Prince Johanna of Porthaven
That the current Prince of Porthaven is a woman passes largely without comment. It is generally understand that the word derives from the Ancient Elven title Princeps, which simply means “leader” and is gender-neutral. Prince Johanna is the fifth female Prince to rule the city of Porthaven.
Born into wealthy Fairbanks family, Johanna spent much of her early adulthood as an adventurer and mercenary. Perhaps unusually for a citizen of a maritime city, much of Johanna’s early exploits took place throughout the inland regions of Realmgard. Returning to Porthaven in her mid-twenties, Johanna enlisted in the city’s Musketeer Guard, where she quickly became well-known for her even-handedness in upholding the law and quickly became the subject of tavern songs throughout the city for overcoming three smugglers in a dockside duel — the stories of her exploits quickly defying plausibility; the most famous version of the story features her defeating twenty-seven enemies at once.
Similarly, while a fair few stories about Johanna’s exploits depict her as a cunning femme fatale, the real Johanna is straightforward, soft-spoken, and has been happily married to her husband since even before she returned to Porthaven and joined the Musketeer Guard.
Johanna’s greatest accomplishment as a member of the Musketeer Guard came during her investigation and dismantling of a smuggling ring operating out of the city. When it was discovered that the leader of the smugglers was the Captain of the Musketeeer Guard, Johanna was appointed the acting Captain of the Musketeer Guard by the then Prince of Porthaven, partly as a reward for exposing her predecessor’s corruption and partly because her own well-known personal incorruptibility was seen as a much-needed asset to reform the Musketeers and stamp out any remaining corruption. The position eventually became permanent.
In general, a candidate for the Prince of Porthaven must announce their own candidacy. However, the laws of Porthaven allow for a candidate with sufficient popular support to be acclaimed as a candidate. As such, Johanna was quite surprised to find herself as a candidate during the fifty-third election of a Prince of Porthaven.
Johanna’s fellow Musketeers led the push for their Captain to be acclaimed as a candidate and found much popular support among the people of Porthaven due to her fame as both a skilled duellist and a principled lawwoman. Despite being acclaimed without her approval or even knowledge, Johanna was elected Prince of Porthaven and dutifully accepted the position despite her hesitancy to take on a full-time career in politics.
Despite the reputation she earned as Captain of the Musketeer Guard, Johanna’s time as Prince of Porthaven has actually been devoted primarily to fostering the arts in Porthaven. Porthaven’s University, Opera House, and Art Gallery have all received generous endowments from the Prince’s coffers in recent years.
Johanna’s other great project as Prince has been to encourage the city’s girls and young women to begin successful careers with the city’s Guild Authority and the Musketeer Guard in particular and throughout the city in general.
As a former adventurer and sword aficionado, Johanna had her official portrait as Prince painted with her holding the Houou Mochizuki, a famous sword from Yamatai that has found its way in the treasury of the Princes of Porthaven.
Now, my plan for this series is to use actual historical paintings of people at least vaguely corresponding to the Realmgard people I’m writing about. I want to lean into the Musketeer aesthetic for Porthaven, but I couldn’t find any good examples of a real painting of a woman who look remotely like a Musketeer, so I found some stock photos and tried to make them look like a painting…
Adapted from original images by Vika_Glitter and LVER from Pixabay.
I had the kernel of this character for a very long time. In an earlier form of Realmgard, I had a Prince of Porthaven named Joachim, but I abandoned the story he was in after I repurposed the characters (mostly notably turning the earliest version of Annie Darkstone into her current self).
Since then, I decided that the Prince of Porthaven would be a woman, due to the fact that “prince” ultimately comes from a Latin word (princeps) that just means “leader.” Now, princeps as a noun is grammatically masculine and, Roman gender roles being what they are, everyone historically titled princeps was a man, but princeps as an adjective uses the same form when applied to men or women (or just grammatically masculine and feminine words).
My major inspiration for the office of the Prince of Porthaven itself is basically the Doge of Venice, with Porthaven based in a lot of ways on the (Most Serene) Republic of Venice — or, really, any of the Italian Maritime Republics.
Hopefully I actually have 30 days worth of these in me. Well, we’ll see, won’t we?
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