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ustryaocs · 5 years

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Character: Ella Tremaine Other Names: Cinderella Age: 19 Current Residence: Rethar Occupation: Queen

Ella had a very happy beginning. She was born in Rethar to a Retharian woman and a Western man. Perhaps better stated, a Western king. As a princess, she had everything she could ask for at the tips of her fingers. Her father always had a short temper, but her mother had a way of calming it before he could ever really get himself worked up. It was helpful, as Ella never really fit the mold of what a princess ought to be. She hated crowds, strayed away from anyone she didn’t already know and couldn’t be wrestled into a dress if her life depended on it. But they were a happy family. Their happiness did not last long.

Ella’s mother grew ill and no amount of riches could pay to make her better. She was gone, before they really had a chance to prepare themselves for it. In losing her mother, Ella might as well have lost her father as well. Percival had always been a difficult man, but he became more demanding, his temper grew shorter. He expected perfection in everything she did, even as a child. Ella had never so much as visited the true West, yet she was expected to live up to the standard of a perfect Western lady. For a while, she tried. She tried to make herself softer, to wear the dresses, to act the part. In time, she realized that it would never be enough for him, and so she gave up.

Growing into her early teens, she began escaping to the armory. After much pleading, she convinced the keeper of the armory (and the leader of the small Retharian forces) to teach her to fight. That became her release. When the castle became unbearable, when her father’s words grew too harsh or his fists too heavy, she turned to fighting. It was an easier way to cope with the fear that balled up in her stomach, and it cut through the feeling that her body wasn’t her own. When the fighting itself wasn’t enough, she pushed herself until it hurt, until she bled, until the pain could remind her that she was alive.

She did everything that she wasn’t supposed to do, just to spite her father. She wore pants, visited the people of Rethar, spent time in the kitchens and the armory and with the servants. She acknowledged her half-brother, the bastard son of the king, going to him more often than not when things got bad. In all the pain and anger that had invaded her life, Ella found a way to, if not thrive, survive. That didn’t last either. Her father remarried, to a nerve-frayed woman with two daughters. Anastasia was the same age as her, Drizella two years younger. To say they didn’t get along was an understatement.

They were everything her father had wanted for daughters. Two perfect princesses, who always followed the rules and knew how to act. They never seemed to get nervous in crowds and always said the right thing, as opposed to Ella who could always, miraculously, say exactly the wrong thing. Their differences settled them into an ugly rivalry, Anastasia spearheading the worst of it and dragging Drizella along with her. They had countless taunts, the most infuriating being Cinderella. Anastasia had an art for speaking the name under her breath, low enough only for Ella to hear and react to, her reaction typically getting her sentenced to dinner in the servants quarters (not that she minded that punishment - it was better than the bad nights where a goblet was likely to be thrown). As if Ella didn’t already know her failings, her step-family made them clear to her at every opportunity.

Then, really, her step-family was the least of her concerns. She reached marrying age. Rethar went to war against Traynia. Ella was swept up in a process of doing whatever she could to frighten off suitors (it didn’t take much effort, she wasn’t the picture of Western beauty in appearance or personality) and attempting to glean information from her father about the war. Years of running off to speak with the common people had ruined the carefully built walls to keep nobility separate from the rest of the people, in her case. She loved her people, her small country with the rolling grassy hills and simple, easy people. She wanted to fight for them, despite the abomination that would be in the eyes of the West. A woman, a noble one no less, fighting?

Percival did his very best to beat the notion out of her. He failed. When he left to view a battle, he locked Ella in a dungeon for ‘safekeeping’ to keep her from following. Here, Ella finally met her ‘Faerie Godmother’. Orlaith was a fae who had known her mother and promised to keep an eye on her, not that she had done a spectacular job on that account. Most fae hated humans, but Orlaith was one of the few who was willing to break rules for those she considered worthy. She slipped into the cell as a mouse and, against her better judgement, supplied Ella with escape and a set of armor, along with a warning that she would have until the sun set before the spell wore off. That was all Ella needed, immediately riding for the battle.

Of course, the battle wasn’t really what she expected. The Northern Barbarians seemed less like barbarians and more like people while she was fighting them. Then, she found herself faced with the prince of Traynia himself, the battlefield clearing around them as though the other warriors instinctively knew that this was not a fight to involve themselves with. In the end, Ella had a shallow cut on her neck and a gash in her thigh, but she left her mother’s dagger in the Prince’s side before the trumpets blew and the sun touched the horizon and the Prince, poised to strike, faltered. The spell fell away and she was left without armor or weapon, surviving only by the grace of a fellow Retharian soldier who pulled her up on his horse and took her out of the battle. The battle itself, was over.

Ella rode for home, knowing if she could get there before her father, no one need be the wiser (her step-family wouldn’t be paying attention to her whereabouts so long as she wasn’t around them). She made it home, dressed in her best and went to her father when she was called on, expecting the worst. What she got was far worse than she had ever imagined. A forced betrothal to the Prince of Traynia, a false peace treaty that she knew would never last. Ella spent the next two weeks locked in her room, refusing to come out for the Traynian visitors and claiming to be ill. The wedding a pompous affair (made only a little more bearable by the outrageous customs of the Northerners who took over the instruments at a certain point and took to dancing in such a wild manner that it drove every proper Westerner off the floor). Then she was leaving, carted off to the North with a people she didn’t know.

As time and trial would have it, Ella found she was much more suited to Northern life. For the first time, she found friends, women who fought alongside her and with her, men who actually respected her and a shocking lack of verbal abuse. She took no less than a few months to fall in love with the people who had accepted her as one of their own as soon as she came into their midst, and only a little longer to, possibly, slightly, develop a certain fondness for her husband (she had taken him for an intimidating, brooding sort, only to find he was an oaf in the most endearing and impossible manner). For the first time, she thought she might have found happiness. As usual, it was torn away from her all too quickly.

