Vhelan rules Gissemari as Prince-Consort and regent, holding the throne for his daughter Ishari until she comes of age. He is a sculptor first and a ruler by accident, one of the finest working in Gissemari's forge-tradition, and he resents every hour that governance takes from the stone. He took the regency because someone had to, and because the someone would otherwise have been a guild or a faction with worse intentions than his indifference.
On the Council of Four Flames this makes him an unlikely peacemaker. Seraphel weighs decades and Khalira demands fire; Vhelan votes for whatever proposal lets everyone go home soonest. He has no stake in the quarrel between patience and action, and no patience for it, so he breaks deadlocks the committed monarchs cannot, simply because he wants the argument over. The other three have learned to court his boredom. It is more reliable than conviction.