Besaba

A Seelie court princess and Meredith Gentry's mother. Besaba wanted to wed a Seelie sidhe prince, but after her sister, Eluned got pregnant after one night in another's bed the royals feared being trapped in marriage to her.

King Taranis used Besaba as a way to seal a peace treaty between the two courts by wedding her to Prince Essus for a three year term. Besaba was promised a Seelie prince upon her return. However, she became pregnant within the first year with Meredith, thus becoming tied to the hated Unseelie court permanently.

Her resentment of Meredith may stem from this, but is also contributed to by Merry's very sidhe beauty outshining her own. Their relationship has never been a good one due to this resentment and Besaba's refusal to interfere when Taranis almost beat Meredith to death for asking about Maeve's exile.

A Kiss of Shadows
Besaba is mentioned in A Kiss of Shadows by Gran, her mother, and Merry though she does not appear in the novel.

A Caress of Twilight
During a mirror call with her mother, Meredith noted that her mother hid her 'very ordinary' brown hair behind a headpiece of hammered gold leaves, she suspected it was because the hair was much like her mother's and Besaba hated to be reminded of her half-brownie, half-human mother. Her skin, however was lovely, she always spent a great deal of time on her skin in the form of milk baths, creams and lotions, but it was merely lovely skin. Not the sidhe moonlit skin of her daughter, or the sunlit skin unique to the Seelie. Her twin, Eluned had such glowing skin, but Besaba never would, and it set her apart.

Meredith said her mother had never allowed a single visit to pass where she had not told her daughter that she was a lovely Seelie princess and Meredith was not. But that call was a revelation to Meredith, her mother felt threatened by her. Meredith was prettier.

Besaba called Meredith using mirror magic to try to persuade her to attend the Yule Ball at Taranis's bidding. She was agitated enough by her contact with her daughter to continually for get not to speak with her hands. She hated the fact that she did so, thinking it a common thing to do. She tried to convince Meredith of the joys of returning to the Seelie court, but Meredith pointed out she had never been in Taranis' good graces, and would give up being heir for being fifth in line to a throne unlikely to be vacated by the present occupant.

She asked her mother if she would really have let Taranis beat her to death as a child. Her mother responded she had been unwise to be impertinent. Meredith took that as a yes. She asked what bribe Taranis had offered her to talk to Meredith, Besaba refused to say, allowing her anger with Meredith to show. For a social climber of her stripe, that was an insult, considering she tiptoed about her own sister. Meredith cut off contact with a naked refusal, while her mother was in mid-word.

A Shiver of Light
She was mentioned during a conversation with Fenella when she could not understand why Merry seemed so Unseelie. She said Besaba's lineage spoke to the light, and that her father's blood was a corruption. Meredith told her she was insulting, and that her father had loved her, while her mother did not. A child went where there was love.