The woman is a mythical figure in Tezetan circles, and the mere mention of her name is enough to send a shudder through a room. People call her The Hag, and she dominated the House during her long lifetime, refusing to die while her weak son lived, determined not to leave the House in the hands of someone unsuitable. She was the most recent woman to control the House, and with Ranis named Damondar's successor, the figure the Sunbird will be compared to. A rather dire set of red soles to try to fill.
The historians of the Tower and the armchair tend to weave a story of extreme cunning on the part of the Hag's husband, Javidhas. They seem to believe blindly in a myth that a petty slight committed against him gave him the epiphany on how to bring House Tezeta into more power at the expense of House Cavriis's--that cunning and careful planning moved the pieces into place until he had married one of Cavriis's youngest daughters before convincing her to turn on the House of her birth and nearly completely shift the balance of power in the system.
Ranis, however, always just looks up at the dagger, at the unrestored, crumbling portrait, with an expression Nihn is not sure she wants to understand. The last time they stood in front of the portrait, she'd looked at the sidearm and asked what Nihn thought they would be like, if they found themselves free of their bindings to their House, but left with the memories and marks of what their House had done to them, and enough agency to do something about it.
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Like Ranis, Kurrem's version of the period also lacked many of the technical details. Her first lesson on the matter came very early into Mojgan's time in the Palace, when she was reluctant to hold the sword, despondent at the idea of killing a human. It had been a lesson of a woman's spitefulness and animosity and likely selfishness had led to a deeper and more meaningful peace for the sector, for the culture and its people, even as she allowed those negative things feed and fester in her spirit. Once Mojgan had begun to venture out among the courtiers of the Palace, it had taken Mojgan some time to realize that the woman Kurrem spoke of was the same woman as the Hag, as Kurrem had typically called her by her name, Sairhiban.
Damondar II's grandmother. Javidhas's wife. Daughter of House Cavriis, Dancer of Kurrem's school.
Many attribute House Tezeta's rise in fortunes to her ruthlessness and the Autarch's personal fondness for her (which may have been rooted in part due to the Autarch's mother having also been a dancer).