Co-Empress Eutropia Stavia Porphyrogene, heir to Taldor by virtue of theoretically being full and co-equal ruler of it right now (which will buy you a drink, at the right taverns, and not much else), wears the second-fanciest headband in Taldor. Unfortunately, she spends all of her time in public, so her best headband is Splendor, the kind of Splendor headband that the world's best sorcerers scrape up the money to afford and lesser spellcasters stare at, their greedy hearts full of envy, and so all plans she makes she makes well below her potential intellect-if-she-had-fifteen-minutes-not-in-public, and even further below her potential intellect-if-she-could-prioritize-like-a-sane-person.

She's currently storming towards her father's quarters. This is not particularly unusual; they are well known to not get along, among the circles that know things, over Eugenius Stavianus being an unholy combination of eel, contract devil, and Maelstrom fiend, and Eutropia being both actually Good (a rarity in Taldor, maintained by those who maintain it by regularly hunting deadly monsters) and a political radical prepared to say in public that maybe Andoran isn't all bad, piracy aside. (Eugenius, meanwhile, is well known as a ruthless and cunning politician actually capable of accomplishing things in spite of the fact that the office of Emperor was stripped of practically all actual power when Aroden died, who nonetheless smiles on his wayward daughter in spite of her childish enthusiasms.)