Chinese Mermaid - Dragon Wyff

I have a documented and traced ancestry that goes back to the 18th Century where my matriarch ruled the South China Seas. My women were Chinese Sea Pirates, that protected the artisan fisherwomen of the Far East Asian islands, looked after villages on the South China Coast, and taxed European Merchants for safe travel through the seas to meet the emperor.

This pissed the emperor off, as he thought that all monies and taxes should go to him, so the pirate queen grew her fleets as the losing navy ships sent from the emperor mutineered and defaulted to join forces with the Red Queen instead.

There is much more to this story that was passed down in part from my mother, along with a wedding band bracelet from 1868 that was a bridal gift my great grandmother received as memento from her pirate culture as she married into the emperors extended royal family.

Westerners bore the myth of mermaids as living sightings based on my Asian Fisherwomen. They infused them with lore and curses to justify many of the stories of deaths involving harpooning a woman seen at sea.

It was tradition for our women to speak many languages in order to deal business with the seafaring strangers coming into their land. My great-grandmother spoke 7 languages, as did my mother and her mother before her. I can barely understand 5 languages. I have a bit more to learn.

In those days marraige was political, with huge risk to save bloodlines and inheritance. But no matter the efforts of the women to save themselves, they were all lost and disbanded. Except of course for the stories I have kept and start to document towards a manuscript on my lost family’s epic journey.