Jamie Fraser

James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser is a Scottish soldier and landowner. He is well educated and has a knack for learning languages. Raised to be the future Laird of Lallybroch, he is a natural leader, from the homestead to the battlefield. He first meets Claire on his return home to Scotland from France.
== Personal History ==
Jamie was born to Ellen and Brian Fraser in the Scottish Highlands, at their family home of Lallybroch. He was very close to his older brother, William, and was devastated when his brother died of smallpox when Jamie was only six or so. From then on, he was raised to be the future laird of Broch Tuarach, the more official name of the estate. The family suffered another blow when Ellen died in childbed, along with the baby, when Jamie was about eight years old. His older sister, Jenny, then aged ten, took on the running of the household after their mother's death, and their father Brian raised them both to adulthood.
Around age fourteen, Jamie went to foster with his maternal uncle, Dougal MacKenzie, at Beannachd, his uncle's home. Dougal, left-handed like Jamie, taught him to wield a sword with both hands. Jamie had been previously taught some left-handed swordsmanship by the factor at Lallybroch, John Murray, his best friend Ian's father. At sixteen, Jamie lived for a year at Castle Leoch, seat of the Clan MacKenzie. At eighteen, Jamie went to Paris to study at the Université and lived with his father's cousin, Jared Fraser.
After Jamie had returned home to Lallybroch, in October of 1740 he was arrested by the English for obstruction – that is, for defending his family and property when the English set upon his home – and then taken to Fort William for imprisonment. He escaped, but the English pursued him and brought him back to the fort, where he was flogged with one hundred lashes for escaping. While still recovering, Captain Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall ordered that he be given another hundred lashes for theft. After his second flogging, friends came to help Jamie escape a second time, and in the process one of the guards was killed; thence Jamie had a price of ten pounds Sterling on his head for murder.
By the time he had escaped, though, he had word that his father had died of an apoplexy, apparently caused by his distress after Jamie's second flogging, when it looked as though Jamie had died.
Jamie then fled to France to join his best friend, Ian Murray, as a mercenary in the French army, where he stayed for two years. Returning once more to Scotland in 1742, Jamie traveled the countryside with a gang of broken men – men without clans – for six months, raiding cattle and the like from the borderlands, when one day someone hit Jamie in the back of the head with an axe, and his uncle Dougal had him sent to recover (or die) from his injury at the Abbey of Ste. Anne de Beaupré in France, where Jamie's uncle Alexander Fraser was abbot.
In the spring of 1743, Jamie returned to Scotland with his godfather Murtagh, and once in the Highlands they were found by Dougal and his men, who were absconding with lifted cattle. Captain Randall and his dragoons pursued the Scots and engaged them in a confrontation, during which Jamie dislocated his shoulder. Soon after, Murtagh brought an Englishwoman named Claire Beauchamp to Dougal, having rescued her from being raped by Captain Randall.
== Personality ==
In general, Jamie is charming and amiable, with a highly developed sense of humor and knack for inventive swearing. However, the Frasers are known for their stubbornness, and Jamie exemplifies the trait powerfully. He is also completely devoted to his family, especially his wife Claire, and will eliminate any threat to his loved ones, no matter the cost to himself. He has a strongly developed social intelligence, and a profound sense of a man's honor and duty. He won't turn away from any fight or responsibility that he perceives to be his.
== Appearance ==
Jamie is described as very tall at six feet, four inches, with thick, wavy red hair and slanted, cat-like blue eyes. While his height and broad shoulders cut a large figure, Jamie is built like a swimmer or basketball player; muscled and strong, but not excessively so – no extra flesh on his large frame. His hair is not the gingery sort of red, but rather a multitude of individual colors mixed together: auburn, amber, roan, cinnabar, rufous, copper, cinnamon, red and gold are all used to describe the strands of its unique hue, and it is often compared to a red deer's pelt. His eyes are described as dark blue, fringed with long lashes that are nearly black at the tips, but transition to auburn then pale blond at the roots. He gets his height and hair color from his mother's MacKenzie blood, as well as the high cheekbones and long, straight nose, but the slanted eyes, strong jaw and wide mouth are traits from his father, Brian Fraser.
Over the years, Jamie's body has acquired many scars from various injuries. The most shocking of these, usually hidden by his shirt, is his heavily scarred back, from lashings inflicted by Jack Randall and, years later, as a punishment at Ardsmuir Prison. He also has a triangular scar on his collar bone, as well as a long scar on the fourth finger of his right hand, both of these also inflicted by Jack Randall. In Wentworth Prison, Randall also branded him, though Jamie later cuts the stigmatized flesh out of his chest, leaving a puckered scar.
Before Claire goes back through the stones shortly before the Battle of Culloden, she carves the letter "C" into the base of his left thumb. A broken nose just before the battle leaves Jamie's knife-edged nose slightly thickened at the base of the ridge where the fracture healed. During the battle, a bayonet ran clean through his thigh to the bone; he only escapes death from infection by his sister's stubborn refusal to let him die, and survives with a thick, welted scar up the length of his thigh.
Over the years since his torture at the hands of Jack Randall at Wentworth Prison, Jamie's right hand has suffered additional trauma repeatedly, owing to the stiff fourth finger that sticks out and is prone to re-breaking. In An Echo in the Bone, the damage to the fourth finger during the Battle of Saratoga is such that Claire finally must remove it completely to salvage the rest of the hand.
== Name ==
== Trivia ==
Category:Characters
Category:18th century characters
Category:Main characters
Category:Characters in Season 1
Category:Characters in Season 2
Category:Characters in Season 3
Category:Characters in Season 4
Category:Characters in Season 5
Category:Characters in Season 6
Category:Characters in Season 7
Category:MacKenzie Clan