“What? I can’t hear you. Can you say that — oh my God, I love this song! You wanna dance?”
Maria Thorne claims to be Rose Thorne’s daughter, and the Spring Queen has never publicly denied the claim. Whether the claim should be taken in the literal, biological sense or a more metaphorical one has never been clarified by either woman. Maria remembers (or claims to remember) little of her time in Faerie or of her life before; she emerged from the Hedge in Miami Beach in the late 1990s, shortly before Grandfather Thunder’s coup. At the time, the Spring Court had a strong presence there, and when a motley of Broadback satyrs in the middle of a barcrawl of epic proportions found her and saw her resemblance to their Queen, they immediately took her to Rose. Neither has spoken about what transpired in that meeting, but Maria was formally brought out to the Antler Crown as “Maria Thorne.” It wasn’t until some years later, after the coup and the Spring Court’s exile, that she began to expressly call herself Rose’s daughter, a claim that rallied several discontented courtiers to join her in her return to Miami. It is widely speculated, especially amongst Rose Thorne’s loyalists, that it was only the Thorne name that lent any weight to Maria’s exodus; had her name been Maria Bramble, they sneer, she would have been lucky to convince even one changeling to return with her to the city. While this theory may be a slight exaggeration, it certainly is not entirely without merit.