Agetha Leine

Like all of her bloodline, including her distant ancestor Rustina Farthing, Agetha was red-headed. 

Her immediate ancestry is unknown, but when she was very small, after the death of her father, her mother was given a job as a kitchen maid in the castle of Fere Erieve in the mountainous Kingdom of Sarn.

As a child she was highly imaginative, composing little songs and stories to entertain the small children of the castle servants. When she was seven, her mother died in an accident and the kitchen staff decided to adopt Agetha and bring her up.

Her mother had taught her to read and write when very young, which was unusual and most of the servants were illiterate. So, when she was ten years of age, rather than have her working as a kitchen maid, Queen Fena decided the young girl could work for her, writing letters, checking reports sent from the capital Don and other duties.

Agetha was a highly intelligent young woman and by the time she was fifteen, she was changing the way many records were kept. Queen Fena had spent the first twenty years of her reign moving Sarn from feudalism, a process started by her father, but in the process, the country's record keeping had become very confused. Previously, records had been kept by thanes and dukes, but many of these had been lost when the duchies were abolished or had been found to be very inaccurate.

Agetha also changed the way harvests were recorded and surplus stores kept, and created a system of taxes that did not penalise poorer, more isolated communities; Sarn with its high mountain ranges was a very fragmented country. Agetha later said that much of her knowledge was gleaned from conversations she had with villagers and how they dealt with their communal harvests.