Maria Mabusa-Dul-Sansiska is the heiress of the two Houses she is affiliated with and the most powerful woman in Everglow. She also happens to be a massive bitch who perceives cultural hesitation as cowardice and openly insults the very fabric of Ladyhood in Everglow and a good portion of Aradia itself. However, she is also quite understand of the plight of women in Aradia and aims to help in ways she can.
She is unafraid of harming her reputation, but understands that she has to keep some semblance of rationality so that others do not turn away from her. Her brash antics usually land her in some sort of trouble such as when she attempted to kill Divan over his choices up to that point in supporting human war. She also happens to hold a special place for Rivka Vennet-Blackthorne; treating her as a cousin and having spent much of Rivka's adolescence in Briochi spending time with the young one after the Plague.
Maria is stunted in her growth and thus resembles an underdeveloped child. In part for this reason she took up basic alchemy to help remedy some of her short comings. This includes her height, weight, bust size, and waist line to resemble a more picturesque elf. She also studied rudimentary antidote and first aid crafting, but she hasn't gotten too far deep into alchemical sciences due to her role in the family. Due to her nature as an inheritor she's had to put her own personal fascinations to the wayside in favor of Lordly ideals.
She has studied basic politics, though with Drow the rules never seemed to matter one way or the other. She also was forced to choose a martial skill with which to defend herself with. All Drow Lords and Ladies much be proficient in a form of combat in order to be safeguarded if their guardians are inaccessible. Maria took up the use of the longsword, a simple but effective countermeasure to any would be assassin is knowing their mark can cut them down.
She's no champion, she's not even close to coming up to the amount of skill the Tourney champions get up to, but she's also no pushover and learned to use her blade as an effective defensive measure while she bought herself time. She's a very defensive swordwoman, never making moves, always waiting for her enemy to come out of place and kill them swiftly. She greatly dislikes fighting however, and thus this is used as a last resort.
Prior to the schism she hadn't had to worry about her swordplay because her father acted as her Hand. Barakul being one of the greatest of swordsmen alive could match blades with the likes of Dominic Blackthorne and Valar Druun. His possession of the legendary weapon Zar'Taka Bruul is proof of this. However he has gone home to prepare for the demonic invasions yet to come and thus she is left with only her younger pirate captain brother and a Wild One to defend her. She she has been prepping her swordsmanship to come back up to at least par.