Caerna is a legendary High Queen of the Fae who ruled the Borderlands of the Isle of the Mighty.
Overview[]
Caerna was a direct descendent of the Tuatha de Danaan and therefore a Sidhe. In 500 CE, she became the High Queen of the Borderlands of Great Britain which included the Principality of Glamorgan in Cymru and the Kingdom of Wool in Albion. She shared Dyfed with Taliesin, to whom she was most kindly disposed.
When Myrddin, another powerful king of the age, felt his time coming to leave, he transferred his kingdom to Caerna, making her the queen of the Gwynned fae as well as protector of the Llyn Brianne. She asked him why he gave them over and where he would go, but he said not a word.
Queen Caerna was no bad woman, and in many ways a fine fae ruler; all Cymru trusted Caerna to do the right thing. But no great glory did her long reign bring Cymru, not to match that of Caledfwlch or Gwaelod. Caerna seemed always a bit close to the precipice of Banality, or what passed for Banality in those times. Nowhere do you see this more clearly than in her fondness for that most Banal activity, political intrigue. Not many of the fair family had truck with intrigues in those days, but not only did Caerna maneuver and connive always to extend her power, perforce she also lured opponents into the same dull maneuvering.
War of the Black Torc[]
In 527, the Unseelie Prince Carniog began a war using his Saxon forces against the Seelie and Queen Caerna. He was in possession of a potent treasure called the Black Torc which can be used to enchant the fae. The Unseelie Morgan le Fay aided him and betrayed Caerna’s son, Rhys, prince of Glamorgan, to him. Carniog imprisoned him within the Torc itself and Queen Caerna went to war to rescue her son. In the final battle, Caerna knocked the Black Torc from Carniog's hand. It fell into the Llyn Brianne in the Cambrian Mountains, turning the waters black for days, and neither Seelie nor Unseelie could retrieve it.
Caerna lost Glamorgan to Morgan le Fay, sadly. As Morgan walked into the principality freehold in 527, in the same instant it happened that in Gwynedd freehold, many miles away, the Brianne pool vanished, and none found it for many a year.
Finally, Caerna retreated, heartsick at the loss of her son. For more than a century, she sent her courtiers out to search the lake, the rivers, even the Bristol Channel for the Torc that it might release her son. They searched England's Midlands, poked around Kent, even went as far north as Aberdeen, but no luck. Caerna languished. The years went by.
Carniog's Doom[]
In 952, Carniog made another bid for power and, led by Queen Caerna, Gwynedd and the Kingdom of Wool battled him for control of Powys.
Then, in 954, the Principalities of Dyfed and Gwynedd, the Kingdom of Wool, and refugees from Powys allied to defeat Carniog. Mage allies assisted to avenge one of their own named Abernaeron.
When Taliesin died in the war, Caerna sought the throne of Powys to go with her other lands. But as she schemed for power, so she made enemies... by the very act of her scheming, perhaps. No throne would these enemies allow her; instead, they clamored for Rhonwen to take the throne. But the sad end of Rhonwen left her supporters without spirit, and Caerna grew strong in the following war against Carniog.
In the final battle, the armies clashed upon the white beach east of what is now Cardiff. Caerna led the feared Gloaming Covey of Claerwen, with their enchanted emerald swords that clashed with the deadly sun-swords of Glamorgan. Sidhe of Dyfed summoned griffins, and a magus of Powys called upon old debts owed her by two Penn-y-Cabar wyrms. The sinuous dragons cast their great shadows against the sun, and the Glamorgan swords went out like spent candles.
In response, Carniog lit a great bonfire with the bodies of his fallen enemies. Holding magickal prisms before the flames, he focused the light into thin beams that sliced the wyrms right down the belly. The ancient dragons fled, leaving only fae enraged by the profanation of their dead. Yet rage did not help them, for Carniog used the Torc, and he kept hold of the enchanted Shining Sword of Glamorgan. Against it none could stand.