She had expected her father to break the truce, but not so quickly. She also hadn’t expected him to do it through kidnapping her and Kit and claiming that the ‘barbarians had stolen his daughter’. Kit was thrown in chains in the dungeon (she tried not to think of what was done there) and Ella was treated as the prodigal child coming home, as though she had chosen to leave. But she was not the same girl who had spent a life trapped there. In the few months she had spent in Traynia, she had learned new worth and new resolve.

Realizing that there would be no more peace until it was done, Ella ended her father’s life and escaped in the confusion. She got Kit free with the help of her half-brother and they rode North with the intent of warning Traynia. Kit, of course, was a broken shadow after the time he had spent in the horrors of the dungeon and it was Ella who was forced to drag him along with her. But they made it North, rallied troops and returned again with the expectation of a battle that could wipe them out. It was Drizella, against all expectations, to ride to their aid (soft Drizella never was much help when it came to important things, but even Ella couldn’t help but feel a certain fondness for her at times). Still, it was Drizella to deliver the new that those in the Retharian forces would fight for Ella, against the mercenaries the West had hired. (It was also Drizella to bring Kel’s body, the half brother, the bastard son, to her. It was always unclear how he passed, only that he had gone too far in trying to help Ella).

They went to battle. They won, the mercenaries refusing to fight once they saw Rethar turn against them. The war, for once, was truly over. Ella sent Anastasia and Drizella back West where they could live the sort of life they expected, keeping her step-mother in Rethar to answer for sending the armies against Ella. It was only when things settled that the truth began to unfold. Isabele (the step-mother), had not been the coordinator. Kel was not dead, though he was missing. Anastasia was the kingpin of it all, and Ella had sent her off alongside poor Drizella. Now the whole country holds its breath, waiting to see the next move of the West (as Rethar works to regain independence) and, more importantly, the next move of one step-sister who proved to be much more manipulative than anyone had expected.

#character #cinderella #ella #rethar #UOR #west #characterbio

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characterbios11 · 4 years

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Kel

Life isn’t fair. This is, perhaps, the first lesson Kelton ever learned. Born the bastard son of the king of Rethar and a maidservant from the South, he spent most of his life as an odd kind of outcast. Everyone know who he was, knew what he was, servants talk. It didn’t help his situation when his mother died of a mysterious illness when he was still just a child. He fell to the responsibility of the other castle staff, and it was Llerlin, another Southerner and the leader of the Retharian army. Llerlin was a stern man and by no means a father figure, but he was good for Kel. He taught Kel everything he knew and pushed him to do better and not allow bitterness to take over, from the time he was a child.

Ella helped with that. The King’s recognized daughter, the legitimate child. She had the life that Kel might have had, if things had been different, and she was miserable. She came to the armory with unexplained bruises and anger and she fought with everyone in sight. It taught Kel to be grateful for what he had in life, as he watched her and only wished that he could help. She was never supposed to acknowledge him, but she did. She claimed him as her brother even when it made things worse for her, every bit as full of love and morality as she was full of anger.

As for Kel, he was not so full of anger. He learned dutifully the skills of fighting from Llerlin, but it was never his heart. He was more easily found watching the children of the castle staff, weaving flower crowns and telling stories, feeling more at home with a baby in his arms. Growing into adulthood, he found a certain contentedness in life.

And then there was Holly. She came into his life like a rush of wind, blowing in from the desert with a group of Swialia people. The nomads came through every few years to trade and stay for a while, and when the two of them met, that was it. Holly was wild and beautiful and Kel was smitten the moment he met her. They had a whirlwind romance and married within a year. Holly stayed with him the next time the Swialia left, and they spent a year together before her people came back through.

Kel brought up children. He thought it had always been obvious that he loved children, that he wanted them, that he wanted all the domestic things of life, but it had not been. As it turned out, it had not even been obvious to Holly that they were married. The next morning when he woke up, both the Swialia and Holly were gone. Heartbroken, Kel couldn’t bring himself to stay somewhere that had so many memories of her, and he didn’t hold onto any illusions that she might come back for him. He traveled South instead, using connections from Llerlin to secure employment as a nanny for a wealthy family.

He found another kind of happiness there, taking care of children and, in a way, claiming them as his own. He spent a few years there, trying to forget and make something new for himself. He kept up steady correspondence with both Llerlin and Ella, but letters took time, and by the time he’d heard of his half-sister’s wedding, it had already happened. He still took his leave immediately, returning to what once had been his home, to find that Ella had already been sent off to the North, and sternly held back from going after her.

It wasn’t long before she was brought back, with claims that she had been kidnapped by Traynia and forced into a marriage. The never-ending war between Rethar and Traynia loomed once more, this time with Ella in the thick of it. When she came to Kel for help, he did everything he could to give it, smuggling her and her husband out once more to run for the North. The chaos that erupted with them gone was difficult to follow. The King was dead, Ella rumored to have killed him. The Queen now took charge, battle loomed, and the Retharian troops whispered their support of Ella instead.

For Kel, this was where things went dark. In a fit of anger, Anastasia, Ella’s stepsister, had used him as a way to cause Ella pain. She cast a curse over him, banishing him to a castle in the desert. Disfigured and left with the other outcasts that inhabited the castle, Kel all but gave hope. There were, of course, ways to break such curses, but his ‘true love’ had already chosen to leave him. The last thing he ever expected was for her to show up once more, claiming she had come to help him, and all the anger stored up over every unfair thing in his life erupted. He told her to leave, and refused to speak with her.

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