Ten duels and thirty-three victories on the field had brought Namiko as much fame as any three women in the Kingdoms, and more fame than all women combined in the northern isles. She has an iai like a bolt of thunder, said Master Girinu of Yokujima. All the other masters nodded their heads and agreed. She commands her army like the Twin Forces At the Dawn of Creation, said General Jaroji of Ounejima, and the war-leaders wrung their hands in dismay.

When Namiko had been only 9 years old, she had been married to the sickly Daimyo of the Ghost Fox clan, and he had died of his congenital diseases at the ripe age of 13, before she reached even the age where the Monks who attended her would be exchanged for handmaidens. Some of the necessary rumors said she was the victim of a sinister plot by the Buddhists against those still faithful to the Kami. Others said she was the innocent lynchpin of a political plan to unify the islands and free them from the taxation of the Jade Emperor.

Whatever the truth of the situation, Namiko knew only that it was her fate, and she accepted it with the wooden discipline of a buddhist and the solemnity one would expect of one faithful to the Kami. So she was held in perpetual maiden hood by the Monks, who refused to approve any of her suitors, against the possibility that she would change the way the people of the islands lived. They taught her only those things that a man would be taught, and waited upon her as a faceless woman would wait on her master. She became like unto a thing of iron, and it was said that denying her the release of womanhood had focused her chi into dragon's fire.

When she was released upon the islands, she took the entire nation-chain into her hands, gave it a single disapproving look, and sang while she re-shaped her homeland into something new. War after war she waged, each to prove that she was the equal of a man. Duel after duel she fought, to prove she was in fact better than most.She had a mastering beauty as well, and proved to the Monks that her strength had nothing to do with their policy of abstinence.

To the faithful, she was Kamikaze, the spirit's wind, the wrath of Amaterasu come to punish them for treating women as their inferiors. To the Buddhists, she was just another thing to suffer through in a life full of suffering, and bearing up under it was the important thing. When all was done, none would call her Queen, but none left could stand against her.

She ascended the steps to her ancestral shrines, and took her own life in quiet rage. To the Monks that surrounded her weeping as she knelt and drew her sword, she said, "I will kill this one last time, 10,000 sword strokes and this will be the one that makes the difference."

It is said that when Namiko took her own life, it was the first time a woman had done such a thing for her own honor, and not for the honor of a man. Many men heard and wrote poems, some men heard and killed themselves, distruaght that she could have been allowed to do such a thing. And, as always, there were a few who heard and thought. They considered many things, but in the end they decided she was right.