“Souran Maravaile was the one besieging Tar Valon?” Rand said, startled. Artur Hawkwing had laid a twenty-year siege against Tar Valon, and put a price on the head of every Aes Sedai.

“The final year of it,” she said, a touch impatiently, “as nearly as the histories record.” It was plain she had little real interest in Souran except as Ishara’s husband. “Ishara was wise. She promised the Aes Sedai that her eldest daughter would be sent to study in the White Tower, thus gaining the Tower’s backing and an Aes Sedai advisor named Ballair, the first ruler to do so. Others did follow, of course, but they still wanted Hawkwing’s throne.” She had the bit in her teeth now, face animated, goblet forgotten, gesturing with her free hand. Words bubbled out. “A full generation passed before that idea died, although Narasim Bhuran did try as late as the last ten years of the War of the Hundred Years—a dismal failure that ended with his head on a pike after a year—and Esmara Getares’ effort some thirty years earlier gained considerable ground before she tried to conquer Andor and spent the last twelve years of her life as the guest of Queen Telaisien. Esmara was assassinated in the end, though there is no record of why anyone would want her dead once Telaisien broke her power. You see, the Queens who came after Ishara, from Alesinde to Lyndelle, followed what she had begun, and not only in sending a daughter to the Tower. Ishara had Souran secure the land around Caemlyn first, only a few villages in the beginning, then slowly expanded her control. Why, it took five years for her sway to reach the River Erinin. But the land that Andor’s Queens held was solidly theirs when most others who called themselves kings or queens were still more interested in gaining new lands than in solidifying what they already had.”

She paused for breath, and Rand leaped in quickly. Elenia spoke of these people as if she knew them personally, but his head was spinning with names he had never heard before. “Why is there no House Maravaile?”

“None of Ishara’s sons lived past twenty.” Elenia shrugged and sipped her punch; the subject did not interest her. But it did give her a new topic. “Nine queens reigned over the course of the War of the Hundred Years, and none had a son live beyond twenty-three. The battles were constant, and Andor was pressed from every side. Why, in Maragaine’s reign, four kings brought armies against her—there is a town named for the battle, on the site. The kings were—”

“But all the queens have been descendants of Souran and Ishara?” Rand put in quickly. The woman would give him a day-by-day account if he let her. Sitting, he motioned her to take a chair.