The turning point came when, there on the beach, the deceitful magus Prester Fflydd turned on his master. No one knows why, but he may have given in to some kind of fae cantrip. Fflydd struck at Carniog from surprise, and though the mortal could not damage the Unseelie Prince, he did scratch the Black Torc.
Carniog slew Fflydd on the instant. But the Torc, once scratched, turned loose good Prince Rhys, that Carniog and Morgan le Fay had entrapped in it those centuries ago. He emerged quite mad, yet in a froth he shouted to his mother, "Queen Caerna, remember, If he leaves the bounds of Cymru, he is doomed!" Then Rhys, too, fell dead on Carniog's Shining Sword. But his death was not in vain.
Queen Caerna heard her son's last words, and she knew at once what to do. Prince Carniog stood on the beach, within a few paces of the surf. Caerna gave quick commands to a magus of Powys, Clothra Seabreeze. Clothra chanted a spell and shed a drop of her blood to the sea-spirits, and down on the beach the surf rushed up to flow over Carniog's feet.
It was no more than knee-deep, that water, and yet it meant that Carniog now stood offshore, beyond the bounds of Cymru. Carniog realized it and screamed, and at that moment, the Shining Sword of Glamorgan turned in his hand and struck him down. He fell into the surf, the Black Torc and Shining Sword slipped from him, and the whole sea went dead black for a day and a night. And that is the last that anyone has seen of Carniog for the 10 centuries since.
Aftermath of the War[]
After Carniog's defeat, Caerna became high queen over all Cymru as well as her own Kingdom of Wool in England. The upshot is that the battle left Carniog dead and Caerna ruling the united Welsh principalities as high queen, but left the fae of the Kingdom of Wool feeling increasingly forgotten as Caerna focused her attentions on Wales. This feeling grew ever worse as the decades wore on....
In 1024, Caerna, the Ageless One, began to ail. After she proclaimed her interest in leaving for Arcadia, her courtiers in the Kingdom of Wool and in Powys, which she now also owned, began to jockey for the throne, and her court disintegrated. Even the land itself came to echo her sadness. Wild rivers once teeming with fish ran barren, flowers wilted, forests grew dark and rambling. Even mortal Cymrians warred upon each other, burning the earth and forgetting the wise lays of old.
Grimsfen Tor[]
Then, in 1215, the Order of Hermes began looking to take over certain places of power; Nodes, as the Awakened call them. Under Caerna, the fae fought mages who tried to take those Nodes, many of which were faerie strongholds.
One of these Nodes, a particularly powerful and ancient faerie mound at Grimsfen Tor in the Midlands, caught the Hermetics' eyes. They moved to take it, but it was successfully defended by the Seelie under High Queen Caerna. Now, centuries of political infighting had weakened the Seelie courts throughout the Kingdom of Wool and Caerna's Welsh kingdoms. Caerna could not rouse a timely defense and took heavy losses. Despite deep misgivings, she appealed to an Unseelie court at Nottingham that owed her favors, and its warriors arrived just when Caerna thought all was lost. Together they managed to fend off the Hermetics, but at dusk of that glorious day, both camps, fae and mages alike, were devastated by the unexpected arrival of a group of scientific mages, the forerunners of the Technocracy. With cannons and explosions, they took Grimsfen Tor and routed the defenders.
The loss of the strategically located Grimsfen Tor shattered Caerna's hold on the Kingdom of Wool. Many court sidhe, knowing this, immediately left the battle site for Arcadia, and Caerna simply disappeared. With these two losses, the charmed places of Cymru faded one by one. The world of men grew stronger, and Glamour grew scarcer.
Conclusion[]
In the end, though long and decent was her reign, it brought no great time for the fae. Sad, in a way, for in many of these same centuries of her reign, mortal Wales was enjoying its only prolonged stretch of independent sovereignty before falling to England.
References[]
- CTD. Isle of the Mighty, pp. 13-17, 133-138.