Grendine

Now Queen Grendine, Rard's co-head of state and the "Mother" of the Family. She ambushes Minalan at a royal banquet by seating Isily — the mother of his secret illegitimate daughter — directly next to Alya, a chilling demonstration of her leverage. Matronly yet devious at court, she grants Minalan his baronial investiture with one hand and threatens him with the other. She is openly hostile to rising magelords and receptive to mundane nobility whispering against them.

Grendine controls the exiled Duke Anguin, prepared to let him return to Alshar only once her son Prince Tavard is safely wed and has produced an heir. She and Princess Rardine spend the summer husband-shopping in Remere. She also arranges the Isily / Dunselen marriage, gaining a second high mage on the Family payroll and tying a woman she controls to a useful witchstone.

Grendine is mostly off-page. Her reputation is strong enough that the goddess Ishi briefly takes her form to taunt Minalan, underscoring her dual aura as both matronly mother-of-nations and figure of carnal political temptation.

Grendine is confirmed as the author of Duke Lenguin's death (ordered through Isily) and is strongly suspected of ordering Duchess Enora's death via a Brotherhood frame job. She sends her matchmaking agent Countess Shirlin to Vorone to push a bride on Anguin; Pentandra and the young duke resist.

Grendine is absent but looms over everything. Her covetous desire for Enultramar drives the plot. It is now confirmed — not merely suspected — that she personally ordered the deaths of both Lenguin and Enora.

Her daughter Rardine is captured by the Brotherhood of the Rat in Enultramar. It is strongly implied Grendine either engineered or at least welcomed this outcome; her difficult daughter out of the way is, to the Family's Mother, a solvable problem.

Grendine effectively abandons Rardine to captivity, privately pleased her troublesome daughter is out of the way. Publicly she maintains the fiction of an impending ransom. When Tyndal and Rondal actually rescue Rardine and Minalan carries the news to Rard and Grendine in person, she breaks down in uncharacteristic tears — the rare moment in the series in which her mask slips. She agrees to send Anguin's sisters to Vorone as his wards.

Grendine attends Anguin and Rardine's wedding in Alshar, sparring coldly with her now-estranged daughter across the banquet table. When the draugen attack erupts in the palace she witnesses it first-hand, and the glimpse of the undead genuinely terrifies her. She sends frantic follow-up messages demanding magical protection for the royal family.

Grendine is steadfastly opposed to Prince Tavard's planned invasion of the Magelaw. Through Ishi, Minalan learns she has warned her son he would lose a war against the Magelaw outright. For the first time in her career she is beginning to worry that Tavard is slipping her control.

A failed assassination attempt on Pentandra briefly looks like the Family breaking its truce with the magi, but Grendine turns out to be surprisingly inactive on this front. When Prince Tavard's wife and children are kidnapped by mercenaries, she rages at Anguin and Rardine, then dismisses her own Family agents' spying as a trivial matter — an uncharacteristic lapse.

The Head Gardner accesses the Family's secret records at Wilderhall, quietly gaining decisive leverage over Grendine without her knowledge.

Grendine increasingly scolds Tavard for his reckless Darkfaller invasion but ultimately still supports him, in part out of spite for her daughter-in-law's apparent infidelity. A long-kept secret is revealed in this book: Grendine's biological sire was not actually the old Duke of Alshar, which retroactively exempted Rardine's marriage to Anguin from consanguinity difficulties.

Grendine and Rard personally visit Sevendor (a major political concession) to beg Minalan to serve as Prince Tavard's preceptor. She appears older now, her face an artfully glamoured mask of youth. She openly admits that Tavard is stubborn and unfit, and that Minalan is one of the few who can still reach him. She negotiates reluctantly when Minalan insists on also tutoring Anguin, Rardine's brother, and Camavon.

Grendine attends the farewell celebration for Tyndal and Rondal and grudgingly admits she likes the two boys. Her planned Yule court is mentioned as part of the "blissfully quiet" royal season. She is still alive and functioning as Mother of the Family at the series' close; her final fate is not shown on-page.