Irene Sforza la Bella

Irene Sforza la Bella, née Icaza (b. 2493, Tobaro) is a Tilean noblewoman and the wife of Capitani Muzio Sforza.

Since her teenage years Irene has been famous as one of the most dazzling beauties of Tilea and perhaps the entire Old World (rumour has Karl Franz himself considered marrying her to his son Luitpold... or possibly himself depending on which rumour you believe). The finest painters and sculptors beat a path to her door to immortalise her in art and her poor brothers had to fight duels daily to defend her honour from some suitors. Nor are looks alone her only weapon as those who have met the woman have discovered a first class brain behind her flawless appearance.

Unfortunately for the ambitious Irene neither her brains nor her beauty are in Tilea any longer as she has followed her husband into exile in the Border Princes. This has not improved relations between husband and wife, and neither has the admiration she has attracted from the other Princes.

Irene's vindictiveness was her undoing. During the trial of her hated rival, the court wizard Elsabeth Holt, Irene tasked one of her husband's mercenary companies—the notoriously perfidious Falkenwald's Falcons—to ambush and murder the magister's chosen defender Ludovic Stubbs. Several of Muzio Sforza's soldiers and the Verenan priest Adelbert Schreiber lost their lives in the ambush, though Ludovic himself escaped to tell the tale. After her role in the ambush was revealed to her husband, Irene fell out of grace and was quietly placed under house arrest in Savonne.