Let's Discuss: Queen Tahlana

Tahlana was Queen of the Ammonites
and aggressive like T Turner in Mad Max.

Queen Tahlana (Tah-lawn-ah): 

I always envisioned Tahlana to be an exotic combination of Polynesian/American Indian with green eyes. There are times Tahlana wears a Mohawk and face paint.  She is a fearless warrior, a strong-willed Queen, and has a don't-mess-with-me attitude that coats her like armor.  She is seventy years old - but doesn't look or act her age.  Another Tina Turner-like trait. 

Part of her age defying looks, of course, is her blood-line from Ammon and his second wife.  In her, the age-defying gene really took root.

Before book one even begins, a ship she was on sank and she was found on the northern shores of the mainland by her first husband, an assassin, who was being hunted.  They married and then lived in Utak.  In what she considered a huge personal sacrifice, she abandoned her husband, Jac Ryn, and her baby girl, Tahloni, and returned to her people to become their Queen.

There are few secrets among the Ammonites, so the people all knew Tahlana had a child, but that child was never recognized officially. Still, since Tahlana and her second husband had no children of their own, it was understood when the Queen gave the word, the unclaimed daughter would become their new Queen.  Because the Ammonites are who they are, they would accept her and love her as they did Tahlana. Her second husband was the King of the Ammonites, a man she respected, but never loved.

Her heartbreak rests in the fact that her people will not remain full-blooded Ammonites once the prophesied Queen takes the throne.  She fears the fulfillment of the prophecy.