The Queen of Hearts (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sisfist2013-02-01 01:27 am
rosestolilies) wrote in sisfist2013-02-01 01:27 am
World Info Post
Who is the Queen of Hearts?
The Queen of Hearts was once a goddess of love in the pantheon of ancient Crete. When that civilization fell, most of its gods and goddesses either died out or were absorbed by the Greek pantheon. The Queen took a third option, submerging herself into the minds of women all across the world. Over time, she became a part of female collective sunconscious, specifically as an embodiment of female desire (often suppressed) for power, safety, and bonding amongst each other...although since she is goddess of love, she tends to interpret that in a rather specific way when acting on her own.
Okay, so why is she so nuts?
If hitching a ride in the collective unconscious was that easy, more gods would do it. In order to do so, she had to give up her name, and in so doing, her identity. She no longer remembers anything about her previous existence as a Cretan goddess, or anything else for that matter, beyond fragments. All she really has left is an overriding impulse to bring women together in a place of safety, security, and mutual bonding. Which she follows as well she can. Trying to dissuade her from this is pretty pointless, she literally cannot believe that she isn't acting in her inhabitants' best interests.
So yeah, if she seems scatterbrained, there's a reason for that: because she is literally scattered across the minds of more than three billion people, with all the conflicting impulses and difficulties you might imagine from that.
What are the Incarnae?
The Incarnae are fragments of the Queen, split off from herself but still tied to the whole. It might be easiest to think of them as facets of a jewel, with the Queen herself representing the whole jewel. She created them because although she could only vaguely remember her days as part of a pantheon, she could still feel the loneliness of the loss of the her brother gods and sister goddesses, accentuated by hundreds of years of patriarchal forces isolating and disempowring the women whose minds she lived within, and desired company. Each one took a label and form from labels used to classify women, essentially becoming the embodiment of the archetype it represented.
The Incarnae, naturally, do not always get along.
What are the Gardens?
The short version: it's an unfinished prototype of a world, but set up completely upside down and backwards.
In the world of Queen of Hearts, a god or goddess can construct a world inside their mind, which (once it's grown to maturity) will become a full-fledged world and join the others like it. These worlds (or Heavens, one could call them) are essentially soul factories, producing people who are then sent down to populate the physical Earth (or rather, a Earth, there's more than one). Upon death, those souls are recycled through reincarnation, or not, or discarded, according to whatever rules the God/Goddess in question had set for it.
Empowered by a wave of feminism and female emancipation sweeping much of our Earth during the twentieth-century, the Queen remembered how the Gods of old created their own worlds, and decided to give it a try. But she couldn't remember how it was done properly...and frankly, by surrendering her name she had also surrendered her ability to do it properly. What resulted was a uniquely half-formed world that we know as the Gardens. The Wild Places that border it are the way they are because reality is literally not solid there.
What are our characters doing here?
A Goddess' world is supposed to be populated with people of its creator's design, but for previously mentioned reasons, the Queen isn't able to do that. She can't create her own souls. She also more of less set up the Gardens in the metaphorical boiler room of the universe, surrounded by metaphorical heating pipes pumping souls from Heavens to Earths and then back again.
I'm sure you can see where this is going. She couldn't create her own souls, but here were all these convenient ones, ripe for her to use! She's hijacked the workings of the universe to populate her Garden.
Your character as they appear in the Garden is actually a manifestation of their soul, taken from a given point on their timeline. They're not just a copy; they are taken directly, and then later returned to the exact point from which they were taken. From a given Earth you would never notice it happening, because timelines do not sync between universes. This is why you retain no memory of your time in the Garden when you return to your world. But the events which take place int he Gardens are imprinted on your soul, which is why you remember them again when you return.
The Gardens are a real mess, aren't they?
Yes. Yes they are.
Could they be fixed?
If the Queen could remember her name and how to do things properly, she could fix everything. Unfortunately, she's lost all of that. The High Priestess, whose role is to the be keeper of ancient secrets, actually does know all of this...but that same role constrains her from actually telling anybody directly. She's not cryptic by choice.
