Estrid

Estrid was a striking, slender giantess who stood unusually tall thanks to her ancient giant heritage. Her light hair was worn up in a ponytail, and she typically dressed in an open v-neck top that bared her cleavage and midriff, a loose sarong that left her fishnet-clad legs on display, and a light coat hung cape-like across her shoulders. Right after Loki's birth she briefly wore a plain light gown, then cast it off for a floral skirt and matching shirt once she made up her mind to abandon the castle.

The very inverse of Harald's earlier love Ida, Estrid was an arrogant woman who prized rank, indulgence, and appearances over everything else. Grasping and exacting, she had every treasure moved into her own chamber the moment she arrived and later meant to carry it all off with her, demanding the finest of everything, insisting that she and Harald dine only from silver platters, and coldly urging him to put his former wife and eldest son out of mind.

She was also deeply superstitious, dabbling in dubious forms of divination under the banner of an "earth-wind art." She had servants seal the castle so Harald's "spirit" would not "leak out," complained of energies skewing eastward, and had a mirror removed for sitting in a supposedly fatal arrangement. Convinced of prophecy and fortune, she branded her own newborn Loki "cursed" for his odd appearance and ordered him killed on the strength of a foretelling that he would one day slay Harald. She felt no affection for the infant, refusing even to acknowledge him as her child while frantically trying to end his life, and she went on smearing his name so his reputation was ruined before he had done anything. Each time Loki tried to come near, she shrank from him in fear, and bearing him so traumatized her that she swore never to have another child. A run of genuine misfortunes that struck Elbaph after his birth, including her own decline, seemed to her to prove these dark beliefs true.

Roughly seventy years ago Estrid was wed to Harald by arrangement, prized for her ancient giant blood and noble family. She greeted her new husband with affection while in the same breath belittling his son Hajrudin and his former partner Ida, then began barking orders at the staff to court "good fortune" through talk of misaligned "energies." She presented Harald with Asla, an eight-legged horse said to bring luck, a gift from her kin, and as her boldest command of the day she had the castle's wealth locked in her room and decreed that she and Harald would thereafter eat only from silver platters.

Around sixty-three years back she bore Loki, yet his looks so appalled her that she recoiled, unable to accept him as her own. She told the nursemaids to report the baby as stillborn, then hurled him from the castle into Elbaph's Underworld, after which she began packing her belongings and the treasure to head back to her village. Loki's climb back up appalled her again. Sick and confined to bed, she commanded a guard to do away with him for good, invoking the prophecy of Harald's death. Over that year a string of calamities, among them a meltdown by the young Charlotte Linlin and violent storms, fed her paranoia, which she pinned on Loki's "curse." When he once broke into her room hoping to see her, she reacted with the same dread and barred him from her sight, spending her remaining days blackening his name. Around sixty-two years ago she succumbed to an unknown illness.

Her cruel words shadowed Loki ever after, with any disaster on Elbaph chalked up to his "curse." Her elder brother inherited the duty of overseeing the boy and loathed him just as she had, so the abuse continued. Nearly fifty years on, her extended family poisoned Ida to keep her from ever becoming queen and securing their inheritance; on uncovering the scheme, Loki rampaged through Estrid's home village and wounded many of her relatives, proclaiming Ida the sole parent he was willing to recognize.