Rose Merlot

The youngest daughter of the Merlot family, Rosé is an accomplished winemaker and chef who would serve as head chef for the royal family of Prance prior to the fall of the crown in 1035.
== Family History ==
Rosé's great grandmother Merlot was a common-born citizen of the Golden Slope region of eastern Prance. She showed a particular skill at wine making, and founded a successful business in the region. 
Merlot became a Merchant Lady of Golden Slope, and though she would never truly be highborn, she achieved the respect of the nobility, and to many acted as their equal. She would pass down her own name as a family name to her foals, and the Merlot family would continue to cultivate and craft fine wine from their homestead in Golden Slope for generations.
== Biography ==
Rosé was the youngest of the 4th generation of Merlot's main house, and lived out her childhood in the family lands, helping to cultivate the land and produce the wine. She proved to be an adept wine maker from early on, but as the youngest daughter she worried for her future.
Knowing that the life planned out for her was only to be married of and be brushed off to the side houses of the family land as was the case with her cousins and their parents, Rosé chose to leave her family home and traveled to the capital region of Ricce. While there, she began to study cooking, ultimately getting a job as a chef in the Royal Palace in 1002. Rosé would live a comfortable life as a servant of the Royal family, even striking up a friendship with a young ambassador who came to live in the palace named Pear Bloom. 
Over the years, through prodigious skill and clever application of her family wine in her cooking, Rosé worked her way up to head chef in the palace. She would continue to serve the royal family loyally until the year 1033, when Prince Hallebarde Argent de la Prance married Marquise Alicia de Chevalier of Blackmist March.
Following the wedding, Rosé watched as the King and Queen disappeared and their son took over as king. She saw Alicia, whom she had heard described by Pear Bloom, seem to be overtaken by madness as the new Queen. She would continue to serve, attempting not to draw attention to herself, for two more years until she received word from Pear Bloom that an attack on the palace was imminent and that if they didn't get her and Alicia out of the palace before it happened, they would both be killed.
Rosé agreed to help, remaining within the palace until Ebon Heart and Sir Wolfric de Fer Dorè arrived at risk to her own life. After the soldiers had killed Argent and grabbed Alicia, she guided them to a secret passage which lead to the lake at the bottom of the waterfall beneath the palace. The bombardment of the palace began during their escape, and their fate was left uncertain to everypony outside.
Emerging onto a small dock in the Witch Bog, all four ponies boarded a small boat and quietly fled Prance. Rosé would return with Ebon Heart and Alicia to Equestria at Pear Bloom's insistence, settling in the forest town Luneria.