Alianora Or So

Three Hearts And Three Lions. 

(Following up on recent posts, Lancaster has a Golden Lion pub, a Duke of Lancaster pub and a Duke's Playhouse.)

Alianora is a swan may. She wears a magical tunic of white feathers that enables her to change between human and swan forms. When making the latter transformation, the body lengthens, the neck shrinks, the wings narrow and a woman appears. Sometimes, she transforms to human in midair and falls nearly to the ground before changing back.

Maybe Alianora warrants a post unto herself but I mention her here for the sake of yet another Anderson-Gaiman parallel:

"Even Dream's former lover Alianora is hard to pin down - in chapter 2 of Brief Lives she's referred to as Eleanora, and in part 12 of The Kindly Ones as Alianore; i.e., her name is spelled a little differently every time it appears."

-Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion (London, 2000), 7, p. 116.

For previous blog references to Alianora, see here. (Scroll down.)