The Queen of Hearts was once a goddess of love in the pantheon of ancient Crete. When that civilization fell, most of its gods and goddesses either died out or were absorbed by the Greek pantheon. The Queen took a third option, submerging herself into the minds of women all across the world. Over time, she became a part of female collective sunconscious, specifically as an embodiment of female desire (often suppressed) for power, safety, and bonding amongst each other...although since she is goddess of love, she tends to interpret that in a rather specific way when acting on her own.
Okay, so why is she so nuts?
If hitching a ride in the collective unconscious was that easy, more gods would do it. In order to do so, she had to give up her name, and in so doing, her identity. She no longer remembers anything about her previous existence as a Cretan goddess, or anything else for that matter, beyond fragments. All she really has left is an overriding impulse to bring women together in a place of safety, security, and mutual bonding. Which she follows as well she can. Trying to dissuade her from this is pretty pointless, she literally cannot believe that she isn't acting in her inhabitants' best interests.
So yeah, if she seems scatterbrained, there's a reason for that: because she is literally scattered across the minds of more than three billion people, with all the conflicting impulses and difficulties you might imagine from that.
What are the Incarnae?
The Incarnae are fragments of the Queen, split off from herself but still tied to the whole. It might be easiest to think of them as facets of a jewel, with the Queen herself representing the whole jewel. She created them because although she could only vaguely remember her days as part of a pantheon, she could still feel the loneliness of the loss of the her brother gods and sister goddesses, accentuated by hundreds of years of patriarchal forces isolating and disempowring the women whose minds she lived within, and desired company. Each one took a label and form from labels used to classify women, essentially becoming the embodiment of the archetype it represented.
The Incarnae, naturally, do not always get along.
What are the Gardens?
The short version: it's an unfinished prototype of a world, but set up completely upside down and backwards.
In the world of Queen of Hearts, a god or goddess can construct a world inside their mind, which (once it's grown to maturity) will become a full-fledged world and join the others like it. These worlds (or Heavens, one could call them) are essentially soul factories, producing people who are then sent down to populate the physical Earth (or rather, a Earth, there's more than one). Upon death, those souls are recycled through reincarnation, or not, or discarded, according to whatever rules the God/Goddess in question had set for it.
Empowered by a wave of feminism and female emancipation sweeping much of our Earth during the twentieth-century, the Queen remembered how the Gods of old created their own worlds, and decided to give it a try. But she couldn't remember how it was done properly...and frankly, by surrendering her name she had also surrendered her ability to do it properly. What resulted was a uniquely half-formed world that we know as the Gardens. The Wild Places that border it are the way they are because reality is literally not solid there.
What are our characters doing here?
A Goddess' world is supposed to be populated with people of its creator's design, but for previously mentioned reasons, the Queen isn't able to do that. She can't create her own souls. She also more of less set up the Gardens in the metaphorical boiler room of the universe, surrounded by metaphorical heating pipes pumping souls from Heavens to Earths and then back again.
I'm sure you can see where this is going. She couldn't create her own souls, but here were all these convenient ones, ripe for her to use! She's hijacked the workings of the universe to populate her Garden.
Your character as they appear in the Garden is actually a manifestation of their soul, taken from a given point on their timeline. They're not just a copy; they are taken directly, and then later returned to the exact point from which they were taken. From a given Earth you would never notice it happening, because timelines do not sync between universes. This is why you retain no memory of your time in the Garden when you return to your world. But the events which take place int he Gardens are imprinted on your soul, which is why you remember them again when you return.
The Gardens are a real mess, aren't they?
Yes. Yes they are.
Could they be fixed?
If the Queen could remember her name and how to do things properly, she could fix everything. Unfortunately, she's lost all of that. The High Priestess, whose role is to the be keeper of ancient secrets, actually does know all of this...but that same role constrains her from actually telling anybody directly. She's not cryptic by choice.