is to become very withdrawn, so that the world can't hurt you and any attempt that tries it will face a nasty surprise. I think it works better for the Solitude emotion.
• Luna. Power of the Moon. No ideas in terms of powers other than working in flip-flopping and indirect ways, perhaps philosophically tied to the concept of Yin (shadows, rest, the underworld, cold, femininity, materialism). Their emotion would be fear.
• Sole. Power of the Sun. No ideas in terms of powers other than perhaps a direct, solid approach in charms. Philosophically tied to the concept of Yang (light, activity, the heavens, heat, masculinity, mysticism). Their emotion would be Courage.
• Lava. Power over Lava. Somewhat like the Cenere Invocation above, but undeniably belonging to Twilight Hearts. Linked to the idea of destruction to create anew and the power underneath structures leading to their own downfall (like how lava flows underneath earth and can dismantle it), and that all power must eventually fade. Powers dealing in destruction of structures of civilization, both socially and physically. Their emotion would be Stress or discontentment, much like how anarchists are portrayed.
• Ghiaccio. Power over Ice. Twilight Diamonds who believes that people are unworthy of knowledge, being unwilling to seek it themselves or using it towards negative means, and thus believes that knowledge should be restricted to those who can reliably wield it, AKA Princesses. Powers dealing in freezing intelligence and growth and locking people in blissful ignorance, or helping plans reach fruition. Their emotion would be Jealousy, as in how they hoard knowledge and never want to lose it to someone they deem unworthy of it.
  • In the Fan-Splat about minor courts, I'm imagining this as Diamond's wetwork guys.
• Morte. Power over Death and Decay. Twilight Clubs that have reverted to barbarianism and believe that in this world, it's Kill or Be Killed. Deals with unnatural states of life (such as Undeath and zombies) as well as bringing rot to all they touch. Also somewhat based on Nurgle from Warhammer in the way that Death and Decay is just as natural as life is. Their emotion would be disturbance, as it's a natural opposite to tranquility and it's the emotion commonly evoked with Death and Decay.
  • Alternatively, we could go for a Don't Fear the Reaper scenario if we go for Radiant. Your targets include the dead and dying. Thing is, humans deal with a lot of things that are dead, like wood and most forms of food (maybe require a time limit or at least a certain amount of being intact so you can't use petroleum) Maybe to avoid overlap with Lacrima's, you are limited to corporeal undead, so vampires are valid targets, ghosts are not.
• Magnete. Power over magnetism. No ideas as of yet.
  • Its powers would be based on attraction and repulsion. It could be used to imbue items, people, or even locations with the ability to attract or repel certain things, possibly including types of people. Its emotion would be disgust.
• Stoffa. Power over Fabric. The philosophy is tied to charity, comforting, and sheltering.
  • I see many a terrifying and awesome possibilities in such a charm. — Mangaholic 13
  • Its powers would be used to temporarily imbue cloth items with supernatural power thematically linked to what the item normally does. A coat could protect you as well as a suit of armor, cloth bandages could heal injuries they're used to dress, a blanket could hide you from detection, and a tent could become an impregnable fortress. They'd also get additional regalia charm(s) that could produce such items if they didn't have any on hand.
  • Stoffa would have an emphasis on protection and assisting others. Its emotion would be concern, and Nobles would lose access to it if they refused to aid someone who was in danger.
• Radiazione. Power over radiation. Focuses on making things break down or transform.
  • Doesn't Storms cover radiation as one of it's associations?
  • Not necessarily. Where Storms is radiation as a destructive force, this is nuclear energy as a force of power and transformation. The Storms are when the bombs fall. This is when you run a power plant for hospitals and schools.
• Luminescenza. Power over light, like infrared and ultraviolet. They're big the search for justice. Redeemed Court of Storms members whose nickname are Eumenides. Can be a bit on the Knight Templar-y side.
• Inferno. Power over the Inferno and it's denizens. Somewhat based on the idea of the Inferno supplement, it would focus on practicing vice as a comforting flame that burns the darkness.
• Calcestruzzo, power over concrete. Twilight Clubs who, believing that nature and harmony have failed them, turn in the opposite direction. They focus on human creations while seeing nature as something that must be "tamed" at any cost. Able to both literally manipulate concrete and other man-made substances, as well as impose rigid rules and restrictions on the people and things around them. Their philosophy encourages you to be a Control Freak.

Other Court Possibilities

• Court of Thorns: A minor court focused on pain, sacrifice, and purification. Thorns dedicates itself to redeeming those who have begun to fall into the Dark. Their signature emotions are Compassion and Remorse.
  • Thorns' Practical Magic is the ability to force the Darkness to attack the body instead of the soul. Whenever she would gain Shadows, a Princess of Thorns may instead spend a Wisp to take a point of Resistant Lethal damage in the form of physical scars.
  • Thorns' invocation would be Crucitorn, the invocation of suffering and self-sacrifice. Crucitorn-specific charms could include the ability to forcibly pull Shadows from another being into yourself, empathic healing (healing someone at the cost of taking injury yourself), charms to purify the mind or body of foreign influences, and charms that can force the target to suffer the pain (physical or mental) that they inflict upon others. Some Crucitorn charms would cause unavoidable damage to use (the same way that Tempesta charms do).

