Lawrence

## Summary

Lawrence is an Antagonist in the story who's deeply full of melancholy and is just trying to make sure his daughter stays safe, no matter the cost.

## Physical Appearance

Lawrence is a middle aged man with salt and pepper messy hair. He's average height and often tends to have a beaten up and rough exterior, almost always having a black eye or other noticable injury on his face.

## Personality

Lawrence tends to be unforgiving and cold to others, but only deeply intelligent and filled with melancholy and sorrow. He's at odds with people quite often due to being stubborn and tends to be at odds with people who don't follow the same mindset as him. He does often dirty and unforgivable deeds, telling himself that he does this because he knows that in the end this will help in a sort of machiavellan way.

Lawrence is a highly skilled tactician and has deep knowledge of both strategies military wise and survival wise. It was heavily implied he fought in a war, most likely Vietname due to his survival and military skills. Lawrence believes in the Sacramento Philosophy of giving merciful killings to those infected by the Rot due to having seen his Wife die to the Rot after a long battle with the Rot. He witnessed his wife slowly die over time and become less and less human, which simply put broke him. Lawrence believes that someone becoming part of the Rotten is a fate worse than death, and he wishes that on no man.

After the loss of his Wife, he begin to care even more about his daughter, Valentine. He's more than willing to do anything to save her from danger and will gladly give his life before she dies, often resorting to things like self sacrifice and resorting to violence just to make sure that Valentine lives another day, shown when Lawrence showed very little remorse about the deaths of the soldiers from Las Vegas as they threatened Valentine, which Lawrence took extremely personally.

Lawrence as a father tends to be very caring for children, disagreeing with Valentine's methods of manipulating Scott with Jasper Wright, believeing that children should never be involved with any remotely similar situation he finds himself in with Valentine and Sacramento.

Due to having awful memories from Vietnam and having been forced to take place in a Massacre on a Vietnamese Village, Lawrence absolutely despises anyone who uses any sort of gun or weapon due to the awful memories associated with them, even to the extent of refusing to even use them. At the beggining of the story he starts as a slightly joking old man who cares about his daughter greatly, often appearing slightly annoyed and distrustful of others, but develops to be an angry old man who's often patient and extremely cunning.

Due to being a former soldier in Vietnam, Lawrence tends to show massive signs of PTSD.

Towards the end of the series, Lawrence has grown to become a broken and brittled man, who even shows a small amount of respect to Scott and Ryker after realizing the monster his daughter was, eventually sacrificing himself to save Scott and Ryker.

### Morality

Lawrence believes that those who are innocent don't deserve to die, unless they are begging for it or clearly dying in pain as a sort of merciful death like euthanasia. As the story goes on Lawrence finds out more and more of how evil his daughter was, and forgives Aaron for giving Valentine a strain of the Rot through using Dale.

## Relationships

### Scott

Lawrence and Scott despise each other. Lawrence believes in the Sacramento Philosophy and Scott thinks it's disgusting and inhumane. They hate each other.

### Dale

Dale and Lawrence are often at odds but Dale more than often Dale doesn't fight back, and takes any sort of yelling like a shameful child.

## Memorable Quotes

"*Well god bless my cold, dead heart. I think I actually feel an emotion."*

## History

### Backround Information

Lawrence is a Vietnam Veteran who was discharged honorably after refusing to invade a village, with that village being where the My Lai Massacre happened. After reeling from the events of the war back in the United States, Lawrence moved to Sacramento where he met his wife whom he would soon marry and then have Valentine as a daughter.

During the Rot he witnessed his wife become part of the Rotten due to not having the heart to let her have a merciful death through something like euthanasia, arguing that she's not a dog that needs to be put down, and that she'll get better. Over time he watched his wife suffer and slowly die, until she fully became part of the Rotten and was beyond saving, eventually Lawrence couldn't take it anymore. He put her in the passenger seat of his car and he went into the driver's seat, then drove off of a cliff as both a way to commit suicide and a way to end his wife's suffering. However, Lawrence survived to live another day and his wife didn't. After that he went home shell shocked, Valentine asked him where Mom was, he told her that her suffering had ended.

Valentine had already been within the leadership of Sacramento so after most of Sacramento's leadership passed due to the Rot, Valentine become Mayor of the Sacramento City State, and Lawrence was added as an enforcer for it.