Ages of a Dynasty
The concept of this "quest" is a frame narrative where an adventurer in distant future Vana'diel has been asked to help Angelica and Tompa-Tumpa paint a portrait of the dowager queen Curilla. I imagine the quest spawns with Angelica, and then requires the adventurer to travel to San d'Oria and check a ??? in the courtyard of the castle over a series of days, telling old queen Curilla's secret life story piece by piece. Much of the back-story has been taken from the San d'Orian storyline, as well as Curilla's quest series including Savage Blade, but a lot was also borrowed from the Vana'diel Tribune story for Curilla and Trion.
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Prologue
For the eightieth birthday of the dowager queen Curilla the One-Eyed, her son Robillard, the 29th King of San d'Oria, commissioned a portrait for her from the most fashionable artist in the middle lands. Tompa-Tumpa was the latest protégé of Angelica, the eccentric Hume artist who had made her early reputation painting strange art and trying to get adventurers to take it to dangerous places to hang it. She had later developed into one of the most successful portrait artists of the age. Her students were numerous, but all agreed that Tompa-Tumpa, who needed a tall stool to even reach the canvas, had the most potential.
The student was busily arranging his oils and brushes while Angelica set up the area in the courtyard that Curilla had selected. They were assisted by one of the many adventurers that Angelica roped into helping her over the years by asking them to pose. It was said that she'd never paid one of her assistants in actual gil in her life.
"Over here by the fountain, I think," Angelica instructed one of the castle guards that had been borrowed for the task. "Or, like, over by the flowers. I think the evening light will be better there." Although approaching eighty herself, there was still a youthful mannerism in the great artist's bearing and voice. She had aged well, despite her temperament.
Curilla herself was escorted in by a grandson, who helped the ancient warrior into the chair although she swore she was still fit as a fiddle. Long ago she had exchanged her armor for more stately robes befitting a queen, but she was still in charge of training the knights of the kingdom in the ways of the sword, even if she herself had retired from the battlefield three decades before.
Her brilliant red hair had faded to a sandy gray, but she still wore it over her missing left eye, a style she had affected when she was twenty. Her one good eye was piercing and sharp when she was stern, and twinkling and friendly when she was kind.
"Now, my young Tarutaru friend," she said, and her eye twinkled to maximum effect. "I expect you to make me look like a princess again instead of a dowager." She chuckled gently.
"Now now, Your Majesty, we can't have any lies in art." Angelica fussed over the arrangement of the great queen's skirts. "He will paint you beautiful as you are."
Tompa-Tumpa looked nervously at his blank canvas. This could be his first real masterpiece. Either way it would hang in the halls of the castle forever, but he wondered at his ability to do justice to the aging royal in front of him. Perhaps if he knew more about her, he could do a better job.
"Milady," he began timidly. "I'm afraid thataru I am unfamiliar with Your Majesty's history, not being from San d'Oria."
Curilla nodded. "It is not a story entirely known in my own kingdom, for that matter. You may ask me anything you wish."
Taking a pencil, the Tarutaru began to sketch the pose that Angelica had selected for the monarch onto a parchment for a reference drawing. He asked the most obvious thing.
"How did you lose your eye?"
His master stepped on his foot. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to ask. The adventurer assisting her looked on with interest.
Curilla smiled, and her one good eye briefly went from twinkling to piercing. He felt as if she had bored a hole through him, but the sensation was gone almost as quickly as it came.
"Ah," the dowager queen said, brushing a fallen petal off her skirt. "That is a long story. But perhaps it is suitable for an activity such as this."
"Tilt your head this way, your majesty," Angelica said demonstrating it with her own head rather than touching the monarch inappropriately.
"Then begin at the beginning." Tompa-Tumpa erased the pencil lines he had started for her face, and tried again with the new angle. "Tell me about your childhood."
"Very well." Curilla smiled and closed her eyes briefly, composing her thoughts. "It begins in a training and tournament courtyard not far from here . . . "