Triumphant Council

Just as the 'divine right of kings' failed its God-anointed bearers in our world, the Ril Dyaran dynasties of old ruled poorly, and ended in blood: blood shed by their own and by the knives of foemen both. However distant in scale and time from the Ril Dyaran Civil War, these so-called Dynastic Wars were, arguably, the first revolution the Ever Triumphant Realm ever saw; wars of assassins rather than of armies, at the end of which monarchical primogeniture was abolished in favor of a system of election for life.

That is remembered, but what is not is that those first electors were themselves the hands behind the knives. At one time this forgotten truth came to light when an anonymous (and swiftly banned) publication, slandering the royal office, made the rounds of the realm; however, the few that put any stock in its allegations decided, rightly and pragmatically, that any misdeed of the day was a price worth paying for the fairness of an elected monarchy.

Comprising a group of the realm's notables — nobles and patricians — the Triumphant Council, as this royal council has been known since its inception, grew out of the need to provide a check and balance against the authority of the reigning monarch, and govern the realm in lieu of one. That, at least, is the official position.

At the time of In Sunder, the council has been, for decades, little more than tools in the hands of imperialist Ril Dyaran monarchs, manipulated by the Velvet Court into electing candidates favorable to the interests of Mai Dyr's shadow lords. Summer has come and gone while they deliberated over a successor to the late, unlamented Yagon Three-Eye — and this time, puppet-strings no longer hang taut upon their arms...