tanrei - "grace, beauty, elegance"; ami - fr: "friend"; saishoku - "wit and beauty"
Yes, her full given name is Tanrei Ami. Together. One piece. If she was Southern American, it would probably have a hyphen. But she's not, and it's Tanrei Ami. If you're very nice and kowtow properly, you can call her Tanrei like her parents. Or Karei and Akahana. But only if you kowtow PROPERLY.
Age: 342
Birthday: September 9
Astrology Sign: Virgo
Blood Type: A
Likes:
Tanrei Ami is, first and foremost and never ever forgotten, a princess. A Queen-in-training. A woman in preparation to rule with wisdom, justice, beauty and love over her people.
She's still working on the wisdom part.
For the most part, Tanrei Ami is easy to get along with — discriminating in her tastes, highly intellectual, and peace-loving, she epitomises the quintessential gentle princess. She maintains a fairly quiet demeanour, rarely speaking unless she has a carefully-considered and valuable thought to offer.
In general, Tanrei Ami can be seen as having two sides — one the painstaking and attentive intellectual; the other the refined, elegant lover of beauty. In either case, she is soft-spoken and modest, skilled in diplomacy and the art of the subtle insult. As a princess, she is well aware of her innate superiority, but equally innate tact prevents her from lording it over anyone who might be her equal, or even close to her in rank.
The intellectual side of Tanrei Ami is orderly and thoughtful. Fastidious, observant, and highly curious, she spends much of her time reading, exploring whatever random topics catch her agile mind. Mental analysis and impartial judgement are major strengths for her. Discriminating and thorough, everything she turns her hands or mind to, she does well. She is a diligent worker with a competent, discriminating intellect. Her commonsensical and realistic approach to problems makes her a very dependable person.
However, her attention to detail is occasionally criticised as being fussy, overly picky. Tanrei Ami prefers quality, even perfection, in herself, her attendants, and her things. Thus, she's known for being interfering and a highly demanding mistress, and when her expectations aren't met she becomes very disappointed, even in herself. Her attitude, at times, can be puritanical and prudish.
Because of this, she is hesitant to take on large projects — she's SUCH a perfectionist that while planning comes naturally and easily, and she's very good at overseeing a whole, getting down into the details will bog her down interminably as she tries to perfect each and every little tiny thing all at once. Also, with all that knowledge floating around, Tanrei Ami isn't really what you'd call the snap-decisive type. She likes to mull over ideas and plans for a good long time before moving into action. Tanrei Ami is a strategist, planning long-term well, rather than a tactician with the ability to plan based on the exact conditions.
The aesthete side of Tanrei Ami is linked to her more affectionate side. She is very loyal and dedicated to those she considers friends. She loves art, music, dance, and all things of beauty, and has actually been known to spend hours on end simply gazing at a painting or a flower arrangement. A great deal of her Privy Purse goes to various artists, musicians, and drama troupes. In fact, Anteros palace has a inhouse drama troupe.
However, Tanrei Ami is stubborn. Ye GODS is she stubborn. She has her own convictions and draws her own conclusions, and once she's done so she won't be moved. Change is not her friend, and taking chances is rare for her. She much prefers thinking things over, applying both her intelligence and her aesthetic sensibility to everything, and she will not be hurried. This is yet another aspect of her ability as a strategist rather than a tactician.
However, one final note: push Tanrei Ami too hard, too far, and her buried temper will come to the fore. She does not take criticism well, and a chill reservation can abruptly give way to an enunciated string of swear words delivered in a perfectly level tone before Her Highness of Anteros sweeps off in a swirl of skirts.
Character Interaction:
Tanrei Ami is a gentle, friendly person, but distant. She enjoys companionship and having a good time, but is thought of as being hard to get to know and elusive. Always aware of her duty as a princess and eventual ruler, she maintains a detached impersonality among those she does not consider her peers. Diplomacy and restraint are her strong points here; rarely will she leave a bad impression. In fact, she is so subtle and restrained that she may not leave an impression at all!
She is very selective about whom she associates with beyond the most casual of meetings, and right up until her temper is triggered one can depend on Tanrei Ami to work hard not to offend. She is the mistress of political correctness, and may be depended upon to know exactly which topics should not be discussed with what people. In situations which offend her sensibilities, she merely withdraws quietly, making little or no comment in the event.
Social acceptance by Tanrei Ami, with her known particularity about her companions, is a high honour, and virtually guarantees one's social status. To become one of her handmaidens equates to being set for life, and competition for those maidens' hands in marriage is fierce. Tanrei Ami is highly ambitious for her maidens, and uses their marriages diplomatically and politically. However, she has never placed one of her maidens in a bad marriage or one they actively did not want, which has led to problems.
Personal Interaction:
Once Tanrei Ami accepts someone as a friend, she is very loyal to them. She loves her friends wholeheartedly, if still a bit distantly. Her friendships are hugely important to her, and she will sometimes give way to a friend rather than run the risk of ruining the friendship. She has a tendency to keep things from her friends, as well, rather than allow them to know things which may interfere in the friendship.
