Elayne Trakand

Elayne Trakand lives in the Royal Palace in Caemlyn's Inner City, where her mother Morgase rules Andor from the throne room and the Queen's Guards keep watch at the gates. She shares the Palace with her brother Gawyn, and its gardens are as familiar to her as its corridors. Her mother's court includes Elaida, an Aes Sedai of Tar Valon whose counsel carries real weight, so Elayne has grown up close to power in more forms than one.

She wears her rank without strain. When something needs doing, she does it herself, whether that means tending a wound or speaking her mind in front of armed guards and the Queen alike, and she is willing to spend her authority on someone else's behalf rather than hoard it. There is genuine kindness in her, the practical sort that reaches for bandages before questions. There is also a reckless streak; caution comes to her slowly, and rarely before she has already acted.

She is a young woman poised between the garden and the throne room, at ease in both, and she takes the duties of her station as seriously as its privileges. A Daughter-Heir raised under Morgase's eye, she is composed, warm, and stubborn in roughly equal measure, accustomed to being obeyed and just as accustomed to being responsible.