Amaranth li Astellia

Astellia Arc, part 2 =

Astellia Arc, part 1 =

Plague Dragon Arc = Prologue =

Amaranth li Astellia is the crown princess of Astellia, a popular idol singer in her homeland, and one of the main protagonists of The Chronicles of Albion.

Appearance
Amaranth is a young woman of around 5'7", with a fairly full (but not thick) build in spite of dancing on stage professionally. She has blonde hair and brilliant blue eyes, with moderately thick eyebrows.  Her chest is on the bigger side of average.

While her hair used to be long, she cut it in battle against Luna (Diana). Additionally, as of the battle against the Plague Dragon and Calystegia's awakening, her left arm ends in a stump just above the elbow, although she has trained herself to manifest a divine light-based prosthetic.

On her right wrist, she wears Skuld, her royal Bracelet passed down since Astellian antiquity. Additionally, she currently wears the bracelet formerly belonging to her brother Hana.

Personality
Amaranth is a free-spirited individual, constantly seeking stimulation and new frontiers. She's very personable, charismatic, and friendly—easy to get along with. Additionally, she is intensely individualistic, with a strong sense of self. With this personality comes a love of and penchant for music, and she has used her royal status, her charisma, and her musical talent to become the greatest idol singer Astellia has known since the retirement of Calystegia.

Amaranth is the type of person who always says what is on her mind and is intensely honest, almost to a fault, as well as being a fair bit stubborn to boot.

Early Life
Amaranth was born as the eldest child of the King and Queen of Astellia. Her early life was spent playing around and doing what young girls are wont to do... that is, until she was announced to the public as the crown princess, at which point she was forced to grow up faster than she would have liked. At the age of sixteen, to escape the tedium and minutiae that her life had become, Amaranth auditioned to become an idol alongside the famous Alice Kuon, and she was so beloved by the judges that she was signed instantly, starting her rise to stardom. Her boundless charisma, good looks, and phenomenal singing voice quickly made her the most legendary idol Astellia had ever seen in fifty thousand years.

Plague Dragon Arc
However, as she grew older, she began to grow sick and tired of Astellia's atmosphere, which she considered stifling and stagnating. With this in mind, she resolved to take her life into her own hands, and, on the eve of her twentieth birthday, she fled her kingdom and her country. Bribing a captain of the Astellian Self-Defense Force, she hitched a ride on an aircraft, but it was revealed shortly thereafter that there were those who wanted her dead, and so she was cast from the aircraft to the planet's surface below, left for dead.

However, thanks to the emergency activation of Skuld, her royal bracelet made from divine technology and materials, she managed to survive, washing up on the shores of the Julian Republic, where she was found by Nonus, slave to the Julian soldier Augustus Hadrian Invictus. After being nursed back to health, she decided to accompany Augustus on his journey to the neighboring country of Egalstria to slay the calamitous beast known as the Plague Dragon.

Joining forces with Augustus' scout Alystra and a wanderer named Avius, Amaranth journeyed to the border town of Rema, where her exposure to foreign lands finally caught up with her and she became deathly ill. Avius used his healing magic to repair her immune system, and, combined with medicine given to her by the town doctor, she was soon back on her feet. However, her desire to lay everything on the table and clear up misunderstandings with Augustus about her homeland led to a rather shocking series of revelations for the young soldier, who experienced a crisis of faith, which was resolved the next morning.

It was around this point that Amaranth realized that she couldn't keep her feelings bottled up any longer, and, on a tour of the town with Alystra, she confessed to her would-be tour guide about her growing feelings for Augustus, only to find out that Alystra felt the same way. The two of them resolved to put their differences aside in favor of waiting until the time was right to lay their feelings bare to Augustus.

After a subsequent spat with Avius and obtaining new traveling clothes, Amaranth and her companions were off, joined by two travelers named Igni and Byrne.

In a cave a day's walk from Rema, Amaranth and her companions found themselves under attack by bandits, but thanks to the sudden arrival of an unidentified Magnolionese youth with immeasurable battle prowess, coupled with the arrival of a band of Paladins from the Church of Merody in Egalstria, Amaranth was able to use the opportunity to escape along with Igni and Alystra. The three of them happened upon Ichihime, who let Amaranth's group stay the night at her manor.

The next morning, Amaranth's group, now five strong, journeyed to Pietravalle, the capitol of Egalstria, where she was reunited with Augustus. She also met an unwelcome and unpleasant surprise—the presence of her little brother Hana, who had somehow found his way to the surface like her. Surmising that he must have met with the same fate as her, Amaranth deduced the existence of a plot against her family's lives, and, with renewed resolve to return home, she met with the Egalstrian king the next morning along with her companions, whereupon she beseeched the king for the means to seek a way home, should she and her companions be successful in slaying the Plague Dragon.

Before departing Pietravalle, the group met Klaus, an Egalstrian knight who was the only person with the power to permanently end the dragon's existence. Together, they all journeyed forth from Pietravalle towards the desolate Plaguelands, land ravaged by the Plague Dragon and the death and destruction it leaves in its wake.

However, it did not take long before things boiled over, and when Amaranth confronted Augustus about his racism and bigotry towards the Magnolionese, she forced him to realize his faults as a person, and he left the group, with Alystra close behind. That night, with just her and Klaus present, she happened upon a young girl named Lycoris—or perhaps it was the other way around—who quickly grew attached to Amaranth. They journeyed onward.

