Fiction:
In Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri, Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor whose mother, from the desert Amrithi tribe, abandoned her and her sister when they were young. While living in relatively pampered seclusion with the other women under her father’s protection, Mehr alternates sparring with her stepmother over assimilation into the majority culture and dancing traditional Amrithi dances that are intended to connect with immortal desert gods. The Emperor and his my...