Although she now leads a people far from her homeland and does her best to learn about those among whom she lives, Khulan never lets herself forget where she came from either. She is deeply devoted to her duty and her family. She would choose her birth family first, but as she has a knack for seeing all sides of an issue it's rare she would find this necessary. If her birth family were to insist, she's not one to back down easily even if her style of argument isn't forceful. Khulan's sense of right and wrong is well-rooted and she clings to it strongly.

Intelligent and voracious, she reads up on many topics, medicine and various religions being her favorites. She still trains with weapons so that she can lead troops into battle when needed but has dropped wrestling for the most part to not alarm Chinese ambassadors. This is indicative of her nature— she will make concessions in the name of keeping peace, yet still find ways to be herself.

The time of Khulan's birth was still a precarious period of her family's life. Despite some notable battlefield successes, her father knew too well how easily fortunes could turn on the steppe. He already had several children; he wanted power as much to secure their future and bring stability to his people as for its own sake. Early in Khulan's childhood things began coming together for her father. She grew up in a perfect balance of privilege and struggle, with knowledge of her own worth and the responsibility that came with it.

Her mother taught her how to ride, cook, and tend the home; her father made sure she learned to read and to fight, even if he couldn't always be the teacher. There was hardly a time Khulan wasn't aware of the expectations her parents had for her. It came as no surprise when she was sent on a mission via marriage to a land south of the great desert among the Onggud. The lives of these people were much different from what she was accustomed to, but she was determined to serve both them and her father well. Several years into her stay she proved this— when some of the Onggud revolted and killed her husband and supporters, she persuaded her father to execute only those guilty of the deaths. After that she was seen as loyal to the Onggud.

Back on the steppe, of course her father hadn't been idle. As his power grew and he began to make incursions on Chinese territory, Khulan provided horses and troops to strengthen the Mongol army. Sometimes one of his secondary wives who happened to have the same name would accompany him; at these times the daughter Khulan would adopt an alternate name Alakhai to avoid confusion. This was also when her title of bekhi (princess) got the most use; she insisted on it with foreign ambassadors but with the Onggud she used it more sparingly.

While her career as administrator and diplomat was successful, her personal life was more turbulent due in part to high mortality rates (of the non-nefarious variety). After her first husband's death, she married a stepson, with whom she had her only child; after he died she married a second stepson. These were strategic political matches and though she did care for her husbands, she sought love outside the marital bed— conveniently for stability her lovers were female, but only one child lived past childhood, and he died in battle.

From then on Khulan worked tirelessly to knit her birth family and her adopted people together through marriage alliances. She lived long enough to see the disunity breaking apart her father's family following his successor's death. This disgusted her, so she remained south of the desert until her death.