Lexi (150:43)
That's right, friends. It is now called All Gets Library because like I said, we get no mention of my boy Rosarius in this book. And for all I know, he's in the bowels of the Winter palace dungeon. So we're staying relevant. And this time we have a shadow cat and paper birds that turn into a mysterious book. And I love it so much. Anyway, today's Elgin's library topic is Vampire Court politics. We got a long one here, everybody. The Vampire Blood Court is the youngest of Yvelia's courts, but they hold strong to their traditions. The vampires are notoriously vicious and narrative nature, which is why they stick to the rules of court so fiercely. Without hard rules, the vampires would fall into complete carnage. And so they take honoring their traditions very seriously. Let's go through the basic hierarchy here. So first of all, of course, we have the monarch, the King or queen. Until Ceres, the Blood Court had only ever had one monarch, Malcolm. Then we have the Lords of Midnight, who are five vampire Lords who rule under the Vampire Monarch regardless of sex. They are referred to as Lord and are known to to be savages, cutthroat and power hungry. And there are always five lords, but more on that in a minute. Each has a title, the Keeper of Something. This appears to attribute to the Lord's specialties and how they can help better protect the vampires and serve their court. The Keeper title is unique to each lord and is not passed on with the position. For example, when the vampires are petitioning Seras for the open Lord Position. They announce the title they would hold and why they should have it. We'll get the proposition for the Keeper of Warfare. Which is from a vampire who is a prominent trainer in the art of siege warfare and has led several battalions of the Horde. And then there's the other one. The Keeper of Pain. Who is apparently from the Princess Bride. And this vampire is an engineer. Not only in infrastructure but also weapons of war that are specifically designed to inflict unimaginable pain. And then beneath the five Lords of Midnight is the Blood Court. So each of the Blood Court Court's standings are as follows. At the top is the High Bloods. The High Bloods are the next level down. After the Lords of Midnight. Thousands of high bled vampires live within the walls of Amontreith. And all of them are Malcolm's children. Consider them the upper class vampires. Some have thralls and slaves. Some don't. Then we have the lowbloods. The Lowbloods are the lowest ranking of all the vampires in Amontreith. They are the staff and the maids. What makes the difference between a Lowblood and a High Blood? I'm not entirely sure. I'm not sure if it's is regarding their status before they turn vampire or after they turn vampire. I'm guess that it's a little bit of both. Then after the low Bloods, we have the enthralled Fae. Most. But I will say not all of the Fae in Amitre are enthralled and not here willingly. Now there are some Fae here willingly, but they are very uncommon. And they like to get high off dosing in exchange for drinking. That's how Tal gets his living blood to stay immortal. Then we have the dead stock, the feeders and the slaves. Slaves which I'm using interchangeably because I think that's how they do it. Or the slaves are kind of the enthralled Fae. Or they're all kind of intermingled here together. So based on my interpretation, dead stock and feeders are the same thing. I think the dead stock is what the vampires call feeders. Which we are very familiar with. Feeders. But we've only been getting it from the phase perspective so far. Right. Feeders are bound to the High Blood who made them. No matter what. They will only obey their sire. Some slaves are branded when they've turned. But most members of of the Court, they don't bother. Runes and tags of ownership are never required since dead stock and feeders cannot be stolen. Then we have the shunned vampires who are Vampires that disrespect the Crown, they are not considered members of the Court. The Court in fact rips out their fangs if they will not swear allegiance. It's a slow and miserable death since without fangs a vampire cannot feed the normal way. At first they will starve, then they go mad dead. Then they wither away to husks. Most shunned vampires end up out on the dead field, trapped between Amon Traith and the Darn. If a High Blood comes across a vampire with missing teeth, they're encouraged to execute them on sight. Being shunned can also include having their bond to their maker rescinded. This means their maker, which is almost always Malcolm recalls their blood, AKA the blood that was used to turn them and it results in the vampire throwing up said blood. This is very shameful for the vampire. And even if they are not shunned, they can still be shamed within vampire society if this is done. So they do not have to have their fangs removed for this kind of process, but it's just not considered a good thing whatsoever. Shifting gears here to the rules of changing monarchs because it is very straightforward. As we saw from this episode. Using the same rule as the Fae Courts, the crown is passed down to a Regent's heir. Heir or in the case of the Regent is murdered and there is no heir, the crown is claimed by the one who kills them. The Vampire Court has only ever had one King Malcolm and he never named an heir since he planned on living forever. When there is a change in monarch, there is a short grace period