Aleksander de Valençia

Aleksander de Valençiais a chevalier and member of the ‘Silver Griffons’ adventurer's company.

## Appearance

Aleksander has long, black hair that cuts off at his collar. He prefers it somewhat lengthy, in part because it had to be kept so short during training and also due to the fact that he could not give a single shit about how his damn hair looked. Typically, it’s tied back when he’s out working; though there’s occasions where he gets so frustrated with it being in his face he takes a blade and hacks an inch or too off. He keeps himself clean shaven; he attempted a mustache and beard once when he was married to Saoirse and she couldn’t stop giggling because it tickled her face. It’s been kept that way even after her passing. His eyes are a sea blue- sometimes under the light they’re clear as the blue sky, others they look murky and greenish like the turbulent Amaranthine sea. He stands at 6’7, a bit on the tall side thanks to his father’s genes and packs quite the muscle due to harsh training, currently weighing 195 lbs. Though he spends most of his time outside, the armor protects him from being tanned completely, some visible streaks from where it manages to slink past the edges in the plate metal to kiss his skin.

There's a bit more subdued hints of his Orlasian upbringing in his attire. The bright colors and intricate fabrics hardly suited a man who perpetually seems to be drawn to war- it would only make him stand out in the midst of a fight. Although he dons more elaborate clothing in terms of their finery; embellished with the crest of his house in silver thread right above his heart, more elaborate weaving than one of common birth could afford. Dark colors may not suit Alek well as they make his pallor most ghastly, furthering the stark contrast between pale skin and dark hair but they have been his preference even long before the death of his beloved wife. Her passage has shown itself with the addition of more black than brown, the colors of mourning apparent no matter how much time may slip past. Around his neck he wears the ring he had made for her on a red steel chain. Modesty may seem an odd trait for a Orlasian and still it plagues Alek; who keeps to less flashy clothing for the sake of that which keeps his scars out of prying eyes, particularly the burn scars on his upper thighs and the faint whipping mars that linger on across his back.(edited)

Military training, as well as a time or two where his trousers were slashed nearly off, have him keep a leather belt to keep his pants on proper. Leather pouches are stored on it - one for dried strips of beef, a waterskin made of a sheep's bladder, some storage for carrying herbs or any small palm sized trinket he finds necessary to keep. He wears an altered form of the chevalier's armor: shoulder cop and gardbrace cut back to allow his bow and quiver to be stored on his back. Part of his chevalier training had him learn to be ambidextrous; his left arm was broken by his own hand so that he could grow just as proficient with his right. Regardless, he prefers to have his blade sheathed on his left hip, the dagger on the right side of his belt for convenience. His weapons and armor are kept as pristine as he can manage with his own hand, sharpened and cleaned when he has the chance but there's some tarnish from lack of a proper forge.

## Biography

If there's always been one absolute in his life, it's that around Aleksander, things tend to be broken.

They say that a storm blew over the night Aleksander and Alina were born. Ioana's cries were lost beneath the thunder that rolled overhead, lightning flashing through the windows as the sky seemingly waged war with itself. The gap that Alistair left could not even be filled by the trio of midwives. The man of the house had left to hand deliver a this season's best yearlings to the Orlasian empire base at Adamant Fortress. The first had been Aleksander- loud and finicky, the child had screamed so loud it roared above the oppressive booming sky, with Alina following ten minutes after, soft and far more mild even for a newborn. The labor of bringing two souls into this world nearly cost Ioana her own, and though she might of persevered against the odds, there begun a fragility of her mind. The superstitious midwives speak of some demonic entity slipping into Ioana's mind while the woman was weak and weary after labor, yet in all actuality it was a severe case postpartum depression that went untreated.

Alistair neglected his wife even with his return, spending more time within the expanse of his office than paying her the attention she desperately needed. The shadows of Ioana's mind crept upon her, dark tendrils of thought polluting the gift of life given to her. She had spoken to Alistair many an occasion, warning him of the dark thoughts that plagued her day and night, but was dismissed and went unheeded. It took two months before the madness won out and the maids arrived to find Ioana kneeling beside the bath, holding Aleksander's head beneath the water. Although their arrival managed to save Aleksander, it was not swift enough to prevent the passing of Alina, who had been drowned first. Alistair's reaction to this was something even the servants disagreed with, he chose to place the blame solely upon Ioana and solved the problem by having a wet nurse cater to Aleksander. There are moments where Alek wonders on how it might be, that only a month old and he'd managed to destroy not only his parents' marriage but shatter his mother's mind.

