Mytharae Historical Chronicle
The Chronicle of Beauty
How Mytharae Learned to Admire Itself
A somewhat unreliable history of cheekbones, clothing, complexion, wealth, power, and the people who had enough influence to declare all of them fashionable.
An Important Observation
Beauty has rarely belonged to the beautiful.
Across Mytharae, people have always had opinions about beauty. They have admired certain faces, bodies, hairstyles, colours, clothing, voices, scars, jewellery, mannerisms, and physical traits.
But the features considered desirable have never been entirely natural or universal. More often, beauty standards are shaped by whoever holds enough social influence to make their preferences fashionable.
In most settled societies, that means the upper classes: rulers, aristocrats, wealthy merchant families, priesthoods, scholars, court officials, powerful guilds, and other people with enough money or authority to spend their time worrying about whether their sleeves are fashionable.
The Scholar’s Summary
Three inconvenient truths about beauty.
Beauty follows power.
What the ruling class can afford to possess, display, or cultivate often becomes associated with refinement and attractiveness.
Beauty follows wealth.
Features associated with leisure, expensive food, cosmetics, jewellery, elaborate clothing, education, or servants can become symbols of desirability.
Beauty changes.
What one generation considers elegant may become ridiculous to the next. Mytharae has repeatedly changed its mind.
The Chronicle
Beauty Through the Ages
The following account traces the major shifts in beauty ideals among the surviving peoples of Mytharae. It should not be read as a list of universal preferences. Every culture contains disagreement, regional variation, personal taste, and people who consider fashionable nonsense to be precisely that.
Early Civilisations
The Age of Survival
In the earliest settled societies, beauty was closely tied to health, strength, fertility, useful skill, and access to food. Once societies became wealthy enough to produce social classes, beauty began acquiring a second meaning: status.
Valeri
Healthy appearance, strong posture, abundant hair, clear skin, and evidence of good nutrition were commonly associated with prosperity. Among early elites, being visibly well-fed could itself signal that one had never worried about the next harvest.
Health = StatusKharum
Physical capability and skilled hands carried far more prestige than delicate appearance. Strong bodies, carefully maintained tools, intricate craftsmanship, and visible mastery of a trade could all contribute to someone’s social attractiveness.
Skill = StatusThalryn
Smooth skin, healthy coloration, clear eyes, graceful swimming ability, and physical ease in water were associated with beauty. Pearlescent jewellery and carefully crafted shell ornaments became early symbols of coastal wealth.
Oceanic WealthSylvarin
Grace, agility, physical competence, healthy hair, natural ornamentation, and an ability to move through the forest without disturbing it were admired. Deliberately artificial beauty was often viewed with suspicion.
Grace = FreedomThe Rise of Kingdoms
The Age of Ornament
As kingdoms became wealthier and court culture developed, beauty began moving away from simple physical health and toward visible evidence of privilege. Elaborate clothing, cosmetics, jewellery, perfumes, carefully styled hair, and leisure itself became fashionable.
Valeri Courts
Pale or carefully maintained skin became fashionable in some wealthy courts because it suggested that a person worked indoors rather than under the sun. Elaborate hairstyles, expensive fabrics, jewellery, and immaculate hands became increasingly associated with aristocracy.
Leisure = BeautyOrlaisi Nobility
In wealthy Orlaisi circles, bronze and golden skin was not something to conceal. Sun exposure could instead be associated with vitality and mastery of a climate that outsiders struggled to endure. Gold jewellery, luminous fabrics, and elaborate eye decoration became especially prestigious.
Radiance = PrestigeLuminari Academies
Among elite Luminari scholars, luminous skin and bright, unusual eyes were admired, particularly when paired with elaborate celestial robes and magical jewellery. Academic achievement itself could become part of attractiveness.
Knowledge = RefinementBerrin Merchant Houses
Wealthy Berrin families popularised colourful clothing, expensive perfumes, intricate embroidery, polished jewellery, and carefully maintained hair. Social confidence and conversational skill were considered nearly as attractive as physical appearance.
Prosperity = CharmThe Age of Empires
When Beauty Became Political
Imperial courts discovered an extremely useful fact: if rulers could define beauty, they could also define refinement. What separated the court from the ordinary population could then be presented as evidence of superior civilisation.
Imperial Valeri
Slender silhouettes, controlled posture, elaborate cosmetics, refined speech, expensive fabrics, and carefully cultivated hair became associated with court culture in several periods. Rough hands and heavily weathered skin could signal manual labour rather than nobility.
