PrincessMeredith

Princess Meredith was the founder and first ruler of Centralia. She was born on Asteria but came to Earth, bringing magic and mythical creatures to the otherwise mundane planet.

Background

Princess Meredith was the first Asterian to migrate to Earth, and as such she lacks familiarity with several aspects of Earth life, especially when it comes to language. She often refers to her surroundings in unconventional ways, for example, calling a bird a "wingbeast" or referring to tea as "leafwater".

Princess Meredith's true age is not known, even to Meredith herself. Meredith previously kept track of her age by counting the Earth years on a small digital counter, but found the device could only count to 255 before rolling over to zero. The counter's current reading is 9, though nobody quite knows how many times the count has rolled over. "I know it's rolled over at least twice," Meredith said, "but after that I kind of stopped paying attention."¹

Meredith's special magical power is the ability to levitate or fly. Meredith had the PalaceOfSerenity built with trapdoors in most floors, allowing her to float between stories of the building without needing to use stairs. Other palace residents and staff learned very quickly to pay attention to where they were walking, as Meredith often left these trapdoors open. Flight came so naturally to Meredith that she often had difficulty determining what beings or objects could or could not easily fly, leading her to commission the Railroad Track Leading To A Cliff And Nowhere Else as a platform for flying trains. While the track was laid, the flying train project never got off the ground (pun very much intended).

"The Santa Claus Incident" and Abdication

Princess Meredith's unfamiliarity with Earth culture proved problematic at times. The most notable example occurred in 1979 when Meredith became convinced that SantaClaus, of all people, was a pretender to the throne and wished to stage a coup. Meredith responded by attacking Santa during his December 24th rounds. Santa successfully fought off Meredith's assault, and Meredith was eventually subdued by members of the CentraliaHonorGuard, who, after many hours, managed to convince her that she was mistaken in assuming Santa wanted to usurp her.

While Meredith maintained that she had done nothing wrong, she abdicated the throne a week later, on 31 December 1979. "I've been doing this whole 'ruling' thing for a long time," Meredith said, "and it's really, really hard sometimes." Meredith's successor, PrincessJeanette, assumed the throne the following day, on 1 January 1980.

Miscellaneous

• In 1978, Princess Meredith bought out homes in the Lilith Avenue neighborhood of QueenCity to be demolished to make way for an expansion of PollyannaWhittierMedicalCenter (known, at the time, as Queen City Central Hospital). However, rather than properly notifiying the residents in advance, Meredith simply showed up with a bulldozer, gave each resident a sack of money, and called a taxicab to take them to the nearest homeless shelter. Thankfully, members of the CentraliaHonorGuard convinced Meredith to give the dislocated residents more time to get moving arrangments in place. ²

• In the mid-2000s, Princess Meredith briefly operated a DVD rental service known as Meredisc.

• Early on in her reign, Princess Meredith learned about the Earth custom of funerals. She found it grossly unfair, however, that only dead people get to have funerals, and insisted on staging her own "funeral" in the PalaceOfSerenity. However, after lying in the coffin for about half an hour, she got bored, and decided to cancel the rest of the proceedings in favor of taking all her friends out for frozen yogurt. It probably worked out for the best.

CategoryRoyalty