[hider=Lyra Magia, Lady Verona, Princess of Mantua]
[center][h2][color=5e8eb8]Lyra-Celeste Mari Magia of Mantua[/color][/h2]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/xDACjqm.jpg?1[/img]
[color=5e8eb8][i]"Mantua bore me, Calabria snatched me away; now Naples holds me."[/i] -[b]Virgil[/b][/color][/center] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮[/b] 
――――――――――[/color][INDENT]Lyra (lee-ruh, not lie-ruh) is how she introduces herself, and Chell (like the first syllable of Celeste) was given by her primary school classmates and stuck quite firmly. [/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓣𝓲𝓽𝓵𝓮[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]The heiress to the duchy of Mantua, her title is technically Marchioness, or Lady Verona. (In real-world terms, yes, she’s the crown pri ncess.)[/INDENT]

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓐𝓰𝓮[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Nineteen[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Female[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓢𝓮𝔁𝓾𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Some form of sapphic, but she hasn’t found a label she likes yet – she doesn’t feel that she fits with bi or pan but she’s not exclusively attracted to girls, either, so...[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮[/b] 
――――――――――[/color][INDENT]Lyra is proud of the fact that she looks incredibly, perfectly ordinary, able to blend in among Mantuan crowds with ease. She stands just shy of five feet and two inches, slightly below the Mantuan average – and she towers over her Lusitanian cousins, though is still dwarfed by most other kingdom’s royals. Her frame is thin and rather girlish, without much by way of curves, though she always dresses to accentuate what she has. Her light olive skin is smooth, naturally radiant with the barest scattering of freckles across her high cheekbones. Her eyes are a shade of “generic hazel-brown”, as she has said in the past, often accentuated with thin eyeliner and mascara, but little by way of colorful makeup. She’s been known to experiment with it, but her go-to looks for the face are incredibly natural.

Lyra is a master of all things whimsical, her shoulder-length waves (her natural brown at the moment, though she’s rocked other colors before!) pinned back simply and paired, often questionably well, with some combination of fantasy-medieval gowns (in formal settings) or flowy tunics, or – for casual occasions – a trendy turtleneck or oversized sweater. Day-to-day, when she’s trying to blend in while attending university, she’ll be found in a belted tunic, leggings, and often sandals or boots depending on the weather. She doesn’t wear much by way of necklaces or bracelets, though she does usually have a thin septum piercing and signature oversized hoop earrings. Lyra’s favorite accessory is a set of oversized glasses, enormous round copper-wire frames with delicate vine-patterned earwires. She only really needs them to see the board in lectures or for reading, but she will wear them to complement any sort of outfit.

Notably, numerous enamel tourist-shop pins of various patriotic sorts (the kingdom flag, coat of arms, house coat of arms, and the colors of each of her holdings/titles) adorn the front pocket of her messenger-bag backpack, which is near-always on her person.[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Above all else, Lyra is a gentle soul. She’s enamored by fantasy and fine art, as one would expect of someone born and raised in the epicenter of a modern-day cultural renaissance, and she has a special fondness for all things creative and [i]pretty[/i]. She has far more ideas than she has time or motivation for, bouncing around from writing to drawing to sculpting to music to sewing to anything else one can do with their hands or their mind. She’s far from indecisive; it’s more that she makes her decisions on the faintest whim.

Soft-spoken and empathetic, she’s fond of animals and small children, though sometimes finds their loud unpredictability off-putting. She’s always eager to make friends, putting herself out into social situations whenever she has the chance, and with her gentle smile and unassuming posture, people often gravitate to her for just that. She does her best to be down-to-earth, and has been even rather secretive about her royal status. She decided to attend the university of Naples precisely to have anonymity among the masses.

Lyra loves to travel, and hopes to someday visit every kingdom and country on Earth. 

Online, Lyra is considerably more of a presence than she is in person. She frequently makes and shares content that supports LGBT+ rights, and she has been (at least remotely) involved in protests in other kingdoms. It hasn’t been an issue in Mantua in the last century, but she appreciates the privilege of having a global platform. She’s unique from other royals in that she doesn’t separate her professional and personal accounts; scroll back far enough on her Instagram and you’ll find cheesy photos of her and her high school girlfriend. To that effect, she’s been an out-of-the-closet sapphic since she was 13 ((and has frequently gone off at length on her Tumblr, Insta, and TikTok about how pretty girls are)) and is very vocal about how supportive her family and friends are both at home and at university. Most people in Mantua are supportive (those who have issues with her choice in partners have issues more based on class than on gender) and though she’s been met with considerable clapback from various other kingdoms, she refuses to let it compromise her authenticity. It’s the one thing she’s notably stubborn about.[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓛𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼 + 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Lyra loves traveling, bullet journaling, and fancy stationery. She’s very fond of various fine art (especially impressionist and other early abstract art) and fashion design across all eras – she’s torn between studying creative writing and fashion design at university, for when she finally starts up classes. Cello is her favorite instrument and she’s dabbled in playing it, but she’s decidedly not good at it. She’s a half-decent pianist, but doesn’t particularly [i]enjoy[/i] playing – especially when paired with a cello, though, she’s all ears for concerts. To that effect, she’s quite a patron of the arts; the house accountant once did a breakdown of her yearly expenses and realized a notable portion of her allowance went towards memberships at dozens of museums, art galleries, and concert halls. As many Mantuans are, Lyra is very fond of tarot and similar magical/arcane rituals. 

