Áslaug (Kráka)

Aslaug is the hidden daughter of the two greatest figures of legend — child of Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer and the valkyrie Brynhild — saved as an infant when her parents died, smuggled away inside a harp, and raised in poverty by a cruel old couple who passed her off as their own soot-smeared drudge, 'Kráka', Crow. Her royal blood shows through the rags: when the viking king Ragnar Lodbrok passes by and sees her beauty, he tests her wisdom with an impossible riddle — to come to him neither dressed nor undressed, neither fasting nor fed, neither alone nor in company — and she solves it perfectly, arriving wrapped in a fishing-net, biting a leek, with only a dog for company. She becomes Ragnar's wise queen and the mother of his famous sons, and her foresight saves and shapes their fates. The cinder-girl who is a hero's daughter — cunning, royal, and unbreakable.