#lunacchi

Firstborn child of Saint Cichol and the mortal woman Melinoë, Artemisia was a beautiful woman known for her sonnets, angelic voice, and prowess in archery. She was often depicted as a master strategist who led her own troops to battle rather than staying behind, despite her followers' insistence. She was pined after by many a maiden, and yet her heart belonged only to one; Lady Berenice von Vestra, the woman that would come to become the founder of the Imperial House Vestra. Despite Artemisia's insistence, Berenice refused to accept the Saintess' blood and Crest, vowing instead to protect and love her with "these mortal hands and heart, for as long as Mother Sothis permits". This is the reason why House Vestra has no Crest.

Artemisia is a Moon Dragon, and her "saint name" was/is The Moonmaiden. She was known as the protector of sapphic lovers across Fodlan (and sometimes beyond), as well as the patron saint of poets. Supposedly, she perished at the Battle of Tailtean, however her body was never found by Seiros after the fact. It was assumed by both her, and an aggrieved Cichol, that Artemisia had fallen victim to the Agarthans' weapon-making. They attributed the lack of a relic bearing her crest stone to the fact that the Agarthans had not had time to "create" one with her body before Nemesis was destroyed, and assumed that her body was lost to time. For that very reason Cichol, in his grief, begged Seiros to hide Artemisia from the annals of history, lest surviving Agarthans look for her lost bones to trap her soul within a relic. That is the reason why Artemisia is mentioned nowhere within the scriptures of Seiros.

What truly happened was that Berenice, loyal to her wife till the end, had carried a mortally wounded Artemisia away from the battlefield when it seemed all was lost. She hid Artemisia in a nearby cavern and sealed it from all mortal eyes with her own magic, then watched her beloved as she entered her kind's healing sleep. True to her word, she refused to leave Artemisia, and entombed herself with the slumbering saint, eventually perishing from hunger and thirst, but regretting nothing. She left leadership of House Vestra to her brother.

Artemisia would wake up five hundred years later (so, a century before her sister Cethleann), to the bones of her beloved's hand clasped in her own. Grieving and unaware of how much time had passed, she found a way out of the cavern and emerged to a world where her kind was no more. Afraid of what that world may do to her, she concealed her ears, fangs and other draconic traits and roamed the land, gathering intel. It was thus she found the monument to Saints Cichol and Cethleann at the coast of Rhodos, where her mother had hailed from, and was also buried in, and assumed her entire family had perished. She did realise Seiros was the one known as the Archbishop of the Church, but believing there was nothing left of those she loved the most, Artemisia preferred to live an inconspicuous mortal life, forsaking her aunt.

She spent the years between her awakening and the game's timeskip as an apothecary who never stayed in one place for long lest her identity and immortality be uncovered. Five years prior to the events of the game, she passed by the Kingdom at the exact time to find herself near the Tragedy of Duscur, just in time to save a little girl by the name of Essun Molinaro. She settled in the Kingdom with the girl, who then became her apprentice, and opened an apothecary shop in Fhirdiad. When she was found out by Cornelia, she entrusted the young Essun to one of her most loyal customers and fled to the wilderness. She was the one to help Byleth, Jeralt and Seteth defeat the bandits near Garreg Mach right after Byleth's awakening, leading to a tearful reunion between her and her father and sister.