I Am Mallora of Kiatra
I Am Mallora of Kiatra is a sonnet written by Mallora Kaldon, princess and later queen of Kiatra: composed in her late teens and early twenties, before she married. While Mallora continued to write throughout her life, nothing else she produced was quite like the sonnet, which edited until her death. Mallora's poetry and prose were popular in her own kingdom as well as elsewhere on the Greater Continent, and continued to be read and reprinted long after her death. I Am Mallora of Kiatra, in particular, was a regular fixture, and considered so compelling that it was often studied in schools despite it's explicit contents.
Contents
Despite the name, I Am Mallora of Kiatra is actually about a young man. In the poem, Mallora expresses deep longing and desire for this man, as well as incredible gratitude. One literary critic, writing a century and a half after Mallora's death, said "it's basically ninety-nine ways to say 'I want to sleep with this guy', and some something about saving her kingdom?". In addition to the explicit contents, the poem features themes of love, devotion, sacrifice, and longing. Still, the verses are so lyrical and intricate, it is considered a masterwork of the genre. The subject of the poem is unknown.
Background
Mallora was roughly fifteen at the time of The Great Schism, and due to some of the lines in the sonnet, many suspect it concerns the events of the war, and might provide a possible clue as to the cause of the divide. Some scholars have ascribed the identity of Mallora's mystery man as "nature"; others claim she is writing about the earthquake, as a metaphor for a young woman's sexual awakening. Mallora herself laughed at such speculations, and took the secret to her grave.
