Iceberg: New Guinea and more

pg 121

"Just before we were attacked, Hunnewell said that Fyri's sister was a missionary in New Guinea."

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem (nom. missio), meaning "act of sending" or mittere, meaning "to send". The word was used in light of its biblical usage; in the Latin translation of the Bible, Christ uses the word when sending the disciples to preach in his name. The term is most commonly used for Christian missions, but can be used for any creed or ideology.

New Guinea (also, Dutch: Nieuw Guinea or Indonesian: Irian; and historically: Papua ) is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km². Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago. Geologically it is a part of the same tectonic plate as Australia. When world sea levels were low, the two shared shorelines (which now lie 100 to 140 metres below sea level), combining with lands now inundated into the tectonic continent of Sahul, also known as Greater Australia. The two landmasses became separated when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the end of the last glacial period. Anthropologically, New Guinea is considered part of Melanesia. Politically, the western half of the island comprises two Indonesian provinces: Papua and West Papua. The eastern half forms the mainland of the country of Papua New Guinea. The island has a population of about 7.5 million, with a very low population density of only 8 inh/km².
New Guinea is differentiated from its drier, flatter, and less fertile southern counterpart, Australia, by its much higher rainfall and its active volcanic geology, with its highest point, Puncak Jaya, reaching an elevation of 4,884 m (16,023 ft). Yet the two land masses share a similar animal fauna, with marsupials, including wallabies and possums, and the egg-laying monotreme, the spiny anteater, or echidna. Other than bats and some two dozen indigenous rodent genera,^] there are no pre-human indigenous placental mammals. Pigs, several additional species of rats, and the ancestor of the New Guinea Singing Dog were introduced with human colonization.
The human presence on the island dates back at least 40,000 years to the oldest human migrations out of Africa. Research indicates that the highlands were an early and independent center of agriculture, with evidence of irrigation going back at least 10,000 years.
Because of the time depth of its inhabitation and its highly fractured landscape, an unusually high number of languages are spoken on the island, with some 1,000 languages (a figure higher than that of most continents) having been catalogued out of an estimated world-wide pre-Columbian total of 6,000 human dialects. Most are classified as Papuan languages, a generally accepted geographical term which a minority of authors hold to be a genetic one. A number of Austronesian languages are spoken on the coast and on offshore islands.
In the 16th century Spanish explorers discovered the island and called it Nueva Guinea. In recent history western New Guinea was included in the Dutch East Indies colony. The Germans annexed the northern coast of the eastern half of the island as German New Guinea in their pre–World War I effort to establish themselves as a colonial power, whilst the south eastern portion was reluctantly claimed by Britain. Following the Treaty of Versailles, the German portion was awarded to Australia (which was already governing the British claim, named the Territory of Papua) as a League of Nations mandate. The eastern half of the island was granted independence from Australia as Papua New Guinea in 1975. The western half gained independence from the Dutch in 1961, but became part of Indonesia soon afterwards in controversial circumstances

"You say hands off, yet I get the distinct impression I'm supposed to play Prince Charming."

Prince Charming is a stock character who appears in a number of fairy tales. He is the prince who comes to the rescue of the damsel in distress, and stereotypically, must engage in a quest to liberate her from an evil spell. This classification suits most heroes of a number of traditional folk tales, including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, even if in the original story they were given another name, or no name at all.
These characters are often handsome and romantic, a foil to the heroine, and are seldom deeply characterized, or even distinguishable from other such men who marry the heroine.
In many variants, they can be viewed more as rewards for the heroine rather than characters^.

History of term  
 Charles Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, published in 1697, includes the following text at the point where the princess wakes up: "'Est-ce vous, mon prince?' lui dit-elle, 'vous vous êtes bien fait attendre'. Le Prince charmé de ces paroles... ne savait comment lui témoigner sa joie". ("'Are you my prince?' she said. 'You've kept me waiting a long time'. The prince charmed by her words... did not know how to express his joy.") It has sometimes been suggested that this passage later inspired the term, "Prince Charming", even though it is the prince who is charmed (charmé) here, not who is being charming (charmant).

"She's beginning to sound like a cross between Catherine the Great and Aimee Semple McPherson."

Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (May 2 [O.S. April 21] 1729 – November 17 [O.S. November 6] 1796), was the most renowned and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, reigning from July 9 [O.S. June 28] 1762 until her death at the age of sixty-seven. She was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, and came to power following a coup d'état and the assassination of her husband, Peter III, at the end of the Seven Years' War. Russia was revitalised under her reign, growing larger and stronger than ever and becoming recognised as one of the great powers of Europe.
In both her accession to power and in rule of her empire, Catherine often relied on her noble favourites, most notably Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. Assisted by highly successful generals such as Pyotr Rumyantsev and Alexander Suvorov, and admirals such as Fyodor Ushakov, she governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy. In the south, the Crimean Khanate was crushed following victories over the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish wars, and Russia colonised the vast territories of Novorossiya along the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas. In the west, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Catherine's former lover, king Stanisław August Poniatowski, was eventually partitioned, with the Russian Empire gaining the largest share. In the east, Russia started to colonise Alaska, establishing Russian America.
Catherine reformed the administration of Russian guberniyas, and many new cities and towns were founded on her orders. An admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernise Russia along Western European lines. However, military conscription and economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and private landowners led to increased levels of reliance on serfs. This was one of the chief reasons behind several rebellions, including the large-scale Pugachev's Rebellion of cossacks and peasants.
The period of Catherine the Great's rule, the Catherinian Era, is often considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire and the Russian nobility. The Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, issued during the short reign of Peter III and confirmed by Catherine, freed Russian nobles from compulsory military or state service. Construction of many mansions of the nobility, in the classical style endorsed by the Empress, changed the face of the country. A notable example of enlightened despot, a correspondent of Voltaire and an amateur opera librettist, Catherine presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, when the Smolny Institute, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe, was established.

 Aimee Semple McPherson (October 9, 1890 – September 27, 1944), also known as Sister Aimee, was a Canadian-American Los Angeles, California evangelist and media celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s. She founded the Foursquare Church. McPherson has been noted as a pioneer in the use of modern media, especially radio, and was the second woman to be granted a broadcast license. She used radio to draw on the growing appeal of popular entertainment in North America and incorporated other forms into her weekly sermons at Angelus Temple.