There is a third circle of friendships Tanrei Ami has, and this circle is limited to a single person: Karei. Tanrei Ami feels that she owes something special to Karei, as the leader of Karei's Guardian Senshi, and tries to act as a mother to the girl. She often thinks that Karei is far too spoiled and naive. She fears for Karei when she has to find out what the world is really like, and hopes desperately to be able to protect her. By extension, she tends to feel some of the same protectiveness about most of the other Iopan princesses, with the notable exception of Akahana, the Queen of Harmonia. Akahana, Tanrei Ami looks up to.
Romantically speaking, Tanrei Ami is overly aware of her duty to marry and bear heirs. She is slightly more distant from her male peers than her female peers, and finds herself continually scrutinizing them. She has never even engaged in a flirtation, and would very much prefer a stable friendly match to a passionately romantic one.
Way of Life:
Tanrei Ami's general outlook can be summed up as "live and let live". As long as you allow her to be her gentle perfectionist self, she will allow you to be yourself — whatever that self may be. Her needs are simple: luxury, peace, friends. Push her around, or trouble her peace of mind unduly, and her shocking temper and outrageous stubbornness come to the fore, eradicating her patience, thoughtfulness, and diplomacy. She loves people, though at a distance, and she has an extensive appreciation of the good things in life, such as art, music, or anything pleasing to the senses.
Tanrei Ami's early life was absolutely boring. Saishoku Hiasobi, her mother, had gotten pregnant neither too early nor too late; there could be no doubt that her father was Kenji, her mother's Consort; she was eagerly awaited. She was born precisely on the predicted day, with exactly the right amount of fuss on her mother's part, and appeared perfect in every way, just as one would expect the Princess-heir of Antares to be.
Tanrei Ami was a serious little person from the start. In fact, her nurses complained she didn't laugh enough, and when she grew old enough to have tutors, they worried that she studied too hard, and encouraged her to get out and play! In order to offset this, three things happened. The first was that artistic, creative endeavours and art appreciation began to be heavily emphasized in her studies, to the point of absurdity; the second was that her mother began to surround her with other little girls, the children of Antarean nobles; and the third was that she began to make a yearly tour of the other Iopan courts. Up until that point, when she was about 210 years old (about 7 mental years), Tanrei Ami had spent the majority of her time either alone or with her tutors.
A heavy emphasis was placed on her duty to be a graceful leader of the Holy Princess' court, and so of course, she had paid an obligatory visit each time another Princess-Heir was born (those all fell within her first 30 years of life). Tanrei Ami was invariably bored by those visits at that age, largely because, save Akahana, she was the oldest, and so there was no one to talk to, and nothing to do. She and Meikyou share a lot of traits in common, as well as being close in age, but due to separate duties they have never become close.
When Tanrei Ami turned 301 (about 10 mental years), she began a yearly round of closely supervised visits — starting with her own kingdom, which she would one day rule, she spent a day or so in each city, then went on to spend a week in each of the other Iopan kingdoms. Her mother felt strongly that the Queen, and thus the Princess-Heir, of the kingdom of unity needed to be very friendly with all the other kingdoms. It's the Princess-Heir's duty, when reaching at age, to take the burden of travel off her mother. Since this yearly round of visits took a long time, Tanrei Ami was constantly being moved from one group of people to another, and grew very picky about what people she would associate with. Her love of decadence also grew out of these journeys.
During the half of the year when she was not away from the kingdom, Tanrei Ami was allowed supervised visits to the capital surrounding Antares Castle, and it was on one of those visits that she discovered henna and her love for the art of henna body designs. The people of Antares love their beautiful Princess, but abstractly, and so these visits were always difficult for Tanrei Ami. She felt isolated, and began to withdraw into a shell, a shell which she still partially keeps.
She picked up swordwork after Hiasobi showed her the Holy Sword and explained the ultimate purpose of the Sword to her. Quick and thoughtful, Tanrei Ami realised that a sword does little good and much harm if you don't know what to do with it, and with her newly discovered sense of duty (discovered in that moment, ironically), she began to take sword lessons. At first she was very bad at it, and very hesitant about making attacks; she willingly practised the defensive moves, but seemed to have a learning block about attacks. It took a visit from Pandia, and Tanrei Ami's discovery of Pandia's disastrous first venture out of the Moon Palace, to break this block. Tanrei Ami threw herself into her sword lessons like a whirlwind, mastering the attack moves in less than two months after three years of stalling.
Tanrei Ami's heavy training in the art of being a Sailor Soldier began when she was 305 and continued for ten years. During that time, she had to sacrifice (small sacrifice to her) her visits to Antares Town. As when she was a small child, she devoted herself so absolutely to the training that her parents began to worry, and so, again, they surrounded her with noble Antarean girls. Initially very distant, and somewhat hurt by this, Tanrei Ami snubbed the girls for about six months. Finally, the twelve maidens, advised by Tanrei Ami's servant girls, resorted to stratagem: they attempted henna bodywork, badly, then one by one they showed Tanrei Ami what they had done. Touched and shocked both by the obvious inability of the girls at the art, and by their clear attempt to enjoy her hobbies, she began to thaw, and now considers many of those girls to be friends, though they do not rank as high to her as the other Princess-Heirs.
