Graendal
What We Know of Graendal
name: Kamarile Maradim Nindar
occupation:
Graendal has been described as blond (sometimes red-gold hair) and somewhat fleshy, and she surrounded herself with half-naked servants (both men and women).
Before she had turned to the Dark One, Kamarile had been a noted "ascetic" throughout the land. Her life had been seeminly simplistic, but toward the beginning of the War, she underwent a complete transformation, to the point of hedonism.
As with the other chosen, she was trapped inside the Bore, but upon her release, she quickly set up residence in Arad Doman as the ailing Lady Basene.
Clues From the Text
[ACoS: 20, Patterns Within Patterns, 357]
Graendal's real interest was always the most beautiful plucked from among the most powerful, but she would have flirted, just to pass an hour, with a man she intended to kill or one who wanted to kill her. The only men she never flirted with were those of the Chosen who stood above her for a time. She never accepted being the lesser of any pair.
--the Watcher
The Chosen Speak
[FoH: Prologue, The First Sparks Fall, 26]
In any other company but Lanfear's, Graendal would have been accounted a stunningly beautiful woman, lush and ripe. Her gown was green silk, cut low. A ruby the size of a hen's egg nestled between her breasts, and a coronet encrusted with more rested on her long, sun-colored hair. Beside Lanfear she was merely plumply pretty. If the inevitable comparison bothered her, her amused smile gave no sign of it.
--Rahvin
[FoH: Prologue, The First Sparks Fall, 26]
Physical beauty was not enough for Graendal's servants; they had to have power or position as well.
--Rahvin
[FoH: Prologue, The First Sparks Fall, 29]
Graendal, too, followed conquest, though her methods did not involve soldiers; for all her concern with her toys, she took one solid step at a time. Openly to be sure, as the Chosen reckoned such things, but never stretching too far at any step.
--Rahvin
[LoC: Prologue, The First Message, 57]
Graendal stepped out, for once unaccompanied by half-clad servants, and let the opening vanish as quickly as Demandred had. She was a fleshy woman with elaborately curled red-gold hair. Somewhere she had actually managed to find streith for her high-necked gown. High-necked, but mirroring her mood--the fabric was transparent mist. At times Mesaana wondered whether Graendal really took note of anything buyong her sensual pleasures.
No, it would be a dire mistake to take Graendal at surface value. Most who had taken her for a fool were long since dead, victims of the woman they disregarded.
--Mesaana
[LoC: 6, Threads Woven in Shadow, 130-2]
He had never met her until he chose to abandon a losing cause and follow the Great Lord, but everyone knew of her, famous or honored, a dedicated ascetic, treating those with disturbed minds Healing could not touch. At that first meeting, when she accepted his initial pledges to the Great Lord, every trace of the abstemious benefactor was gone, as if she had deliberately become the opposite of everything she had been before. On the surface her total fixation was her own pleasure, nearly obscuring a desire to pull down everyone who had a particle of power. And that in turn almost hid her own thirst for power, very seldom exercised openly. Graendal had always been very good at hiding things in plain sight. He thought he knew her better than any of the other Chosen did--she had accompanied him to Shayol Ghul to make his obeisance--but even he did not know all the layers of her. She had as many shades as a jegal had scales, slipping from one to another as quickly as lightening. She had been the mistrees then, he the acolyte, for all his accomplishments as a general. That situation had changed.
Graendal prattled on like a fool, but only a true fool took her for one. What she seemed to let slip among her babbling was often planted as carefully as a conje needle. The key was picking out why, and what she meant to gain.
She used Compulsion so often like a hammer that one might forget that she could wield the weaker forms of it with great delicacy, twisting a mind's path so subtly that even the closest examination might miss every trace of her. In fact, she might have been the best at that who ever lived.
--Sammael
[LoC: 6, Threads Woven of Shadow, 137]
Long ago she had chosen to seek every pleasure, to deny herself none that did not threaten her standing with the Great Lord.
--Graendal
[LoC: 23, To Understand a Message, 349]
Graendal thought too much; she was so used to making others out for her that she failed to think of acting for herself.
--Sammael
Updated 06/28/99