When Alek were just a kid, it was minor nonsensical things. The models of horses and wooden swords his father brought for him reach birthday, the porcelain heads of the dolls gifted back when there had been a little girl in the house. The nannies his parents’ hired wizened up early on and started buying him building blocks and puzzles, even back before when he was in that delicate age gap and technically supposed to quite old enough for grown up toys . Looking back on it, it’s really ironic that despite how easily things tend to fall apart around Alek, the only thing immune to the walking disaster that is him is himself.

Eventually he traded those puzzles for saddles and building blocks for plain and single rocks, whenever the bratty kid visited. Even as a young child, he was problematic. The family sought to build ties by pairing him off to Isabel Körver, the daughter of another noble family within the same business, in order to expand their horse breeding empire by uniting their houses. This failed drastically from the beginning, the girl more a complaint than companion. She'd poke fun at his speech impediment (a mild stutter) and mock him around the other children their ages. Alek's revenge often came in the form of sneaking insects into her long, golden tresses or decorating sponges as a dessert and leaving them out for her to find. Horseback riding was particularly his favorite because it gave him the freedom to flee his father’s halls and the tension that oozed out of every stone. The whispers of the deed done by his mother reached his ears when he was little; sympathy from the stablehands who quietly remorsed the loss of one so young while simultaneously cursing Alek’s father for abandoning Ioana when she needed him most. His favorite lesson was combat training, simply because it gave him an excuse to tackle the other kids in the area. Once he threw a rock into the landowner next door’s custom stained glass windows and shattered it as easily as the thin frost that covered the lake come winter. Though Alek’s so-called friends bolted off into the woods, screaming and howling with laughter, he manned up and knocked on the front door. It still took him nearly thirty lashings from his father and six whole months of hard labor: taking on odd jobs to earn enough to pay for that window. Back then, he had been outraged. Ronan had set his bedroom on fire and nearly burnt the house down playing with a match, and he got a slap on the wrist. In comparison, a window is nothing.

Despite his ire, a wasted summer was nothing in the grand scheme of things and when Alek went back to his lessons, his arms were stronger than any of his friend’s because Alek had spent months mucking stalls and carrying hay barrels, and helping the horses in boarding stretch their legs. Besides, in hindsight a window is nothing... Alek shattered far more valuable things than that window as he grew older. The virginity of his sweetheart when he was pressured into a promise he couldn’t keep. Bottles of ale at a social gathering when he choked back one to many. His own wrist the first time he saw the bruises on his mother and got a hold of his father. Leaving home after that was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, but as he reached manhood he had a duty to Orlais. His commanding officers describe him as someone who was born to be a soldier, although his personality is mentioned as a risk factor. Even if Alek is not a bad person, the natural affinity for combat and dangerous situations make you something of a curiosity: Alek were never as phased by the stress and anxiety as his fellow soldiers.
The chevalier training is as strict as rumor dictates. It was meant to break you or make you. Alek’s aware he hardly came out of it entirely unscratched- but he came all the same. It took the longest time for him to complete his training and move off base to a official post. There’s an informal final test of chevalier training that he wasn’t made aware of. His new brothers-and-sisters-in-arm took him into a tavern to drink his fill. That night they took to the streets, hooting and laughing. Alek did not drink as much as they’d thought- certainly not enough to consent to testing his blade on a city elf.

But he thanks the divines for it. If he hadn’t been out on the streets that night, if he hadn’t been lead to that alleyway, he never would of met her. Saoirse. When the elven maid moved, head slanted slightly to send her face to shadow, her hair caught a lilac moonbeam, making the color almost translucent. The strands twist and spill across his head, as if some tangible moonlight reaching out. As if the elf can feel Alek staring, her eyes meet his. Blue meets a sea of green, and the color is alive, churning like an angry ocean, pulling him in. Alek lets himself drown. She looked like a goddess, he remembered thinking. A great lunar goddess sheltered by the embrace of the night. The woman fled when he held his fellow soldiers back, only stopped a moment when he asked for her name. “*Saoirse,*” she replied, sparing him a smile that’d haunt his dreams just before she slipped off, out of reach.
Saoirse stayed with him even when he was sent off to settle a conflict outside the city walls. The mission was supposed to be something easy. A couple bandits stirring up trouble with one of the farm households. It would have went well, if they hadn’t set fire to the stables. Aleksander went in to get the horses- smashing stall doors open to free the animals, helping stable hands lead the frightening horses out. That doesn’t change the fact that he did disobey, risked the mission and everything for the sake of a couple replaceable steads. The stable was on fire, the only exit with flames in the way. Everyone around him was just gone or dead, lost to the smoke- Alek was barely conscious when he made the snap choice to jump through the fire. The barn was coming down either way, burning the hell out of his back and legs or stay here and become charcoal, why shouldn’t he take the chance? Certain death or a leap of faith, Alek managed a prayer as he took the leap. Because though he can break necks and skulls and not feel remorse.
He can't break the feeling of not having a purpose.

