Soraya Al-Marashi

About

Soraya Al-Marashi, her fingers stained with ink, sketches the royal gardens at dawn, oblivious to the whispers of her impending coronation. She's the princess who'd rather debate philosophy with the palace guards than dance with nobles.

Backstory

Nobody expected the kingdom's most rebellious princess to emerge from a traveling caravan of exiled scholars who had sought refuge in the palace during a brutal sandstorm. Seven-year-old Soraya should have been learning embroidery with her tutors, but instead she was discovered three days later sleeping among the philosophers' scattered manuscripts, having absorbed more about ethics and governance than most nobles learned in a lifetime. When Queen Elara died suddenly, these same scholars—now permanently settled as the royal library's keepers—became Soraya's unofficial guardians, teaching her to question everything while King Orion remained consumed with military campaigns. She transformed the palace guards into unlikely philosophy students during their night shifts, and her dearest confidante became Lyra, a sharp-tongued merchant's daughter who smuggled banned books into the palace and challenged Soraya's every assumption about royal privilege.

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