Refinement = ClassOrlaisi Magicians
During the great academic periods, signs of magical education became fashionable. Jewellery incorporating magical materials, elaborate robes, precise grooming, and even the ability to discuss obscure magical theory could function as social decoration.
Education = StatusDraconi Houses
Draconi societies traditionally placed greater emphasis on strength, posture, visible health, controlled aggression, and physical presence. Scales that were unusually vivid or well maintained could be admired, while visible weakness was often considered undesirable.
Strength = HonourSkaldir Clans
In harsh northern societies, beauty was less easily separated from endurance. Strong physiques, healthy complexions, thick hair, resilience, and evidence of competence in extreme conditions carried considerable social value.
Endurance = BeautyThe Age of Magic
When the Supernatural Became Fashionable
Magical societies produced perhaps the most spectacular beauty standards in Mytharae. Once magic became associated with education and prestige, unusual physical traits could shift from strange to desirable almost overnight.
Luminari
Luminous skin, softly glowing eyes, elegant height, celestial jewellery, long flowing garments, and an appearance suggesting magical refinement became strongly associated with elite society.
Magic = EleganceCaecari
Because Caecari perception is based on magical currents, conventional visual beauty has historically held less importance in their own communities. Magical presence, emotional clarity, composure, and the character of one’s aura carry greater significance.
Presence = BeautyNoctari
Underground Noctari communities developed beauty ideals suited to their environment. Pale or softly coloured skin, reflective eyes, luminous ornamentation, intricate hair decoration, and clothing that caught the light of crystals and fungi became desirable among wealthy families.
Luminescence = PrestigeOrlaisi Scholars
During periods of magical expansion, intellectual achievement became fashionable enough to influence appearance. Scholarly robes, enchanted jewellery, elaborate libraries, and the particular exhausted look of someone who had been awake for three nights studying Magica were all surprisingly respectable.
Scholarship = GlamourThe Age of Trade
Beauty Travels
Trade routes made beauty standards considerably less local. Merchants carried fabrics, cosmetics, jewellery, perfumes, hairstyles, and fashions between continents. Suddenly, a wealthy person in one kingdom could become the reason an entire city changed its hairstyle.
Berrin Influence
Berrin merchant families became powerful cultural intermediaries. Their fashions mixed regional clothing, colourful textiles, jewellery, practical travel garments, and carefully cultivated social charm.
Trade = InfluenceThalryn Coastal Courts
Coastal elites popularised sea-glass ornaments, pearls, shell jewellery, shimmering fabrics, and carefully maintained aquatic features. Wealth increasingly meant access to rare materials brought from distant waters.
Rarity = LuxurySarnai Clans
Among wealthy and influential Sarnai families, beauty remained closely connected to horsemanship, confidence, endurance, carefully maintained hair, decorated riding equipment, and the quality of one’s horse.
Skill = PrestigeBogryn Communities
Bogryn beauty remained closely connected to the marsh. Natural pigments, botanical perfumes, intricate woven materials, polished teeth, carefully maintained skin, and herbal adornments could signify health, knowledge, and prosperity.
Nature = RefinementThe Age of Changing Kingdoms
When Yesterday’s Beauty Became Tomorrow’s Embarrassment
No beauty standard survives unchanged forever. Political revolutions, new religions, economic crises, wars, migration, magical discoveries, and changing trade routes repeatedly overturned established ideals.
From Pale to Sun-Kissed
In several Valeri regions, aristocratic paleness once suggested indoor leisure. Later periods associated healthy colour with travel, outdoor recreation, military strength, or wealth sufficient to travel for pleasure.
The Same Skin, Different MeaningFrom Delicate to Powerful
Some courts once admired delicate physiques as signs of refinement. Later warrior cultures celebrated stronger, broader bodies as symbols of capability and authority.
Strength ReturnsFrom Natural to Elaborate
Periods of political stability often encouraged elaborate cosmetics, hairstyles, fabrics, and jewellery. During times of war or economic hardship, simpler appearances could become fashionable instead.
Luxury Has SeasonsThe Rebellion Effect
Whenever an elite style becomes dominant for too long, younger generations tend to invent something deliberately different. Nothing irritates a court quite like discovering that its most expensive fashion is suddenly considered boring.
Fashion Is PettyThe Current Age
Beauty Has Become Many Things
Modern Mytharae has no single standard of beauty. Regional cultures, old traditions, wealthy families, magical communities, merchant houses, religious institutions, and ordinary people all maintain different ideals.
