Lady Nuria

Instigator and organisor of the Convoy project.

Daughter of a Sheik of the United Arab Emirates, she maries Ossad bin Mohamed al Sharqi, Sheik of Fujairah, another of the Emirates, and becomes Sheika Fatima.

Later on, her husband, better known by then as 'the sand shark' for his ruthlessness in uniting the crumbling emirates under his authority, dies, leaving a succession of cousins and distant relatives squable for the throne, killing each others as well as any male with any claim to the throne. Quickly the families of the original Sheiks are decimated and new ones rise to the fray while the widow of the Sand Shark and her family of surviving females are forgotten, aside for the few requests of political marriages that never lasr long enough to come to fruition.

In the shadows, Sheik Fatima uses her late husband's information and disinformation network to make herself unimportant while manipulation and scheming to organise what she sees as the only way to save the dreams that she shared with her husband; the flight toward a new planet where she can raise her extended family under a new, revolutionary matriarca.

Lady Nuria is pretty much a sociopath with a Shepherd Complex out of control: she will do everything she has to to save her flock, no matter the costs. It makes her hard to relate to, cold, calculating and inhuman.