Lauda

Lauda is the mother Snow White and Rose Red, who masquerades as nothing but a poor widow, but who is secretly a powerful witch who descends from a line of cursed magical women. Her status is currently unknown, but she is believed to be dead.

Early Life
Lauda was the youngest of thirteen sisters, all of whom belonged to a long and powerful bloodline of magical women. Lauda and her sisters had the usual squabbles common to any group of siblings, but for the most part they delighted in each other. Despite this, Lauda knew from an early age that she would have to kill each and everyone of them, in order to come into her power. Thus she took measures and precautions, preparing for the day she and her sisters would begin to quarrel for the family's power.

When her sisters did start fighting amongst each other, due the the sheer numbers of rivals the fighting begun slowly. First, an unknown sister poisoned the family dinner's broth. Lauda, being a finicky water by nature, saved herself by taking only a small trial taste and rejecting the meal altogether. While bedridden and sick for days, shielded by her locked bedroom door's cold iron and her own hot spells, Lauda soon recovered in privacy. Her sisters Valka, Lif, and Káta were not so fortunate and died from the poison.

Two years later, Hallerna burst into flames in the fountain square of Lauda's childhood home. Despite her own protection spells and jumping into the fountain itself, Hallerna died. Just over a year later, Tobba transformed into a rose bush and, while her own magic fought against the curse and bloomed a single rose amidst the vines, a large crow came and plucked the rose. The rose bush that was Tobba died within the hour.

Not quite a year later, Lauda revealed that she had spent all her efforts redirecting her dead sister's share of the family power into herself. Announcing her plans to bow out of the family contest for her generation's power, Lauda revealed her plan to move far away and then, once safe, she would relinquish all the power she had acquired. To protect herself from being killed, Lauda warned her sisters that should anything happen to her all the power she had would be lost to her remaining sisters. Lauda then moved into the woods in a world far away from her own, all to herself from her bloody-minded sisters; however, despite her promise, Lauda held back a bit of power to make her life in exile a bit more comfortable.

For years, Lauda lived alone in a cottage in the forest, rejecting the constant urges to hunt and kill her sisters. Until the clamor to act boldly, to rend and destroy, had died down to a small whisper in the background of her mind. During this time, Lauda was more or less at peace. Until one day, more than thirty years after she'd left home forever, her last surviving sister, Geirvé, located Lauda with the intent to kill her to ensure she'd win the winnowing. A clever Lauda enchanted the thorns of a rose and managed to get Geirvé to prick her finger on one of them before she deployed her defenses, thereby infecting her with a curse that turned her into a rose bush. With her sister's demise, Lauda was sole inheritor of her family's power.

At some unknown point, Lauda helped a young woman net the king of a kingdom far off to the east of where she lived.

Marriage and Motherhood
Hoping to end the generational contest for power for all time, Lauda planned to live the rest of her life as a spinster. However, Lauda met and quickly fell in love with an unnamed man, who happened to be the brother of the woman she helped become queen of the Silver Realm. Determined to remain innocent, but unable to keep heir lusts in check, their only recourse was to marry immediately. As they consummated their love, Lauda revealed her line could only produce daughters and that they could, in fact, never have children. Her husband, however, desperately wanted children and she could refuse him nothing. Thus, Lauda chose to bear him a single daughter, so she could give her husband the child he wanted whilst avoiding igniting another generational struggle for power. To Lauda's dismay, she birthed two twin daughters, whom she named Snow White and Rose Red respectively. Within the year her husband died, killed by his evil sister.

Snow White and Rose Red
Having made bargains to keep her and her daughters safe from the dangerous things in the forest that surrounded their cottage, Lauda raised her daughters the best she could. By the time her daughters were little girls, she had two rose vines in her garden, on bearing white roses and the other red — her two daughters were just like the two roses. They were happy as any two children in the world. Snow White was gentle and quite. Rose Red was wilder, and liked to run about in fields and forests. Her two daughters were terribly fond of each other and never far apart.

