Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

==  Cyrene Valantion ==

Cyrene Valantion was Sanguinius' lover and the mother of Belarius, but originally she was just one of the childhood friends that Sanguinius had when he regally snuck out of the palace. Back when his wings hadn't grown too much and he could hide them under a coat and just look like he had a fucked up spine. And shoulders.

Cyrene Valantion was a factory worker from age 5 or 6 onward and unsafe working conditions and fumes gradually took her eyes, going so far as to fuck with the optic nerves and make replacements difficult.

Sanguinius would visit her often as they grew up though at the time she never knew who he was and by the time the wings were getting impossible to hide she was almost completely blind.

Then events of state take over, Duscht Jemanic is and up absorbed into Europia and the Imperium, Sanguinius becomes a general in The Warlord's army and he doesn't see her again for several years.

Sanguinius was always super human, he was made that way. It's possible that the next time he saw her was during a victory parade after the surrender of Merika and the completion of Earth Unification. He would have been in the parade in all his splendor, he was nothing if not magnificent and scanning he crowd he would have picked her out as a recognized face among the masses. She would not, under the Imperium, have been half starved and ill looking but he would have recognized her all the same.

After the parade he would have looked for her and asked his most trusted people to do so. It would not have been with any intent beyond just wanting to see a familiar face from a more innocent time.

Cyrene Valantion presumably did not know who her childhood friend was which would have been awkward.

Cyrene is remembered to history as the Blessed Lady and is referenced much as this in old tomes though few people today know much about her. Cyrene was shy and voluntarily avoided the spotlight, in contrast to the wives of primarchs like Guilliman, Khan, and Russ, so much less was written about her. Family was important to Sangy; after being treated by his father like an investment and a legacy rather than an actual son, he would have vowed to be a better man and father than his old man ever was, but he didn't want to force his wife to be something she wasn't. Additionally, Cyrene isn't as well known as Yolande or Russ and Khan's wives because there was always more weird apocryphal stuff surrounding Sanguinius than any of the other primarchs due to his popularity and it gets hard to tell fact from fiction.

Oscar remains silent on the subject because if Sangy didn't want it written down he sure as shit isn't going to start talking now.

After both Sanguinius and Cyrene were long gone, there are strange, occasional appearances of a Cyrene-like figure down the ages. Nothing that can be proven. Sort of a Lady in the Lake with the Blood Angels equivalent of the grim reaper. Maybe she appears to a Death Company veteran, worn and broken looking down odds that he can't see the other side of. She would not offer him a way out, not if there is no way out, but she would offer him comfort. She will be there when the load gets too heavy, when the pain gets too much, when he falls for the last time she will catch him.

It won't offer him any practical help but it will offer him some measure of comfort in those last moments.

The Blood Angels don't know who or what she is/was, they just know her as what they see her now. The Blessed Lady, The Blind Guide, Lady in the Red Dress and a few other names. There are a few books, more pamphlets really, written by the Chaplains that say that she might be some sort of angelic creature or rare benevolent warp spirit.

There is no hard proof that she exists.

She is like the Savlar gods. Nobody has been able to prove her a daemon or even existing, but the visions all share too many similarities to be coincidence. In the case of Cyrene Valantion her name is forgotten by all bar one old immortal but many Blood Angels know her now as The Blessed Lady and they can all give an identical description from the red dress to the grey blind eyes.

The apparitions have in recent centuries been gradually increasing in frequency. Nobody in the chapter knows what this means by they are hopeful. Some in the Death Company even go in to battle screaming some variation of "For The Blessed Lady" to the confusion of their allies.