Aleksander woke up - but he didn’t remember much. Bits and pieces. Fire in the sky. A ringing in his ears. Blinding lights and muffled voices. The next time he’s coherent, he’s in the medical center with a healer looking down at him, with enough gauze and herbal rub to make him wonder how on earth he managed to survive. The flickering images of a figure cloaked in white, those endless pools of sea-green make him curious as to if it wasn’t divine intervention that spared him death. The mission had been a success and he was deemed a hero. That didn’t mean he felt like one-- his comrades, his friends were dead and gone and he managed once again to show that he was only good at breaking things. Breaking the promise he made to Branson Vallen’s wife to get him home safety, that same promise he made to Branson’s kids- He made a mess of himself, would of destroyed his body so badly that not even all the emperor’s horses and all the emperor's men would of had any shot at putting him back together again.
The only bright side to recovering when he felt like he should not be here, was that his rescuer and healer, stuck around to keep him in one piece, although it might have helped in the long run. Nothing made it okay or alright again, but slowly Aleksander began to realize that he couldn't quite hate the path life had set out for him, because past the twists and turns, the uphill battles and slopes, it had led straight to Saoirse.

Returning to duty would of been impossible without Saoirse. She kept to his side throughout the physical therapy to mend the damage done, stood by Alek; didn't ask many questions on days where the flashbacks and nightmares made the man unable to rise out of bed. She pulled the bottle from his hands, refused to let Alek break off sobriety and drown his sorrows away. Instead she bought that old fat lute. He broke strings instead of faces, ears (at times) instead of bottles.
Though he broke hearts when passing woman wanted him to be a little more perfect than he’s capable of - he had enough morals, though, to never lay hand on them. Saoirse on the other hand broke her wrist a time when a sleazy drunken girl got a little bit personal for her tastes. That's actually the first time Alek said "*I love you*", a small smirk as he kissed her bandaged knuckles. It’s funny to think about, in hindsight, how Alek thought he could keep this for himself. He remembered growing up with a father who used to call him a ‘*ball-less whelp*’ because he felt things like ‘*like a woman*’. Aleksander doesn’t do those things, not anymore at least. But at one point he did. A year into his relationship and he decided he wanted more. It wouldn’t be possible to marry her in the proper way, not yet, but in his heart- Saoirse sees through the proposal before the words have even left Alek’s lips - she laughs and asks what took him so long as she wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him.
Alek thought he was invincible now, because there's nothing in this world that could upset him, not when this beautiful woman agreed to be his.

He was on duty when it happened. This sort of union wasn’t forbidden, but he hadn’t needed the hassle from the chelveier, so they were forced to spend their days apart and keep their love a secret. Saoirse had duties in her alienage, so it was for the best. Until he came home and she wasn’t there. Until he came upon her in the streets, huddled in an alleyway, life slowly leaking from the lightning magic inflicted burns on her. The elf was going into labor, and that’s when Alek first realize she wasn’t going to make it. Already sapped of strength, already so weak… but he put on a smile and told her everything would be okay, held her hand and breathed with her with each passing contraction. Aveline was so small, so tiny. Saoirse was able to hold her, eyes so bright and hopeful. She made him promise to take care of Aveline, made him swear to keep powering forward. The elf was lucky enough to pass on long before her daughter joined her. Aleksander wasn’t granted the mercy of relief. Because he wouldn’t be able to break a promise, not to her.

The trouble was, he’d become disillusioned by the chevalier. If they had been more honorable, if they had done their damned job, Saoirse wouldn’t have died like this. She wouldn’t have been condemned, all because the shape of her ears. He packs his things and leaves- no warning, no apology. The road becomes his home. Traveling by daylight, holing up when the sun sets. Most of the people Alek cared about are dead now, and he thinks about that a lot. The things that mattered and the way he thought he could be a good person back then is nothing. Most of those people who loved him and felt safe with him are dead. And that only leaves him. Now Aleksander can break whatever he want, fear no repercussions when his temper runs thin. He can throw rocks into windows can crash carts without being made to pay. He can shatter faces or his own fists and there won’t be that slightly downturned frown of disapproval on Saoirse’s face.

Aleksander does not forget those he loved, but he had to move on. Because there are many who he failed and all that matters now to him is dead and gone from this world. He’s lived a life of ruin, his fingertips instruments of destruction and wants to see if some good can come out of him yet. There’s word of some group forming- blessed by the Divine Josanna herself, some say it’s a band of detrimental dysfunction, others speak of it as a new era of heroes. For Alek, it’s a start, a means to give himself purpose, even possibly a cause worthy to die for. It’s something, and that’s enough for him. Sometimes he can still feel her arms around him when he wakes, hear the soft cries of a child when he is by himself. There’s even times he can feel the sticky residue of her lifeblood on his fingers, clinging on his hands like ghosts.

