Shady times in the hot sun or "how I met your queen".

Gravitas in truth.  So began the wars leading up to the new empire and the divine rule of his lordship the former prince of thieves.  Whispers through the cities talked of him, his plans, his ambitions.  Nothing that really tickled the ears of most the nobles, but the spymaster was competent enough in his job.  The alleys swarmed with guards, a show of overbearing force with the sole intent of squashing a bug.  The dessert folk of the wastes in the southwest have a saying, "never squash the scorpion in your boot with bare flesh, for in flinching from the sting the scorpion may get away with your life and its."

Prophetic in a way, Aligon the Stinger was known as the little scorpion in his youth, poisoned blade and quick reflexes felling each foe to stand in his march to the top of the cities underbelly.  Even that was not enough for the prince, though for a time he played the patient crime-lord of the city.  Guards were corrupted and streets kept safe out of respect and fear.  While he was never inactive his routine was set into the business, the trade of seedy duplicity.

Then came the returning conquest from the east, the duke of the gate come bringing tribute from the mountain passes and the parade of captives and of marvelous wooden sculptures.  The train of his company stretched back a mile out of the city as he progressed through the twisting streets up to the palace gates, each company of men scarred and weary from battle, empty of vigor yet filled with a pride at having survived the long campaign that duke had pressed deeper and deeper into the forests.  Cages of magnificent stags, great wild boars hobbled and tied in wagons, sleek wolves of white and black and grey that snarled at the end of poles, chained and collared and still barely held back by five men apiece.

From the windows and rooftops and alleyways that the procession edged past, the noble palanquin passed, the duke seated on it with silks and his heavy sword belted to his side even in the city.  The jewel that caught Aligon's eye, the only treasure that he could not steal out from under the duke's nose was that bound and chained lady, that pointed-eared grove-walker.  Surely the old empire knew of them, felt their arrows bite into leather clad shoulders and heard their laughter echo through the trees, sure a few brave and mighty warriors had been known to fell one in combat, but none this beautiful and none this tame, none this alive and none with eyes of flashing green had appeared in the city.

That year was filled with Aligon's impatience, his plotting, his cunning, and most of all his obsession with the lady.  He would sneak about the palace walls, peering up at windows in his free time, wondering where she would be. She was a gift to the current emperor, Lord of the lands and the shifting sands, ruler of the outreaching provinces.  His rule was cemented by the city he governed, situated at the center of the land on an oasis shore with rivers extending out like rays of light into the desert.

The King fell eventually at the end of that year, killed by a dagger in the back by that very same prince of thieves.  He took the girl for his own, and in time she loved him.  It was not quite that easy, though.  Each province did not know to fear the prince and his wiles, they did not know the fear a sharp prick in the night can cause.

So there was war.  Bloody war.  A war to last ten years, each slowly grasping back towards stability.  The city did not love him, but they feared him.  His barons, some new faces some old, respected him as much as they feared him.  He cared not of their love, ruling the sea of sands with an iron fist.

Some say he charmed the immortality out of the grove-walker, some say he was magic to begin with, others say his sons replaced him in his old age, the world none the wiser.  Who knows for sure, but he still sits on his throne, white hair and weathered face next to his bride, old surely but beautiful in her age like a parched flower.