One winter's evening as they were sitting comfortably together near the fire, a talking bear knocked on their door and asked for shelter from the bitter cold. Lauda let him in, unafraid of the creature due to having made bargains to keep the family safe from harm, and he stayed throughout the entire winter with them; in the daytime the bear would trot off into the forest while at night he would lodge with the family. When spring came, tardy after the long winter, the bear left them. By summertime the girls, in their youthful exuberance, had nearly forgotten their visitor and they soon met a dwarf who claimed his long beard was stuck on a tree while getting wood for his tea kettle. To the dwarf's chagrin, Snow cut his beard to free him and he, having lied about his predicament, pulled out a treasure bag from the tree. That night, Snow told Rose about a dream of hers of when the bear left them, where he says he needs to return to the woods to protect his treasure from the wicked dwarfs. During the course of that summer, the girls encountered the mean old dwarf twice more and on the last encounter, near the end of summer, the dwarf was being attacked by a giant bird, his beard and another bag of treasure in its talons. Snow decided that they should help him and once more cuts the dwarf's beard, freeing him from the bird's grip. After saving the mean dwarf yet again, a giant bird told them that they would come to regret their actions. After being saved, the dwarf was angry with the girls and magically piled his treasures while telling them that because they cut his beard, his reserves of magic will have vanished and his people will shun him. He was then attacked and killed by the same bear Snow and Rose sheltered in the previous winter.

After killing the dwarf, the bear changed into his real form - a human prince - and he vowed to marry Snow, while Rose could marry his younger brother. Both the sisters and the prince told their mother and father, respectively, about the vow. Both parents disapproved for their own reasons; Lauda was unwilling to let her daughters marry so young and into nobility no less, whereas Brandish's father didn't want his sons marrying lowly, peasant girls born of a witch, instead intending to marry them off politically to one of his rivals' daughters. Later that night, Lauda used magic to turn into a giant bird and secretly met with the King of the Golden Realm, who ordered her to kill Snow so that his son's vow could be broken without any consequence; aside from Brandish's steadfast commitment to have Snow bear his children because of the powerful magic he sensed from her, in those days there were apparently harrowing consequences for oathbreakers (i.e. giant cauldrons in Hell where one would boil for eternity and be eaten from time to time, rivers of scythes, and all sorts of other ugly punishments). To preserve her daughter's life, Lauda faked Snow's death by pretending she’d ventured to a nearby lake alone and drowned that same night, lying even to Rose, and arranged for her to secretly live with her paternal aunt, the widowed queen of a distant land.

After the loss of her sister, Rose Red was no longer the happy girl of her youth. She didn't play or look for adventures in the magical woods and the woods, sensing her sorrow, left her alone for the most part. Eventually, word of Snow's marriage made its way to Lauda, and she reveled to Rose that Snow still lived. Rose was devastated over this revelation, jealous of her sister's seemingly charmed life. When she was invited to live with Snow and her new husband, Rose Red adapted to the courtly and chivalrous life surprisingly quickly.

Lauda's ultimate fate was never revealed, but it is presumed she died.

Personality
Lauda showed a great deal of cunning intellect. Whereas her sisters fought to kill each other, she focused her efforts on redirecting her dead sisters power to herself and then, as it was implied, bowed out of the family fighting early to let her sisters kill each other off until she only had to deal with one.

Physical Appearance
Lauda was a lovely young woman and seemed to bare a remarkable resemblance to her own mother in her old age.

Powers and Abilities

 * Longevity: Lauda seemed to have some sort of supernatural longevity. Despite more than thirty years passing, she maintained her youthful vigor.
 * Magic: Lauda possessed great magical power, inheriting all her generation's power.
 * Shapeshifting: Lauda used magic to turn herself into a giant bird and flew miles to secretly meet with the King of the West.
 * Phytokinesis: Lauda showed that she could accelerate the growth of plants, as seen by her beautiful rose garden. She also transmuted her sister into a rose bush, instantly killing her.
 * Gardening: Lauda seemed to have a lush garden and a green thumb. Though given her magical power, her lovely garden could be due to magic and not any real gardening talent.