Amalasuintha
- True Brujah of Mainz
Sobriquet: Der Bewahrer der Zeit (The Keeper of Time), Queen Regnant, Queen Mother or The Sage of Mainz
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History: Amalasuintha's life is quite literally history. She was born in the last years of the fifth century to Theodoric the Great and the Gothic queen Audofleda the sister of Clovis I, King of the Franks. As a child she was quite literally brilliant, being born the only heir to the Gothic Kingdoms, she received the best education that money could buy and as royalty she possessed a singular powerful will. At the matronly age of twenty, her father arranged a royal match between Amalasuintha and Eutharic an Ostrogoth noble of an old and prestigious bloodline. It is unknown whether the marriage was a loving one, but the union was short one and left Amalasuintha with two small children and a kingdom to rule.
Only a few years later her father died leaving the title of king to her ten year old son and the authority to her. For the next eight years Amalasuintha would be the most powerful woman in Europe and her closest confidant was the Byzantine emperor Justinian I with whom she carried out constant correspondence. Throughout her reign, Amalasuintha was forced to content with pro-Gothic political opponents while she identified with and represented the surviving Roman factions. In an effort to solidify her power and end opposition to her rule, she named her cousin Theodahad as co-regent only to be betrayed and banished by him to a remote island in the Tuscan lake of Bolsena. Only a year later in the spring of 534, she was drowned in her own bath by servants loyal to Theodahad.
Thus the mortal life of Amalasuintha came to an end and she rose the next night as one of the damned. That night she left Italy behind forever and went into seclusion at Mainz, Arcadius was already prince and she offered him her loyalty and wisdom. He in turn came to accept her counsel and erudition on matters historical or political. In the centuries since, she has turned ever more to observing and recording the passage of history. While she is the Sage of Mainz, she has not honored a request for an audience in two or three centuries. Amalasuintha has become a veritable recluse, emerging for courtly functions rarely and only at the request of Arcadius, but her reputation as a scholar has only increased over the centuries and she corresponds now with only the most promising scholars among the living and undead.
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