Valeri Cities
Beauty varies dramatically between kingdoms and classes, but wealth continues to influence fashion through clothing, cosmetics, jewellery, education, leisure, and access to fashionable goods.
Many StandardsKharum
Skill remains more important than conventional appearance. A master craftsperson with exceptional work is often held in greater esteem than someone possessing fashionable features but little practical ability.
Craft Over VanityThalryn
Coastal communities continue to admire aquatic traits, healthy coloration, graceful movement, and ornamentation, although individual cities differ considerably.
Regional VariationSylvarin
Natural appearance remains influential, with physical grace, archery skill, healthy hair, connection to nature, and freedom from excessive ornamentation often valued.
Natural BeautyLuminari
Magical radiance, elegance, scholarship, celestial aesthetics, and carefully designed clothing remain influential among many Luminari communities.
Celestial EleganceDurakai
Stone-like skin, unusual mineral patterns, physical endurance, and age-earned geological features can carry prestige. Among some communities, becoming visibly more stone-like with age is considered a mark of dignity.
Age = CharacterAcross Mytharae
Beauty Looks Different Everywhere.
There is no single Mytharaean standard. What is desirable in one culture may be ordinary, impractical, strange, or even undesirable somewhere else.
Valeri
Celestria • Aurelia • WidespreadValeri beauty standards change more frequently than those of many other peoples because Valeri kingdoms are highly exposed to political fashion, trade, aristocratic competition, and cultural exchange.
Among the Valeri, beauty has often been less a description of a person than a description of their circumstances.
Attributed to a Celestrian court historianKharum
CelestriaKharum society is unusually resistant to wealth-based beauty standards because skill and craftsmanship carry greater social value than inherited status. Strong hands, careful movement, physical capability, precision, and visible mastery of a craft are admired.
A Kharum artisan may consider a beautifully useless object a greater insult than an ugly useful one.
Common Kharum sayingThalryn
Ilyra • Coastal RegionsThalryn beauty tends to emphasize healthy skin coloration, clear eyes, graceful movement in water, strong swimming ability, and aquatic features considered desirable within particular coastal communities. Pearls, shells, sea-glass, and rare ocean materials can signal wealth.
Sylvarin
Thaloria • ThornevaleSylvarin standards tend to favour natural appearance, agility, healthy hair, physical grace, archery ability, musical talent, and harmony with the forest. Excessive displays of wealth are generally less prestigious than freedom and competence.
Luminari
LuminarisLuminari beauty is strongly influenced by their magical and scholarly culture. Luminous skin, glowing eyes, elegant proportions, celestial jewellery, elaborate robes, and visible magical sophistication can all signal prestige.
Berrin
AureliaBerrin standards often combine physical appearance with social intelligence. Charm, confidence, expressive clothing, polished manners, healthy appearance, good storytelling, and the ability to negotiate successfully can all contribute to attractiveness.
Orlaisi
Orlais • CelestriaOrlaisi beauty often celebrates bronze and golden skin, bright eyes, magical ability, scholarship, elaborate jewellery, and confidence. During periods of academic dominance, intellectual accomplishment itself became a form of social attractiveness.
Skaldir
Northern CelestriaSkaldir ideals reflect their environment. Strength, endurance, resilience, healthy skin, thick hair, physical capability, intelligence, and strategic ability are commonly respected. Beauty divorced from usefulness has historically had limited prestige.
Caecari
LuminarisBecause Caecari perceive the world through Magica rather than sight, conventional visual beauty is not central to their own understanding of attractiveness. Emotional clarity, magical presence, composure, honesty, and the character of a person’s magical signature carry greater weight.
Noctari
Underground RealmsNoctari beauty has developed around their subterranean environment. Luminous ornamentation, reflective eyes, carefully maintained hair, pale or softly coloured skin, intricate fabrics, and jewellery that catches underground light are admired in many communities.
Draconi
Various RegionsDraconi ideals frequently emphasize strength, physical presence, healthy scales, controlled power, high endurance, and visible signs of lineage or achievement. Honour and reputation can be inseparable from perceptions of attractiveness.
Sarnai
MarrowindSarnai beauty is closely tied to movement and competence. Horsemanship, archery, endurance, confidence, healthy hair, physical resilience, and the quality of one’s riding equipment can all influence social status.
Bogryn
ThaloriaBogryn beauty incorporates the marsh rather than attempting to conceal it. Natural patterns, botanical pigments, carefully cultivated plants, polished teeth, healthy skin, herbal scents, and intricate woven adornments can signal prosperity and knowledge.