Her coming-of-age ball at age 315 was something of a triumph and a trial to Tanrei Ami. She enjoyed being honoured and rewarded for her hard work in training, but the ball also marked the moment when she was expected to begin looking for a Consort. At one and the same time, she wanted her parents to choose someone for her, and wanted to make her own choice. At that time, she also didn't understand the need for hurry, and felt she was being rushed into a decision which could affect her for a long time. Between her desire to get to know the noble boys better, and her hatred of being rushed, Tanrei Ami was in a sad state.
She stalled on the issue for about five years, continually claiming, when pressed for a decision, that her duty to become the perfect guardian for the Holy Princess was as important, nay more important at the time. However, her parents cornered her in a private conversation one day, and the real reasons came out — she didn't want change, and felt rushed. They came to an agreement: Tanrei Ami would host some kind of party four times a year until she turned 350. At that time, she would have to declare her choice of Consort, though they would be allowed to wait before marrying.
Current Situation
Nowadays, Tanrei Ami has a regular schedule, which she really likes. She is resolutely not worrying about the upcoming Consort deadline. She makes her yearly tour of the kingdom and kingdoms, hosts her four parties willingly and with a cheerful heart, and in between does her henna, her swordwork, her government study, and her Senshi training. If truth be known, though, she's becoming just a wee bit secretly bored with this round of events, and a tiny bit of excitement would be okay by her. Preferably something other than the scandals from Leda and Cecreops, though; Tanrei Ami still isn't quite sure what to think about Kurihana and Chimonami.
Kingdom: Anteros, kingdom of unity
Geography/Climate: Anteros occupies that span of coastline not occupied by Harmonia, Leto, Rhodes, or Cecreops. At some point along the winding borders, the kingdom borders every other kingdom, or if the kingdom is on an island there is a port nearby or facing that island. It is an extremely irregularly shaped kingdom, owing to the need to keep a border with as many kingdoms as possible, and thus has equally irregular geography.
The far side of Cecreops and Harmonia's mountains belong to Antares; the southern forests are outgrowths from Leda and Leto's forests; Cerberus' mists stop near the border. The central plains, which slope down to the coast, are the same rolling plains as in Leto. Despite the varied geography, the one type of land Antares does not have is absolute flat plains. There is very little flat ground in the entire kingdom; even at the coast hills and cliffs are more common than coves and bays. Four rivers wind through the land, with one debouching in a butterfly-shaped lake near the centre of the country.
The best way to describe Antares visually is 'picturesque'. Travellers are apt to come on glades in the southern forests where beams of sunlight fall perfectly on gnarly roots decorated with tiny flowers. [Kyoukai's note: There was a Lot More Rhapsodising here, but I had to Cut it to save Space! - K! (pawprint mark)] The Nitians might have created Antares specifically for beauty. Even thunderstorms and snowfalls there are beautiful, or at least dramatic and eyecatching — although, to be fair, some of this might have to do with the attitude of the Antareans towards their land.
Antares Castle and the surrounding city is the largest of the population centres of the land (unsurprisingly); however the land is dotted with towns and smaller cities, including three growing seaports. Farms tend to cluster together and be fairly small.
Antares as a whole seems to average more sunny days and more dry weather than is good for the land. However, the Antareans have turned this into an asset by planting lots of vineyards. The same goes for the abundance of clay; Antares has a large pottery industry.
Flora: Antares is famous for its flora, for the abundance and variety of the flowers alone. Almost any variety of flower which can be found in another kingdom has been cultivated at some point by someone in Antares (they didn't all survive ...). The southern forests are composed of mainly deciduous trees; fir trees or evergreens are very rare. Rare, also, is the bit of land near or in a town or city which is not cultivated somehow, whether it be flowers or fruit.
Fauna: If there's one flaw in the perfection of Antares, it's the fauna. The forests are full of wild, dangerous animals, and for some reason dry weather creepy-crawlies are abundant. There is also a large population of poisonous snakes. Aside from that, the fauna is typical of what one might find in England.
Exports/Imports: Antares exports beauty. Okay, that's vague. Major mass-produced exports include wines of all varieties, pottery in many shapes and sizes, and fruits of all sorts. Less frequent but more lucrative exports include flower artwork, paintings, and jewellery. Also diplomats. Major imports include grain products, and many of the materials for jewellery-making.
Warnings: Wandering alone in the wilds of Antares is not really a smart thing to do. Within a few miles of a city or town, you are relatively safe, but any farther and you run the risk of being eaten, mauled, bitten, stung, or otherwise unpleasantly molested by a very thriving animal population. Also, the picturesqueness of the land may not seem a danger, but one can easily become enraptured with the beauty of the country and be accosted by brigands or those same wild animals. And the natives are so friendly (the ones that aren't brigands, which really aren't all that common), they may not let you go.