Not only normal humans can be Darkened and become Darkspawn

The Darkness twists everything, making them drunk on their own Vices and turning them in things that have no right to exist. We know that Princesses can be corrupted and turn into Dethroned, but what about the other Splats? My guess is that the Duskhounds are corrupted Wolfbloods or Uratha, which is why no one can tell if they were canines or humans originally, and the description of a Shadowpuppet looks awfully like a Wrecked, a Sin-Eater with their Geist in the pilot seat. A mage would likely become a very powerful Mnemosyne and I really didn't want or can think in what a Beast or Unchained would become if Darkened.

• As horrifying as the concept is, I don't think the Unchained can be Darkened, since they're mindset is probably too mechanical for the Darkness to effect. As for Beasts, I'd imagine that they either turn into something similar to either Unfettered or Merger, a Mnemosyne version of the Incarnate, or an Insatiable (all of which are indeed a terrifying possibility). — Mangaholic 13
  • I agree. My personal Fanon regarding this is that a being must be at least partially human to get corrupted. And the Demons we’re speaking of are the rouge biological drones of an AI built into the fabric of the Universe. As a result, I shudder to think what would happen if the Darkness somehow managed to corrupt a -Promethean- of all things! *Shudder* It bears as much thinking about a corrupted Beast, or even a high-tier (Maxed-out, or Near-Maxed-Out Power Stat) member of one of the fan-splats like Leviathans or Genii (the Plural version of Genius from Genius: The Transgression)! — Terror Cooper

The Dark Queens are Queen Class Dethroned

Just as how cataphractii and mnemosynes retain their human intelligence compared to Darkspawn, the Dark Queens that initiated the Fall are what happens when a Queen becomes a Dethroned. Instead of eldritch abominations with little to no sentience, they are humanoid abominations intelligent enough to be the masterminds behind the Darkness' near complete victory.

The Queen of Mirrors is trapped by her own prophecy

As the Queen of Pentacles, her invocation backfires if she tries to do things other than the way she prophesied it. Mirrors is her Invocation much like Storms is but instead of living hate, she is an instrument of fate. Mirrors predicted that someday the True Heir will arise to restore the Kingdoms and her own Invocation is forcing her to make that come true somehow. She cannot act otherwise due to the effect of Vuoto's practical magic.

The Queen of Mirrors was and is partially caught in the Trap.

• The Trap, the dream in which the Darkness held the souls of the Hopeful for so long, is described as a world in which the Light always won, in which the Darkness was easily defeated and there were never any hard choices. And one of the core principles of Specchio is precisely that the Lightbearer lives in such a world, that if they seem confronted with a no-win scenario it is only because they haven't looked hard enough for an answer. Moreover, the last reliable word we have of the Child-Queen is that she had fled back to her birthplace, a region already subsumed by the Darkness. So let us suppose that the Heirophant-Queen did not escape, that she was slain and her soul trapped in the Dreamlands just like her Radiant sisters.
• Let us also suppose, however, that her status as the Queen of Pentacles and the source of the Vuoto Invocation granted her some ability to pierce the veils of the Darkness. She could not completely throw off the illusion (quite possibly because after all the trauma she'd been through, deep down she didn't want to), but she could still see that the real world has fallen to Darkness in her absence, and she could still reach out and touch the dreams of those Princesses who freshly blossomed into the World of Darkness. Unable to keep her trapped as they had her sisters, the Wardens wove a more subtle and elaborate illusion for her. They could not disguise from her that the Darkness had triumphed and they could not block her from reaching out to the Nobles on Earth, but they could keep her from realizing the true scope of the problem, keep her believing that she only needed to find the right Noble and the Darkness would be swept away as it had during her past lives in Crystal Heril, and cause her to forget again and again the failures of her chosen.
• Because the Queen of Mirrors already knew that she was in a dreamworld, the Release did not affect her as it did her sisters. To free her, some enterprising Somninaught will probably have to find whatever corner of the Dreamlands the Wardens have hidden the Queen of Mirrors and her subjects in and peel away the veils (or if the above speculation regarding the Queen's psychological issues is correct, persuade her to finally confront the truth).

The Queen of Storms is never directly referenced by name or title

• Ever heard the saying "Speak of the devil and he shall appear"? There may be a superstition to not say the words "Queen of Storms", lest her agents appear and burn anything aligned to the Darkness or Alhambra with no measure of subtlety. It is for this reason that one of the more ambiguous titles for the Seraphic General could be "She-Who-Became-Her-Own-Invocation" or just "She-Who-Became"