History of Veils

The History of Veils

Author: Sandriel Andarin

All right. Lets get this over with.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away (Tarabon), there lived a poor merchant (the Panarch of Tanchico). Now this merchant (Panarch) was plagued by a horrible disease (twins), and

she what? Of COURSE I intend to continue the parentheses bit all the way through. What was that about my paycheck?! Okay, okay, fine, you win.

Ahem. As I was saying before I was so RUDELY interrupted, the Panarch was plagued by an ordinary set of twins. Mind you, these weren't just any ordinary set of twins. Oh no. Their names were Aurelia and Alexander, and they were horribly ugly. Trollocs looked pretty in comparison to these two little terrors. The Panarch was dreadfully embarrassed, for she herself was quite beautiful, and her husband wasn't bad looking either. She refused to let her children out of their special section of the palace; nevertheless, it was a public secret that the Panarch of Tanchico was mother to the two ugliest children in the country (and most likely the world).

Now, locking her children up in the palace was all well and good while they were young, but as soon as they reached adolescence, they would have none of it. They, of course, being raised in isolation, both believed that they were stunningly beautiful. As such, they wanted to share their beauty with the world. At first the Panarch kept them contained by convincing them that they were simply too beautiful to show their faces in public. She gave them the old, you'd blind the crowd with your magnificence! speech and they were all over it. However, it was not long before they decided that the public could handle their beauty, and The Panarch quickly ran out of good excuses to keep them locked up. She was nearly at her wits end, and she didnt know what to do. She called an audience with her advisors, and commanded them to think of something to save her honor and pacify her monstrous children.

They were, of course, unable to come up with a solution. Aurelia and Alexander got out of the palace and were promptly stoned to death when the commoners mistook them for trollocs. The Panarch was humiliated to the point of insanity.

The end.

Okay, kidding, kidding. It didnt happen like that.

What really happened was that the Panarchs advisors thought of an ingenious way to hide the twins ugliness without damaging their pride. They suggested to the twins that wearing veils of brightly colored silk might enhance their beautiful eyes. Alexander and Aurelia did not need much convincing, and they were soon parading about in public with their new veils. The rest of the court adopted the veils so as not to cause the twins to feel out of place, and before long they became quite a fad. In fact, as is painfully obvious to all but the most dim of individuals, the tradition of keeping ones face veiled persists even today.

The veils never fooled the people of Tanchico, for they had heard horror stories about the Panarchs ugly children. Not to mention, the veils happened to be made of transparent silk. Out of love for the Panarch, however, they humored her and pretended not to notice.

Well, mostly, anyway. There were always the few nutjobs who insisted upon describing the twins true looks at the top of their voices, and in quite foul language, too. But the tale largely ended well, so I won't elaborate.