where the crown to be is safe from being straight up murdered. This is called the Law of Ascension. The Court has to acknowledge the incoming monarch as the rightful crown and proceed with the coronation before they can try to steal the throne or murder the crown. Now let's talk about the actual crowning of the new monarch. First. The court acknowledges the new King or Queen and assesses if they are eligible for the crown. They have to feed from the life source of the living. The vampires don't trust in a monarch that is not leashed to the blood. Technically this was not law before, but pretty much the Lords of Midnight made a law in real time here because they did not trust Sirus to not have already done this. Once it's been decided that the criteria has been met, they are able to proceed with the coronation. This takes place in the hall of Tears which we are already described plenty of earlier. And each of the Lords of Midnight stands at one of the points of the star that is on the mosaic flooring. The ceremony is simple. One of the Lords of Midnight, in Ceres's case, Aerith, walks up to the dais, bows before the new monarch and places a gold diadem on their head. Let's shift gears to these Lords of Midnight. Each of the Lords wears a ring called a Ring of Office. And this ring is a source of power gifted by Malcolm when they were chosen as his Lord Lords. Each is supposed to contain an equal amount of magic, but it is rumored that Talz is the most powerful. There are only five rings and they each get passed on to the new Lord if a previous Lord dies. There is Hasrax, who has a thick gold band with a large blood red ruby. Talidaz ring has a warm citrine colored stone. Then there is Sylvania, who has a thick gold band with a purple stone. Aerith. And then Folly's ring has a large amber orange jewel. And knowing that Folly is still a vampire by the end of this, I wonder if he still has the ring and if that will come in handy at any point. And then we unfortunately do not know anything about Owl's ring. Moving on to the selection process of a new Lord of Midnight. When a spot in the five Lords opens up, a selection evening is held. I do want to point out that only one other selection evening has ever taken place. So I'm going to assume that before this, Malcolm appointed them those he thought best for the job to, you know, just create the five Lords of Midnight. And then if one ever goes away, then that is when they have the new selection process. So here is how the selection works. Candidates present themselves to become the new Lord of Midnight. The monarch must listen to each petition, and after which, pick who they like best. Each petition includes the candidate's background in who they are and what they've done for the Blood Court, as well as why they believe that they would make the best choice for Lord of Many. They also propose what keeper title they want and again give the reason as to why their skills will be beneficial to the Court. The current members of the Lords of Midnight are of course, we have Talidaeus, who was Malcolm's second in command and is now Ceres, advisor and guide to vampire politics. He is the Keeper of Secrets. And Tal has been a part of Malcolm's court for just over 1063 years. Then we have Zavenia. She's known to be a horrible person in general, if you didn't catch that from this deep dive already. And she is the Keeper of missives, which she has held that position for 783 years. She is in charge of all communication in and out of Amon Treeth. Battle orders, news, secrets, letters, everything goes through her. Then we have the Hasrax. Technically not an official member of the Court, but has a deal with Malcolm and now Ceres to watch them. He is the Keeper of Silence. The Hasrax does not participate in most of the Court things. It just watches. It's only broken its silence for a very small amount of people. And Alligate. She used to be a witch, cast out by her own clan by meddling in dark magic magics. She is the Keeper of Records, who is responsible for the library in the palace and gets to decide who gets to check books out and who has access to them. And there's Aerith, a religious leader worshiping the Under Gods. And he's an emissary for the Dioxin people. He's the Keeper of Evenlight. We don't actually know what this role entails or how it's connected to his positions as a religious leader and emissary, but you know, we're gonna be guessing throughout this deep dive here. Moving on now to the only previous member of the Lords of Midnight Knight, who is named Zaris. He held the Lord position before Alet. And we don't have an exact time on when this happened, just that it happened fairly recently. Who knows how long ago that was in vampire terms, after he was killed by his own brother over a pointless disagreement. And later in this book, we will have a new member of the Lords of Midnight to replace Aerith, which is folly, our boy. He is Slash Was, I'm gonna say is a member of the Lupo Proalia and was shunned by Malka. He's also never been an official member of the Court. He will be selected by Sers as the newest member of the Lords of Midnight. And as far as we know, he does not have a Keeper title. And technically, I don't think the Lords of Midnight still exist, like an hour after he fills a role. But anyway, that's all the Vampire Court politics for today. Or else we'll be here all day and all night. Next episode, we will go more into vampire culture and the society in general.
