Anamaya (Incas)

Anamaya is the main heroine of the Incas novel trilogy by Antoine B. Daniel (a pseudonym for French novelists Antoine Audouard and Jean-Daniel Baltassat, along with an Inca specialist Bertrand Houette). She is an Inca born in 1516, during the reign of the Inca Emperor Huayna Capac. She has lived her first ten years with her mother in a remote village without ever knowing her father. She looks different in many ways from other Incas, especially with her paler skin and blue eyes (which are later hinted to be the result of her being born a mestizo).

After Anamaya's been captured by Inca raiders who kill her mother, she gains the attention of Huyana Capac himself. The dying Inca ruler believes that the girl with eyes as blue as the waters of the sacred Lake Titicaca has been sent to ensure his passage to the Other World by Quilla the Moon Goddess and ignores his advisers' requests to sacrifice her. In his deathbed, Huyana Capac confides to Anamaya secrets regarding the past and the future of the Inca Empire, but afterwards the girl can't remember the specifics.

Anamaya is appointed as Coya Camaquen, the wife and guardian of Huyana Capac's golden statue called Sacred Double. She's then involved in the Inca Civil War and Francisco Pizarro's conquest, guided by Huyana Capac's last words she remembers by flashes. Right before the Battle of Cajamarca, she meets and falls in love with a conquistador named Gabrielle Montecular y Flores who has a birthmark shaped like a puma. One of Huyana Capac's last words ("trust the puma") ties Anamaya to Gabriel throughout the war between Incas and Spaniards as they have to witness the darker aspects of human nature and deal with their conflicting loyalties and Huyana Capac's predictions coming true.