Empress Koline Otrese

Koline, daughter of the late Empress Constanze Otrese, is the inheritor of House Otrese's centuries-old rule of the empire. She was raised in the expectation that she would be empress one day, which meant tutoring in all that might entail. In early adulthood, she was swiftly pressed into various roles, which she had to try to juggle all at once, with rather mixed results, be that issuing directives or making law, social engagements at the imperial court, or navigating the myriad issues dealt with by the Imperial Crown. This was an overwhelming lesson in itself: she could not possibly hope to attend to every particular of rule all at once. Besides that, Koline did not like bureaucracy even one little bit.

When she was left more to her own devices in her mid-20s, it did not take Koline long to refine her own approach to rulership. She focused on people, from the monarchs of the other imperial realms to the burghers of Sanctuary, and on personal engagement. Her mother died in 631 after a period of illness. The succession, already planned well in advance, was smooth.

The fine details of policy, law and public administration do not energise Koline. It is not that she does not understand their importance; she does, but she leaves the particulars to members of her government. She intervenes primarily where she is concerned that inertia has taken hold or where a decision has strayed far from her wishes.

Koline's day-to-day is spent in many social engagements, whether formal or informal, from meetings with the most powerful rulers in the empire to attendance at soirees, though sometimes these can be one and the same. It is through other people that Koline finds her energy. She comports herself with grace and dignity in most public settings, though usually with an undercurrent of liveliness which she keeps to a gentle ebb for propriety's sake.

Koline has a way of making people feel at ease, whatever the setting.