The Tiger Minister

Feng Kwan Lin, The Auspicious Tiger

The Tiger Minister
City state:  Guiyang, City of Luck

While courtiers are birds of various plumages, the Tiger Minister prefers to be the feline in the grass waiting to pounce and scatter her squawking cohorts by her mere appearance. She is an odd mix of courtier and courtesan, and woe betide the fool who thinks her soft and cannot unsheathe her claws.

Before becoming a courtier, Kwan Lin was something of a social anomaly---the bastard whelp of a noble and his servant. This mixed parentage did not serve her well early in life. Because the servant was useful, she was not dismissed, but neither was her daughter given any favor either. As a result, Kwan Lin was in a class all her own---far too common for any privilege afforded a noble, but clearly bred from the elite and expected to be above the common rabble. It left her with no friends and few acquaintances.

Her loneliness behooved her to decide---if no one wanted to be her friend, then she had to make herself wanted. She learned the intricate social graces, the steps with which to navigate both noble and common circles and as she grew older, her cause was bolstered by her considerable beauty and an outpouring of generosity on her part to the lower classes---as she's said more than once before, "I am but one parent removed from your condition." (A statement that angers her noble father, whose feelings she has since learned not to care about and in fact likes to tweak in moments of quick-tempered pettiness.)

She has since used her political maneuvering to make herself a diplomat between the Empire's social classes, and her City of Luck shows this. A haven for gambling, entertainment, music and theater, it is a City perforce egalitarian---there are no classes here, only artists and their audiences.