She professes to not dislike anything, but she has a deep-seated hatred for prejudiced and oblivious people. She doesn’t care for espresso; even mixed into a drink with Starbucks amounts of sugar and cream, it’s still too bitter for her. Bright fluorescent lights, especially strobing ones like one would find at a concert or club, tend to give her migraines, and some electronic music becomes especially grating on her ears after even a short time. Still, she tries to be open-minded to all things except hatred.[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓑𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂[/b]
 ――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Lyra’s had the privilege of a very quiet and well-supported childhood. She grew up in a happy home with a loving mother and father and two affectionate younger siblings, attending a state school – it was a point of pride for her parents that they so trusted the public education system that they would educate all their children in it. Their public schooling is full of art and music and literature, with most higher-level math and science as an optional addition. Lyra has always been quick to make friends, and for the most part those friendships were not even strained by her royal status. She had some lessons at home to supplement her public education, but those were mostly on international relations and things that she was required to know even more of as a royal – her parents tried to give her opportunities to have as long of a “normal” childhood as they could.

As teenagers do, she had a girlfriend in secondary school – Eva Caladri, whom she’s still friends with and speaks fondly of – for nearly two years. Eva's family moved and so she transferred to a different school, and as could be expected the distance pulled them apart. She still misses her, sometimes, but they’ve both pretty neatly moved on with no hard feelings. Lyra’s been very fortunate in that regard; a smear campaign could have been disastrous.

Over the summer, Lyra took some university courses from the University of Naples; she’s certain that she’s going to attend school there, loving the bustling of the campus and just how [i]diverse[/i] and lovely it all is. With that being said, she has no idea what she wants to study. She’s been friends with Lea Lynton over social media since they were much younger – when she found out about the wedding, she begged her parents to be able to attend, and it happened to work out perfectly with her gap year plans. After the festivities, she’s going on a tour of the world, stopping in Britannia and Liang and Castilya and Lusitania and a dozen other places over the span of a few months. It’s not a diplomatic visit and half the countries don’t even know she’s planning to be there – she’s just going to explore. Her family is remarkably not worried about her safety. After all, Mantua barely even shows up on a map; it’s unlikely that anyone outside of maybe the Lusitanians or Brizians would even recognize her.[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓕𝓒 + 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻 𝓒𝓸𝓭𝓮[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]FC: Amanda Arcuri, color-code 5e8eb8[/INDENT] 
[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓣𝓸[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]N/A[/INDENT] 

[color=5e8eb8][b]💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Instagram: @chellybelly[/INDENT] 
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[hider=Mantua][center][h2][color=3fc46e]The Duchy of Mantua[/color][/h2][/center]
[color=3fc46e][b]💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Mantua, occasionally spelled out as ‘The Duchy of”.[/INDENT] 

[color=3fc46e][b]💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓠𝓾𝓮𝓮𝓷[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT] The king and queen (Technically, the duke and lady) are Dorian Magia and Marina Monteverdi – the lady elected not to take her husband’s name due to her own proud family heritage. The duke is 52 and the lady 49. They have three children – Lyra, who’s eighteen, Iris, who’s sixteen, and Luca, who’s twelve.[/INDENT]

[color=3fc46e][b]💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻𝓼[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]Forest green, imperial violet, and white.[/INDENT]

[color=3fc46e][b]💎𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓲𝓼 𝓚𝓷𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓕𝓸𝓻[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]- Tinysmol bastion of progressivism, even more radical when compared to its neighboring Lusitania
- Lots of high-value commodity exports, some industrial and tech and a fair amount of agriculture – it’s all very fertile land
- Tourist hotspot! “the living renaissance”, as certain tour companies say, Mantua is still a thriving artistic community, with fine art, literature, theater and film still booming several hundred years after the start of the Renaissance.
- Notably secular – they have little interest or commonality with either the old-god pagan Lusitanians or the surrounding remnants of the catholic Holy Roman Empire and they prefer to keep it that way. Some amount of Lusitanian paganism spills over into the point below this one but for the most part they’re exceptionally good at the separation of church and state.
- An obsession with magic and the arcane – the tradition of tarot started in the vicinity of Mantua in the 1400s and the medieval obsession with such forbidden arts has only grown even stronger. [/INDENT]

[color=3fc46e][b]💎𝓡𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽/𝓡𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓿𝓪𝓷𝓽 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓗𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]- Got off the crazy train of Lusitania in about 760 AD as their tribalish proto-empire began to crumble once more. Mantua existed as a “free imperial city” for a long while, fending off the HRE; became a duchy under the Holy Roman Empire in the mid 1500s. As the HRE lost control of various lands Mantua was quick to take back its sovereignty, and has (mostly) quietly existed since the mid-1700s as its own entity. That said, it kept its titles related to being a duchy because of the historical significance. It regularly confuses outsiders. In 1815 Lusitania tried to reconquer them and it ended spectacularly badly for the Lusitanians. They now share a border in “amicable” peace – Mantua has no desire to conquer anyone, though the Lusitanians know that they absolutely [i]could[/i].[/INDENT]

[color=3fc46e][b]💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻[/b] 
――――――――――[/color] [INDENT]N/A yet![/INDENT] 
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