![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Some indeterminate time longer than a century ago, Brazzia fell into [magic wars] that ended only when the noble houses of Brazzia joined their military strength together to conquer the nation and suppress the Brazzian working class.
To justify and affirm the new nobility's power and ensure some measure of social stability and prevent more [magic wars], the religious authority of Brazzia, the Agnello--leader of the Agnastic Church--issued a divine mandate that restricted access to the study of magic. According to divine revelation from Saint Agnes, only the nobility could be trusted to use the power responsibly, and knowledge of the practice of magic was consolidated into the academies and libraries of the Brazzian nobility. This practice continued for more than a hundred years before Antonia Sforza was born in Thiazzi, the cultural metropolis of Brazzia, to Marcella and Lorenzo of House Sforza.
Despite the fact that House Sforza was somewhat progressive and liberal relative to its peerage, even sponsoring their retainers and most loyal servants with access to magical education, Antonia was raised to believe in her inherent superiority to the Brazzian working class. Restricted access had, by her time, evolved into a belief that magic was restricted to the nobility simply because they were the only ones not only wise enough to be trusted with the responsibility, but the only ones capable of great magical feats. She therefore grew up under high expectations of her exceptional magical capabilities and how they set her apart.
However, following [uprising] when she was [age], the noble houses were unseated in Thiazzi by the [communist unions] and replaced by a ruling ['democratic communist' council] who ordered the summary execution of anyone with noble blood in order to ensure that the noble houses would never retake power and reproduce the stratification that led to the [uprising]. No longer the military giant they once were, House Sforza attempted to retreat into their walled estates once the other houses started falling--to no avail. Before long, their house too was raided.
At that time, a retainer of the Sforza family named Ferdinand (known by "Ferrante") secreted Antonia out of the city to protect her from the fate that awaited the rest of her family, many of whom had been killed in front of her (including her younger siblings, Luca and Concetta). The two concocted a story about his discovering a bastard of his late brother, and she returned to the city under the pseudonym Nia Black so that Ferrante could resume his role at the [magic academy/temple/enclave/cloister]. He treated her as his ward and instructed her on how to conceal her noble background.
To justify and affirm the new nobility's power and ensure some measure of social stability and prevent more [magic wars], the religious authority of Brazzia, the Agnello--leader of the Agnastic Church--issued a divine mandate that restricted access to the study of magic. According to divine revelation from Saint Agnes, only the nobility could be trusted to use the power responsibly, and knowledge of the practice of magic was consolidated into the academies and libraries of the Brazzian nobility. This practice continued for more than a hundred years before Antonia Sforza was born in Thiazzi, the cultural metropolis of Brazzia, to Marcella and Lorenzo of House Sforza.
Despite the fact that House Sforza was somewhat progressive and liberal relative to its peerage, even sponsoring their retainers and most loyal servants with access to magical education, Antonia was raised to believe in her inherent superiority to the Brazzian working class. Restricted access had, by her time, evolved into a belief that magic was restricted to the nobility simply because they were the only ones not only wise enough to be trusted with the responsibility, but the only ones capable of great magical feats. She therefore grew up under high expectations of her exceptional magical capabilities and how they set her apart.
However, following [uprising] when she was [age], the noble houses were unseated in Thiazzi by the [communist unions] and replaced by a ruling ['democratic communist' council] who ordered the summary execution of anyone with noble blood in order to ensure that the noble houses would never retake power and reproduce the stratification that led to the [uprising]. No longer the military giant they once were, House Sforza attempted to retreat into their walled estates once the other houses started falling--to no avail. Before long, their house too was raided.
At that time, a retainer of the Sforza family named Ferdinand (known by "Ferrante") secreted Antonia out of the city to protect her from the fate that awaited the rest of her family, many of whom had been killed in front of her (including her younger siblings, Luca and Concetta). The two concocted a story about his discovering a bastard of his late brother, and she returned to the city under the pseudonym Nia Black so that Ferrante could resume his role at the [magic academy/temple/enclave/cloister]. He treated her as his ward and instructed her on how to conceal her noble background.