Durakai
AureliaDurakai beauty often embraces their stone-like nature. Granite, sandstone, marble, and basalt colouring can all be admired, while naturally developed stone-like patterns acquired with age may signify maturity, endurance, and closeness to the mountains.
Thalori
Deep ThaloriaThalori beauty is closely associated with the forest. Subtle movement, earthy coloration, quietness, natural ornamentation, and an ability to move unseen through woodland environments are considered desirable traits in the limited accounts available to outsiders.
The Great Pattern
Beauty is often wealth wearing a prettier coat.
Across Mytharae, the strongest recurring pattern is not a particular eye colour, body shape, complexion, hairstyle, or facial structure.
It is access.
The people who can afford leisure, servants, expensive materials, cosmetics, education, jewellery, fashionable clothing, private tutors, magical treatments, rare foods, or simply enough time to cultivate their appearance are unusually well positioned to define what refinement looks like.
Once the upper classes adopt an appearance, the rest of society may imitate it. Once it becomes widespread, elites may abandon it for something rarer.
Thus beauty becomes a moving target: forever just out of reach of the people trying hardest to catch it.
The Politics of Appearance
Why does beauty keep following power?
Scarcity
Rare materials, unusual cosmetics, imported fabrics, magical jewellery, and specialised beauty practices become desirable partly because ordinary people cannot easily obtain them.
Leisure
Intricate hairstyles, elaborate clothing, cosmetic routines, and carefully cultivated appearances require time. Time is itself a luxury.
Imitation
People often imitate the styles of those they associate with success, wealth, authority, or social advancement.
Exclusivity
Once a style becomes accessible to everyone, wealthy groups may move toward something more expensive or difficult to reproduce.
Propaganda
Courts and ruling families can associate their own appearance and fashion with civilisation, virtue, sophistication, or divine favour.
History
War, migration, religion, trade, disease, climate, and political change can all reshape what a society considers desirable.
At a Glance
A Scholar’s Quick Reference
| People | Commonly Admired Traits | What They May Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Valeri | Healthy appearance, grooming, fashion, posture | Wealth, leisure, refinement |
| Kharum | Strength, skilled hands, craftsmanship | Competence, mastery |
| Thalryn | Healthy coloration, aquatic grace, ornamentation | Health, coastal wealth |
| Sylvarin | Grace, natural appearance, agility | Freedom, harmony with nature |
| Luminari | Radiance, elegance, magical sophistication | Knowledge, magical status |
| Berrin | Charm, confidence, expressive fashion | Trade, social influence |
| Orlaisi | Radiance, scholarship, magical ability | Education, prestige |
| Skaldir | Strength, resilience, intelligence | Endurance, capability |
| Caecari | Magical presence, emotional clarity | Integrity, magical ability |
| Noctari | Luminescence, reflective features, ornamentation | Underground wealth, artistry |
| Draconi | Strength, scales, physical presence | Honour, lineage, power |
| Sarnai | Horsemanship, endurance, confidence | Competence, clan prestige |
| Bogryn | Natural patterns, botanical ornamentation | Health, knowledge, prosperity |
| Durakai | Stone patterns, endurance, age | Strength, maturity |
| Thalori | Natural colouring, subtle movement, woodland grace | Harmony, secrecy, forest belonging |
Historical Oddities
A Few Things Beauty Historians Would Rather You Forget
Fashion Can Be Expensive
Several historical beauty trends became prestigious precisely because ordinary people could not afford to imitate them.
Sunlight Has Had Many Meanings
In one period, tanned skin could imply outdoor labour. In another, it could suggest leisure, travel, or wealth.
Hair Is Political
Hairstyles have repeatedly been used to distinguish class, profession, religion, age, marital status, and political allegiance.
Kharum Remain Unimpressed
Kharum craftsmen have historically been difficult to impress with expensive cosmetics when the person wearing them cannot repair a broken machine.
Beauty Travels
Merchants, diplomats, travellers, and conquerors have carried beauty standards across borders for centuries.
Royalty Can Start Trends
A ruler wearing an unusual colour, hairstyle, gemstone, or garment can turn something obscure into the height of fashion remarkably quickly.
The Chronicle’s Final Observation
There has never been one beautiful face of Mytharae.
Beauty has always reflected the people defining it: their climate, their magic, their history, their fears, their ambitions, and most importantly, their relationship with power.
The standards change. The rulers change. The fashions change. The wealthy discover something new to admire.
And everyone else, sooner or later, decides whether they agree.