Madeleine de Valois

Madeleine De Valois is the second child and only daughter produced by the union of Asilgard Rhyne and Arnaud de Valois.   As a young child,  she was rather willful and demanding.  She followed her elder brother Adrien around,  trying to do everything that he was doing.   She tried her best to upstage him.

It was this competitiveness that was eventually responsible for the accident that would change a spoiled hellion into a true intellectual.  Arnaud de Valois had just purchased a stallion for Adrien's twelfth birthday.  Madeleine decided that she wanted to have the stallion for herself so she snuck out of the keep in the middle of the night in an attempt to tame the stallion.   Somehow, she had managed to saddle the beast and get him to the training grounds.  It was there that her unconscious form was discovered the next morning, her left leg shattered. There was some doubt that she would live as she was comatose for five days.   But when she awoke, she was much more subdued.   As the doctors told her that the way her leg had shattered meant that she may never walk again,  her only entertainment at first came in the form of books.   She began to read everything that she could get her hands on as if she was searching for an answer to a question that she was not sure how to voice.  Eventually,  between the stubbornness and a lot of hard work,  Madeleine has been able to walk again with the aid of a cane. She can walk or stand for brief periods of time without the cane.

What was surprising to her parents was that for some reason,  Madeleine developed a thirst for religious knowledge.   Perhaps it was the accident or the boredom afterwards that has prompted her into the study of the various religions.  At the age of thirteen,  Madeleine asked her parents if she could study in one of the temples of Angelica's schools.   It was in this school that Madeleine discovered that she had inherited her mother's natural diplomacy from the Rhynes.   She began to acquire the reputation of being a peace maker, especially among the students.

Surprisingly,  she became friends with Gloriana de Prix,  an older student with a rather colorful reputation.   Three years into her studies,  the gossip begun to swirl around the school of Gloriana's torrid love affair with an unknown nobleman.   Maddie,  as she was known in the school,  did not know the name of the nobleman,  or if she did, she hasn't revealed it.  Gloriana's parents disowned their daughter,  preferring to avoid the scandal.  Gloriana panicked as realization of being alone to raise the child set in. She begged Maddie to help her. Maddie gave her word that she would do whatever it took to help.   Little did Maddie know that Gloriana was planning on suicide.   The poison that Gloriana ingested caused the young woman to go into labor.   The twins,  Jeanette and Margarette were born as their mother was dying.   Gloriana begged Maddie to kill the newborns,  but  Maddie refused to murder the innocent infants,  vowing instead that she would raise the girls as her own.

Following some wise advice,  Maddie has contacted the de Prix family about the twins.  The family denies their existence.   Their official story is that Gloriana fell ill while attending the school and died from the illness.   If Maddie knows the identity of the father,  she has not contacted him.

Overall,  Madeleine is a quiet woman with an inquiring mind. She is still rather stubborn,  with rare glimpses of the hellion she was before the accident showing through.   She is very protective of her wards, raising them alone.   She seems to have a shyness around men who are not part of the family.   There may or may not be a sword hidden inside of her cane.