Lady Amelia Woolcombe

There are libraries filled with books, and then there is the Royal Library under Lady Amelia Woolcombe. Raised in the high meadows of Northvale, where winter storms isolated her family estate for weeks, she treated books as windows into distant kingdoms. After joining the library she introduced the Open Shelf Charter, ending the custom that reserved certain rooms for nobles, and designed reading rooms for children, travelling craftspeople and visitors with impaired sight. She believes no one ever truly finishes their education.

From the register

• Her unusually large spectacles were made by an apprentice whose work had been dismissed as impractical; she commissioned the first pair.
• Lord Edgar Blackquill occupies the same green armchair for hours, claiming she always knows which forgotten volume contains precisely the line he needs.