Telden Hasting

Telden Hasting is a noble of House Hasting from Luthadel on Scadrial.
== Personality and Appearance ==
Telden Hasting is a tall man, with a sort of square body shape and a deep voice. As a young man, Telden is a dandy. He is always very well-dressed in expensive suits and fashionable, his hair is always perfectly arranged. He is enviably attractive and always very relaxed and comfortable. Telden is also something of a flirt, particularly towards serving women. As second son he has fewer responsibilities and can spend more time pursuing women. Telden never gets too close to the women he chases though. Telden has little interest in practical politics, but remains aware of political situations and always avoids women who might be spies or have questionable loyalties. After the Collapse, Telden gains some weight, and while still well dressed, he is less concerned with fashion and style. Telden retained some of his carefree and relatively innocent nature, even through the horrors surrounding the death of the Lord Ruler.
Despite his lack of interest in practical politics or trickery, Telden enjoys discussing philosophy and political theory with his friends. Telden is well-versed in many of the same subjects and theories that his good friend Elend Venture knows, although he does not enjoy reading nearly as much. Unlike Elend, Telden has little love for the skaa. He never understood Elend's obsession with them. Telden spends very little time in politicking but he is a clever man, able to disguise any nervousness and display confidence in situations where he is in danger. He also displays some bravery on occasion, and is willing to put himself in dangerous situations to help Yomen.
== History ==
=== Youth ===
Telden was born the second son to Lord Hasting in Luthadel, the leader of the second most powerful house in Luthadel. As the second son, Telden grew up without many responsibilities to his house, he was able to spend his youth chasing after women that interested him rather than engaging in political maneuvering.
Telden grew up as a member of house a whose political enemy was House Venture, but he still became good friends with its heir, Elend. They remained friends for many years, and by the time they were young men Elend was one of Telden's oldest and best friends. Telden spent much of his time giving relationship advice to Elend, but considered the man to be a lost cause when it came to women. Telden and Elend, along with Jastes Lekal and a couple other young nobles, often met in the evenings to drink wine and discuss politics. Through these conversations, Elend eventually managed to convince Telden that the Lord Ruler was not a good king. Telden was no revolutionary, but he believed that the nobles should be united against the Lord Ruler in order to conserve their power. 
=== Collapse of the Final Empire ===
As Kelsier and his crew began their plan to destroy the Final Empire, Telden's meetings with Elend after noble balls drew the attention of Vin, in the guise of Valette Renoux, and Sazed. Sazed informed Kelsier of these meetings, and both he and Vin listened in on a few of them. Kelsier was unconcerned with these meetings, believing them to be meaningless. During some of these meetings, Telden and Jastes counseled Elend to be wary of Valette Renoux, believing her to be a spy from another house. Despite the mounting tensions among the noble houses, Telden remained convinced that the whole affair would blow over in a few months and no house war would occur.
As Kelsier continued with his manipulations, House Hasting was pushed to the brink of destruction. When the house war finally errupted, Keep Hasting was burned by House Elariel in the night, and House Hasting collapsed. Telden remained in Luthadel until Elend was crowned king of the Central Dominance, but left Luthadel shortly thereafter, believing Elend to be little more than a figurehead. Telden and what remained of his family retreated to the city of BasMardin in the Western Dominance, which suffered from koloss raids. Once Lord Ashweather Cett left the Western Dominance and the obligator Aradan Yomen took control of Fadrex City, Telden left his family and relocated to Fadrex, believing it to be less dangerous and more stable.
=== Life in Fadrex City ===
Telden lived in Fadrex for some time, and became good friends with Yomen. Telden heard rumors from Luthadel that Elend had truly seized power in the city, but refused to believe them initially. After the city was besieged by Elend's armies, Telden attended a ball held at Keep Orielle, where he met Elend and Vin. Telden and Elend spoke for a time, Telden expressing his disbelief that Elend had set himself up as emperor and intended to conquer the city by force, comparing him to the Lord Ruler. Elend attempted to convince Telden that he was no tyrant and that his actions were necessary. Telden still doubted the truth of this, but changed the subject to his shock at Elend's marriage to Vin after Elend's hopelessness with women in his past. They parted as Elend went to speak with Yomen.
After Vin was captured by Yomen while searching Fadrex's storage cache, Telden and some skaa servants were sent down to speak with her by Yomen. Telden's mission was to persuade Vin to drink wine with a powerful sedative in it so that she could be transported to a proper cell instead of remaining trapped in the cache. Telden himself doubted that he would convince her to do so. However, Telden successfully convinced Vin that no matter what she did to him and his servants, Yomen was unlikely to open the cache unless he gave the all-clear signal of his own free will, so Vin drank the wine and fell unconscious, in spite of her duralumin-enhanced pewter burning.
Telden's ultimate fate is unknown, there is no mention whether or not he survived the chaos surrounding the Final Ascension and the Catacendre, but as House Hasting exists in Elendel, it seems likely that Telden or at least some of his family made it to a storage cache and survived.
== Relationships ==
=== Elend ===
Telden and Elend had a strong friendship in their youth, although they were very different people. Telden's concerns were with women, and all of his attempts to give Elend relationship advice went nowhere. Telden could not understand his friends odd love of books and the skaa. He was a little dismissive of Elend believing that he and his scholarly habits were a little bit boring and that Elend would never end up married. He agreed with some of Elend's more practical beliefs though, hoping the nobility could regain political power they had lost to the Lord Ruler through a united front. Elend for his part often had to work hard to convince Telden of his beliefs. Telden also had little faith in Elend as a politician, believing that he was a puppet of Kelsier's crew and never would be able to actual rule a nation.
After Elend's New Empire began to absorb the other nascent nations, Telden realized that Elend was seriously considering taking Fadrex City by force. He did not understand what had happened to his idealist friend. He believed that Elend had betrayed all that he had once stood for. By this point, Telden and Elend had grown distant, they merely had memories of friendship. Elend was also afraid to tell Telden that he had executed their mutual friend Jastes Lekal. Telden treated Elend differently as well, bowing to him when he withdrew from Elend's presence. Elend had grown into a realist, while Telden remained the carefree man that he always had been.
== Trivia ==
*Telden's appearance in The Hero of Ages is an intentional callback to The Final Empire. Brandon missed some themes from the first book while writing The Well of Ascension, so he very intentionally included some of those elements in the final book. Telden's appearance at the ball is a part of that.
== Notes ==