❑ observant

❑ prudent

❑ sullen

❑ heavy walker

❑ picks nails

❑ teeth

❒ caustic

❒ cunning

❒ gambler

❒ short-tempered

❒ stubborn

❒ taciturn

As a boy, Baelric was second in line to the throne, which may as well have meant he could live a life unconcerned with such responsibility. Insofar as he and the nurses who raised him believed. He was rambunctious as a boy, the type who gave more than a few of the servants gray hairs and yet little else but good things to say about the boy once his bruises, cuts, and scrapes had healed. He was affable, charming, and handsome, but not especially blessed by the serpent save for a few patches of scales rarely visible to others. As a teenager, it was a foregone conclusion that he would someday marry for the purpose of creating an alliance and was liable to end up some distance from the seat of the kingdom with little to do with any real power.

In his adolescence, he was unconcerned with such things. He would have to marry in time, but in his freedom he took to riding, fencing, and the sea under the touch of the sun, and in moonlight, the secret clubs of brawlers were a siren song to him far more than the pleasure houses. It was a fitting outlet for the anger of a young man until what anonymity he cloaked himself in was torn away from him. A social misstep cost him the outlet for his wrath, something which left him to quietly boil beneath the surface as such outbursts of anger were not becoming of a prince. That unfortunate trait, while not something he revealed to those closest to him, is something he still carries with him.

Had he known as an adult that he was wrong, he would have been better prepared to take the throne in his brother's absence. In some ways, the new responsibility had embittered him, creating resentment between himself and his absconded brother that he would not voice. However, he ascended the throne with the grace expected of a king and with it, he lost what little trace in appearance of the young man he had once been that had still remained after his marriage and the birth of his firstborn. There is no doubt that the man has the cunning necessary to rule effectively, but some question if too much of his humanity has been locked away for all but the most selective of company.

Length:
semi-para to multi-para

 

POV:
3rd > descriptive 1st

 

Genre:
angst, dark, drama, mature

 

Avoid:
excessive fluff, plotted , forced connections, OOC drama