All the while, however, Amaranth had been having dreams of a most peculiar sort. In her dreams, she spoke with a mysterious figure who turned out to be none other than Calystegia li Astellia, her homeland's first queen, who taught Amaranth many things in preparation for a great trial to come. Through Calystegia's instruction, Amaranth was able to mature on many levels, becoming stronger both emotionally and in terms of battle prowess.

Shortly thereafter, Amaranth and her group encountered a bandit gang led by a woman named Luna, Egalstria's bloodiest and most notorious bandit. Seeking to put a stop to Luna's banditry, Amaranth squared off with Luna, at one point cutting her hair to escape Luna's grasp. Bringing out the full capabilities of her bracelet, Amaranth fought Luna to a standstill, at which point Luna agreed to accompany Amaranth's group in their quest to slay the Plague Dragon.

After a long journey, the group arrived at a small town on the edge of the Plaguelands. Early one morning, when Amaranth woke up early after a relatively sleepless night to find a large group of refugees being brought into the town, the sudden arrival of the Plague Dragon brought everything crashing down. Amaranth went into shock at the sight of the dragon, and it was at this point that Calystegia's memories took over as a failsafe. Calystegia began a defragmentation process to fully restore her memories that had been dormant inside Amaranth; however, due to the incompleteness of her memories, Calystegia's constructed personality was faulty and "buggy," and she went berserk upon attempting and failing to reunite with her brother Silva ul Astellia. Klaus sought to reach out to Amaranth and bring her back, and after taking a serious beating at the hands of Calystegia, he managed to do so, causing Amaranth to regain partial control, although she lost an arm at the hands of Calystegia's wrath.

Thanks to the sudden awakening of Silva's memories and personality within Hana, however, Amaranth was able to resume complete control, with Silva's divine song-based magic forcibly separating Calystegia from Amaranth, at which point Amaranth used an inverse of Calystegia's own magic to negate the latter's existence, erasing her from this plane of existence entirely.

When Alystra loses her life in battle against the Plague Dragon, Amaranth experiences, for the first time, what true loss feels like. Breaking down, Amaranth is overcome by sorrow—sorrow that is only compounded further when, after Klaus is overcome by cowardice and fear of death and cannot permanently end the Plague Dragon, Hana and Silva merge, using their divine attributes in order to wield the Omnilanze, Klaus' weapon and the only thing that can permanently end the Plague Dragon, to put an end to the dragon's soul, preventing its reincarnation. However, this comes at the cost of the Omnilanze's wielder's life, and despite Silva being the spawn of a god, he was no exception to this rule—and thus he and Hana lost their lives.

The Aftermath
In mourning for Hana and Alystra, Amaranth met with Augustus after the battle. It was there that Augustus confessed his budding romantic feelings for Amaranth, who reciprocated, the two of them becoming a couple. After a funeral for Hana the next day, Amaranth and Augustus, as well as the rest of their comrades, returned to Julia, where a funeral for Alystra was held. The day after the funeral, however, Amaranth and Augustus went their separate ways, with Amaranth journeying alongside Lycoris and a number of her companions to Pietravalle, in order to obtain a ship.

Astellia Arc
Having obtained a ship, Amaranth and her companions—Lycoris, Igni, Luna (now known as Diana), Avius, Vrael, and Ono—journeyed by sea to the island of Lemuria, where, in the process of searching for the Archsage, they happened across a forest manor inhabited only by Lostelle, the Archsage's daughter, having newly awoken from a mysterious sleep. Through her dreams, Lostelle was able to provide the location of a "big, round place" far out to sea, confirmed by Vrael to be the remnants of Astellia from when it was still part of the surface. Armed with this information, Amaranth used a powerful magic circle in the forests of Lemuria to teleport herself there, along with Diana and Avius; the rest of her companions elected to stay behind.

Arriving at her destination, Amaranth was greeted with great exuberance, hailed as the second coming of Calystegia. She was informed of a fallen fragment of Astellia's magical reactor that lay in a town far to the north—so she and her companions set out, accompanied by the entirety of Old Astellia's population, worked into a fervor at the chance to finally return home.

However, when she successfully activated the reactor fragment and opened up a portal to Astellia, what awaited her was a homeland changed. She discovered that Finis Solomon, a famed biotechnical inventor and head of the massive Asterion Corporation, had betrayed the royal family, turning all of Astellia into a kingdom entirely under his control. She attempted to fight back, but she was laid low by Finis after a battle with Lessica, Finis' synth android servant.

In Battle
Amaranth fights using the power of Skuld, her royal bracelet, which uses electrical impulses to manipulate air currents. She can use this ability to send out blasts of wind, create walls of air, or increase her own movement speed. Additionally, she can use the bracelet's electrical impulses on her own body, augmenting her physical capabilities.

When not using the power of her bracelet, Amaranth fights with aikido, a martial art that makes use of counters, throws, and grapples, being a seasoned martial artist back home. Her fighting style consists of a mix of her aikido training and her abilities as a dancer, making her light on her feet and quick to dodge and counter.

Additionally, as of Calystegia's awakening and subsequent erasure, Amaranth has begun to awaken to her own capacity for divine magic independent of Calystegia's abilities. Her divine abilities center around the manipulation of light and spatial dimensions, allowing Amaranth to perform feats such as firing solid rays of light and generating concentrated gravity fields. Due to these awakening abilities, she has stopped relying on the power of her bracelet.

Despite losing her left arm to Calystegia, she has trained herself in generating a replacement arm out of divine light. While this was initially heavily draining on her stamina, subsequent practice has lessened this drain.

Finally, she can use a mean spin kick, even in the air.

Trivia

 * Amaranth has a penchant for cute, girly things, in spite of her rough-around-the-edges personality.