Wilhelmina Renjino

Synopsis
Wilhelmina Renjino (known as Willa) is the daughter of King Wilbur Renjino and Whitney Renjino Alistair. She is a descendant of the Old Lord Renjin. She is first introduced in part two of the Dawn of Blood and Chaos as a fiery young girl of seventeen infused with vigor, conviction and ambition. Her chief desire is to be loved, wanted, and validated.

Early Life
She was born as one of the few seers in the world of Lumina, meaning she was blessed with the ability to see the makeup of destiny and the webbing which connects all livinng things. Something of an empath. Premonitions also came to her in dreams. She was technically the fourth child the union between her mother Whitney Alistair and King Wilbur Renjino, but all before her had either been stillborns or girls, whom Wilbur believed could not be proper heirs. The children were killed upon birth when it was evident that they were female. With the birth of Willa, Wilbur finally had enough and put Whitney to death for her inability to provide a suitable heir. He was about to kill Willa as well when a mystic warns that Draemor will not allow for the merciless slaughter of four of his direct descendents, and that by killing the newborn Willa he would risk the full wrath of Draemor. By some miracle, Wilbur listens to the mystic and decides against killing his daughter, but she was to be sent away to be raised by the Ri Attisai, a group of nuns dedicated to serving Draemor and cultivating a healthy minded young women. She would not be returned until she was of marrying age.

Ri Attisai
She was somewhat of a troubled child at the Ri Attisai, to the point where even her status as the king's daughter couldn't save her from a kind of social leprosy which was perpetuated in part by the Mother Attisai. It was apparent even from a young age that Willa was no simple ally of the faith, and that she seemed drawn to ancient ways she herself did not understand. She would tell the Mother of the premonitions she saw in her dreams, and also of witches and dragons. This was sacrilege to the Church and everything the Ri Attisai stood for, and the Mother would often punish her for her talk of a more ancient understanding, and there was a silent understanding amongst the Ladies at the Attisai to keep their distance from the King's daughter.

One day while in the garden, she comes across a strange fruit which seems to beckon to her. She plucked it from the bush and took it to her room to eat later. When she ate the fruit she took notice of the seeds which were packed tightly in the core of the cylindrical mass, and something told her to swallow them. Upon doing so, she became somewhat intoxicated, and could see the world in a clearer way than ever before.

She saw thousands of fibers erupting from her naval and spreading out into the world in the direction of people she knew, with many going to ones she did not. The closer she got to a person, the easier it was to discern which fiber connected her to them, and what their relationship was depending on the predominate color of the strand.

Suicide Attempt
Her first chapter in the first book is immediately following an attempt she made on her life. Willa tried to poison herself with a flower she'd read about called simply and appropriately "Death" (real life Belladonna). Suicide is an action prohibited by the Draemorian religion. Those who are successful are damned to hell by church order, and their memory is condemned. If unsuccessful, typical action calls for the denunciation of the act, followed by recalibated imprisonment, or enforced isolation where the values of the religion are drilled into the subject once more. When Willa awoke and saw that they got to her before the poison took effect, and that the attempt was unsuccessful, she escaped from the infirmary.

She had the option to dodge castigation by running away, but fear of the unknown prompted her to decide against it. She hid in the Trilundary Garden, the smallest and most secluded garden on the edge of the grounds which had been long defunct and neglected since the building of the Jessandrian Garden. Soon a search party was launched. Not a hour later, her friend Renara Milian found her in the garden since she knew where to look. This is where the book opens.

She dreaded the shame and embarassment of being chastised in a public trial with all the other girls watching and judging this girl of royalty who had somehow managed to gain a role in their hearts as an outcast.

Prince of Chaos
She is integral to the Prince of Chaos storyline and reluctantly becomes a servant of Zzaro along with Rhys once she bonds herself by blood to him in a promise ceremony. The Prince of Chaos storyline mainly serves to detail the battle between the two Gods and how they are influencing the plot and actions of characters like Rhys, Willa and Archer. It’s a back and forth of Willa playing the role of the redeemer and Rhys corrupting her. This silent push and pull happens as the story progresses. Eventually, Willa is convinced to go through with her plot of killing her own father, though she can't bring herself to force the miscarriage of the heir he so desperately desired which gestated within the belly of the new queen. A while later when she explained what had happened, Rhys chastises her for this because it leaves the door open for this queen and the heir to take her rightful place as ruler, though he understood why she couldn't do it. Archer both understands and applauds her reluctance. "'My father had the choice to kill me when I was born. No doubt he wanted to; to kill me before I even had a chance to live. What am I to take away that baby's chance for life because of how I feel about him?'"Following the ordeal, Willa falls into a coma as a result of her conflicting spirit, which helps in solidifying her plan to play the victim after killing her father. Rhys and Archer sneak into the castle in the midst of all the chaos and find her unresponsive in her bed. They overhear that one of the king’s former advisers plans to murder Willa in her vulnerable state and seize control of the city themselves, so in a panic they carry her out of the city.

When they clear the city, a chasm opens up at their feet and they fall into a cave system deep within Lumina known as The Pit of Disorder, where they come face to face with ancient secrets, civilizations, and beasts which had long since been lost to time. They learn that Lumina is much older than 50,000 years old, and that there was an era before Draemor where Zzaro ruled. The world was filled with beasts and giants and some qualities which endear all three of Willa, Rhys, and Archer. It’s in this chasm that they become more familiar with the esoteric and what forces they are dealing with, however there is a force field rendering them unable to penetrate the deepest level of the pit, which Willa assumes contains some dark secret Zzaro didn't want them knowing about.

Much of the history of Lumina is unclear and shrouded in myth even to those who live in it. Willa's trip into the pit offers a chance for her to see things more clearly. In the end of the book and the Prince of Chaos arc, she sucumbs to the desires of the pit and her growing love for Rhys (which Archer believes is some artificial facilitation on the part of Zzaro) and chooses to bond herself to Rhys in marriage and to Zzaro in spirit once she escapes the pit.

She and Rhys escape on the beast Gorildolmier, a son of chaos which the trio find in one of the deeper levels of the pit, but Archer can bring himself to follow them down their dark path no longer. They reluctantly leave him behind to find his own way out of the pit. When they escape from the pit, they find themselves far away from the where the ground had swallowed them. They emerged from a volcano on an island in Jan Vure with the locals watching on in amazement.

Desolation of Ruin
When the second book begins, they are already bonded, and have been bonded for almost a year. The locals of the island have taken to calling them their leader, and for the first time Willa truly gets to actually feel what it's like to be a queen...something which was robbed from her when she killed her father.

We find Willa in despair because she appears that she cannot conceive a child no matter how many times they try. She fears that she's infertile and cannot provide an heir for Rhys. She has nightmares about him having to use another woman and not needing her, which preys on her insecurities.