Taliesin

Taliesin is a Story-weaving Bard.

## Personality

Fabulous. Fantastic. Flamboyant. Taliesin can't resist any opportunity to perform, to the point that he would want to be the centre of everyone's attention. All. The. Time. Allies, enemies and everyone in-between! A great show-off, he loves the limelight. When not doing a performance or telling a story, he is prone to singing, whistling or humming quietly - or not so quietly! - to himself. Stealth isn't something that Taliesin does at all.

He is a performer of consummate skill and he knows it. A charismatic womaniser, he is charming to the ladies and will take opportunities to flirt with a pretty barmaid, a merchant's daughter, a lady of the court or even royalty; he has made hasty retreats from... misunderstood situations over many, many incarnations and has had plenty of opportunities to perfect both of those skills.

## Role in the Quest

Taliesin was the first of the Soul Stones to be recovered by the Company and was attuned to Iola. However, as far as Taliesin was concerned, she was not a Bard of particularly outstanding skill. He would tell her how she was nowhere near as good as he was, and would never be as good as him. This infuriated Iola no end, and she would argue with him about it, without any progress or impact on him. But as the Quest progressed, Iola developed her skills almost without Taliesin realising or recognising it. Living in her head, he had seen what she had been getting up to, getting to know more about her and seeing the world through her eyes, but without recognising the changes in her. Or seeing how she had been affecting him.

And then Cait came along, he became attuned to her, and several things happened. First he started to really see Iola for who she was; there was a level of separation between them that he'd not been used to, and it gave him a different perspective on her. He saw her empathy with Sal and also her returning the necklace to Meg in Greenbank, that she did it herself without needing to be persuaded or told to. He saw her show Indri a perspective of joy, life and hope as another dimension to the Quest. And he was impressed. Then secondly there was Morgana. While Iola had been attuned to her, Morgana had been her usual self, with her underhanded, manipulative ways, attitude and nature. Never one of Morgana's biggest fans at the best of times, Taliesin was completely torn up by how she was affecting Iola, and he didn't like it one bit.

Having spent a little time with Cait, he saw some of the potential value she could bring to the Company, not to mention that she went out of her way to listen to many of his songs of the history of the Soul Stones and the Quest over the ages. He intended to persuade her to commit to the Company and get along with them (especially Iola), and set her up to spend some time with Gwynivar, then to return to Iola as soon as he could to stop Morgana's influence. But he still hadn't really understood himself or his feelings.

Then, during the The Celebrations at Greenbank, Iola challenged him to a performance competition, to determine who was the better of the two of them: a Bard-off. Not only did Iola stun him when she absolutely aced her performance, he was also thrown emotionally when he heard of her bet with Morgana. Everything came together for him in that moment and he confessed his feelings to her. He had no idea how any of this might have worked out, or even if it could. However, Cait went on to attune to Gwynivar for a few days, then shortly after Cait reattuned to him, the Company caught up with Arthos and Merlin, and Iola asked to be reattuned to him. It's possible that Iola thought it would all just be too weird, or that there could never really be anything between them if, as they thought, his existence might end once the Quest was completed. Cait encouraged him in that Morgana expected to survive beyond the end of the quest, and that she had her eye on what might happen after that. As for anything else, who knows what the future might hold?

## Quotes

* Though, for the Company, there may be trouble ahead, tonight there's moonlight and music and love and romance [Storyweaving in The Celebrations at Greenbank].
* You are the one, you're such wonderful fun, such passion and grace [To Iola]

## References

1. ↑ A nod to Fred and Ginger's famous number. Fred Astaire ignored an early review saying that he 'Can't sing. Can't act. Balding. Can dance a little.' and went on to international stardom. He was a perfectionist and a professional; in the clip shown (the first take of twenty he did of this dance) he's hit by Ginger Rogers' heavily beaded dress sleeves in the eye (around 1:41), but barely flinched and danced the remaining one-shot take not being able to see properly. He is rightly known as a virtuoso and one of the best dancers of all time. Ginger, on the other hand, did everything that Fred did, but backwards and in heels.
2. ↑ Said when he was expressing his feelings to Iola, it's a nod to the line Xander sang to Anya, in a song which also revealed that, while they cared for each other, they both had serious flaws in their characters and had deep rooted fears that their relationship would never work, a significant factor in that being that they didn't trust each other to open up and talk with honesty and vulnerability.

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