House Aelvar

House Aelvar wears command like a vow that must be renewed in public. Its sea-crowned line keeps white halls above the quay, but the portraits there show more funerals than triumphs: captains lost in storm, heirs killed on foreign roads, queens selling jewels to keep refugee ships afloat. The house's banners are beautiful, pearl and blue beneath old gold, yet every levy begins with the recitation of what Aelvar blood has already spent. Its power survives because it has made humility into ritual. Its danger is that ritual can become theatre, and theatre can hide hunger for a crown.