Andais

Andais is the Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie sidhe. She was once worshipped as a goddess of war and destruction. She had one son, Cel  with her late husband, Owain.

Appearance
She has long, black hair. Pale skin; tri-colored grey eyes: from charcoal to storm cloud, to a pale winter’s sky. Typically wears black clothing, dark eye makeup, and red lipstick. She is ix feet tall.

History
Andais has been queen of the Unseelie for the last one thousand years.

A Kiss of Shadows
When she finally admitted to herself that Cel was mad, Andais invited her niece, Meredith Gentry back to faerie and gifted her with some of her Ravens, saying if she were to produce a child first, she would be heir to the Unseelie throne. Remarkable in that she admitted freely that she hated Merry, and once, when she was a child, tried to drown her.

Weapons & Artifacts
Mortal Dread - A sword able to bring true death to immortals. The hilt is a trio of crows with entwined wings and beaks open to hold the black jewels in the pommel.

Queen's Ring - One of the few magical items the fey brought from Europe, it was once called the "happy ever after ring." Andais once told Meredith she took it as a trophy of war from the body of a dead enemy. Described as a plain silver, almost masculine ring hexagonal in shape, it only reacts to fertile fey. Andais gifts the ring to Meredith in A Kiss of Shadows. The Queen once used it to choose her consorts and to create "true love" matches for her court.

Power

 * Hand of Air - ability to draw air out of a room
 * Hand of Darkness - ability to hear things spoken in the dark of night. She is also able to travel through the darkness.

Personality
She is known to habitually take a personal hand in the torture of prisoners, and is far more interested in having people fear her than love her.

She is a sexual sadist, and enjoys partners upon whom she can inflict a great deal of pain.

Cel
Cel is Andais' only child, through her late husband Owain.

She allowed him a great deal of leeway, covering up crimes he had committed that would in the normal course of events lead to his banishment from faerie.

Queen's Ravens
Her personal guards, The Queen's Ravens, are bound to her by oath.

A condition of their service to her is celibacy, none may take a lover she does not sanction, nor have sexual release by any other means without her permission. For some of her men this prohibition has gone on for a thousand years.

Essus
The Queen’s younger brother. They loved each other very much in their own way—he enough that he refused to kill her and take the throne even seeing what a tyrant she was, and she so much that she tortured much of her court in the search for his killer. It was mention of their childhood together that made her cry on a mirror call in A Shiver of Light.