 But it's okay. Alek’s used to being haunted. No Fade dreams required.

## Personality

Alek is honorably in the service of the Orlasian empire and retains a strong sense of loyalty to the empire. He could have chosen to take up his family’s holdings and run the stables they own, but the easy route has never been his first choice. This is a man who wanted his life to have purpose, and if that meant abdicating to his younger brother, Ronan, so be it. When he’s not working, he occasionally picks up fat lute to play out a verse or two or hangs around the stables. This military man has always had a lot of feelings and carried his fair share of sadness around, both because of clinical depression and specific events in his life (the death of his brothers-and-sisters-in-arms and loss of his wife Saoirse) that's only gotten worse. Events in his life have also made him distrusting of magic and those who possess it- to the degree where he’d sooner perish than allow a mage to heal him. Magic and the mages who wield it are not his favorite company; he tends to withdraw and put his shields up when near them, loathing as he is of the arcane abilities imbued within them. Elves are, however, something of a soft spot for Alek- though you wouldn’t gauge as much. His aversion to them is often seen as distaste when in reality it’s a subconscious avoidance of any and everything that reminds him of his late wife.

It isn't that he's a bad person, not necessarily. This is merely a man who has lost much and become guarded as a result; he can be seen as caring or gentle, when his shields are lowered. Aleksander does not like to hurt or kill unless required, although he will not hesitant if his mind comes to the conclusion it’s necessary and is not afraid to take out potential threats unflinchingly. He makes an exception when it's a person or reanimated creature going after women or children and grows more reckless in defense of them. Alek does have a horrible temper and when it's triggered it usually ends with him beating someone (or something) into a bloody pulp or preying on what he perceives to be their biggest weakness and not feeling a damned thing about it a week later. Often described as having a stick up his arse, he’s hardly a man to befriend based off first impression. He’s typically in a grouchy mood, grumbling to himself or unable to resist the most unamused bitch face of all bitch faces. So long as you accept that he’s naturally likened to a grumpy feline, he is overall a decent man who will take care of those who need it, not because he needs to or feels forced but because at the heart of him is a man who genuinely wants to protect others.

*Platonic;* Frequently described as private, Aleksander is a closed book. His upbringing was upper class, one of two children born to a wealthy horse breeding land nobles. Some say that his family dabbled in arms dealing behind the scenes - perhaps that was a motivating factor in Aleksander choosing a different path for himself versus following in his father's footsteps, through the chance at escaping his family made the decision all the more easy. Most, if not all, can agree that he is hardworking, fastidious, fair, dedicated, however when pressed for further details, more intimate affairs, they likely come up short. His business is his own, and as he does not stick his nose in the business of others, so do the same and expect to rub him the wrong way. Alek definitely is the type to 'pack up' and join forces with other like minded individuals during crisis. He is a solitary individual but that does not totally mean that he blocks people out. Yes, he is a little guarded, and perhaps reclusive during the worse of his depression, mostly because he's scared of being vulnerable. Call him paranoid, but he doesn't like the idea of exposing himself only for it to be used against him.
*Romantic;* Aleksander is cautious, weighing the potential consequences and outcomes of every decision he makes before he makes it. His military service is made clear by his methodical, efficient strategy and mentality. He leaves nothing to chance if he can help it, rarely acting spontaneously unless those he loves are in danger, and he becomes frustrated in situations where there is no choice and he must take a plunge. In his youth, he was far less hesitant, prone to being bold and direct despite his age, but that all changed after a mistake that cost the lives of his comrades. This served as a wakeup call of sorts, as he viewed it as an opportunity to get his life in order and do things right going forward. As a result, he is a far more deliberate, thoughtful person these days.(edited)

Often this is brought on by guilt. Aleksander to this day blames himself for what happened to his wife Saoirse, despite the fact that there was little he could of done to alter such a fate. This guilt oftentimes transforms into a deep seated depression: crippling in its intensity, but as with most things, Alek goes out of his way to keep his turmoil buried, tucked away so that it can’t hurt those he cares about. The irony is that his attempts to spare those closest to him his burdens, is frequently what causes the most pain. He is a working man, and that's all he makes time for. He has tried dating - once or twice since Saoirse past, however many of these relationships failed due to his unwillingness to open up and their inability to penetrate his secretive layers. In many ways, he chooses to be lonely, but he also doesn’t believe most could handle his reality, as it is a reality that he still grapples with himself.