Long ago, in a place many, many miles from where you and I now sit around the fire, there was a young woman. This girl was called Miranda, and Miranda lived in a village on the edge of a vast forest.
Miranda was a very pretty girl, but despite what you hear nowadays, not all beautiful people are stupid. Miranda was no stupid girl. In fact, she was the smartest girl in all of her village. She was fair, wise, kind to all living things, and gave almost all of her daily rations to the poor. The people she knew would constantly say to anyone who would listen that Miranda would make the best Queen the nation had ever seen.
But this wonderful girl had one major flaw, as all pious characters have in stories like these do: she was poor herself. She lived in a small shack on the edge of a vast forest. She came into town for one hour and one hour only every day, to hand out her rations and buy the necessary supplies for food and such with the gold coins she kept in a small bag around her neck. The rest of the day, she spent in the forest, chasing butterflies, picking flowers, and wading in the many rivers that twisted through the wood. She also visited her father there.
Unknown to the citizens of the town, Miranda's father was great magician named Prospero. Prospero lived in a great tower with a pinnacle at the top, where he practiced all forms of magic, from wands to potions to shapeshifting to divination. Why did Prospero live in the woods in secret?
You see, 50 years before the events of this story, Prospero had a brother named Antonio. Antonio was a very wicked man, as skilled in the dark arts as Prospero was in the good. But Antonio, as all evil magicians do, only showed his good side to the public. He made sure to give to the poor everyday, and perform magical duties for all the people of the town. Prospero did it too, but only out of the goodness of his heart, not for wickedness and falsehood as Antonio did.
The reason Antonio had been so nice was that he was planning to overthrow the queen. The queen of this nation was called Sycorax, and she was as kind and good as rulers came. She did everything Antonio and Prospero did, and then some. The neighboring nations of this nation said the people that lived there lived in the best conditions possible. And they were right.
Antonio wanted nothing more than to rule over the nation and turn all it's inhabitants into slaves so they would do his nefarious bidding, les he kill them. So he made friends with the Royal general, Caliban, who honestly didn't care if Sycorax lived or not. Antonio made sure he kept the army supplied well with mead and weapons. Oh yes, Caliban and Antonio were good friends.
So, one night, Antonio told Caliban that there was a gang of thieves going around the next nation, kidnapping and killing innocent peasants. Caliban, trusting his "friend", immediately rushed off with his army to apprehend the gang. Knowing they would be gone all night and almost all of the next day, Antonio plotted and carried out the murder of Sycorax the night Caliban and his army were gone.