Heather Lynderly

Heather Lynderly is the current Lady of the Snakewood. The eldest child of the late Lord Edmund Lynderly and his late lady wife Arrana Waxley, her brother's untimely passing saw Heather become Heir to the Snakewood and Lady of House Lynderly following Lord Edmund's sudden death in 435 AC.

Appearance and Character
Heather Lynderly sports the smooth, milky complexion typical of her father's House, with hooded eyes blue as any newborn babe's oft filled with unspoken melancholy. Heavy brows frame fragile eyes, with a prominent nose and sharp cheeks. Heather's lips, full with gentle curves and never quick to smile, are her softest feature. Whatever struggles Heather held with assuming the expected aesthetic of a proper Lady were only exacerbated by her tall, lanky frame, only granted nominal curves when she entered womanhood. Exercise proved useful in filling out her bottom half, but by the time she came of age she no longer cared. From youth to the twilight of her maidenhood, Heather wore her hair short, in part due to her close relationship with her father. Mostly, she despised the tangles that would result from the wear and tear of adventuring. Even well into womanhood, she misses the days of a tight cut. Her fingernails used to be worn from frequent biting, a habit she thankfully was able to abandon. Typically Heather will opt for dark silhouettes made of sturdy material be it a gown or trousers.

The person Heather was before the death of her father and who she is as Lady of the Snakewood are not entirely different; there was always a stubborn distance to Heather, but never had she felt so heavily as she does currently. The only person Heather seems to hold closely is her younger sister Arwyn, of whom she is fiercely protective. At first born out of the death of her mother and furthered by her father's inability to cope, Heather possesses a stability and sense of realism few members of her family could boast. The traumas and challenges of her childhood molded her skills into what they are today, and Heather carries a certain rigidness in knowing they were born of necessity and not a patient teacher. Despite her straightforward, sarcastic, and at times cynical nature, there is a maternal side to her buried well beneath the surface. She favors the wild expanse of the Snakewood to courtly life, and thus could be considered something of an introvert. Fierce determination and unbreakable aloofness clearly separate her tendency towards solitude from shyness.

Early Life
The contents of Heather's earliest years stretch beyond even her childhood, but long before her conception. At the conclusion of the Mummer's War following the death of Alaric Arryn Heather's grandmother, Rohanna Lynderly, Lady Regent of the Snakewood, vanished without a trace. Edmund Lynderly had once been a squire to Lord Arryn, and the loss of both a paternal and maternal figure- though it would be incorrect to assume his relationship with his mother, a notoriously bitter and narcissistic woman would be anything resembling a functional mother-son relationship- caused a boy once hushed by the hardships of life to become more distant still. The now-Lord Edmund was of a different stock than his daughter would be though, and retreated further into himself. As he advanced farther into lordship it became harder to balance duty with family, ultimately leading to a distant relationship at best with the siblings remaining.

Despite his excursions away from the Snakewood being infrequent, he fell for a girl while on business in Wickenden whom he considered much out of his league. Arrana Waxley was a tall drink of water, with warm blonde hair and eyes like deep pools. She relented to his advances however, and the two were wed in the later half of 414 AC. It was said that for every inch Lady Arrana loved her husband, he loved her a mile. Lord Edmund proved himself potent enough to get her with child soon after their marriage. Whatever love Lady Arrana could not bring herself to devote to her husband, she found easily fell upon her child. A girl, as the gods would have it. Lord Edmund was no less thrilled for it. He doted upon his daughter with such frequency that he seemed finally freed of any fabled curse, that he would be given the opportunity to continue forth as a young Lord finally at peace with the misfortune of his childhood. Unfortunately, dark clouds do not stay away forever.

Yet in 417 AC, Lord and Lady welcomed a son and could not be happier, whom they named Alaric after Edmund's closest thing to a fatherly figure. Little changed for Heather, but the presence of a male heir did much to soothe concerns of the household. As a young child, Heather's headstrong nature made itself apparent, as well as her affinity for spending time alone. The girl did not struggle in social situations, she simply took no joy from it. Young Heather could oft be found playing with toy soldiers alongside baby dolls, though there was one thing she dreaded most of all: needlework. Even as a woman grown, her needlework is sloppy if not illegible. Her mother doted on both of her children, even if her eldest often struggled to assert her independence. Soon enough their brood would expand, when Lady Arrana gave birth to her second daughter Arwyn in 420 AC. From the moment of her birth, Heather shared an especially strong bond with her baby sister, no matter the half a decade separating them in age. In 421 AC young Heather took it upon herself to abscond into the pantry with a dull knife and gleefully chop off the majority of her hair. Her mother cried while her father laughed, but both decided it was time to invest in a proper education for their eldest lest she take to spending her extra energy on less superficial forms of destruction. To their surprise, Heather took to books, always with a fascination on the factual. She had a soft spot for epic tales, either with or without the fair maiden in distress. More oft than not she fantasized about being the one doing the saving, of which her baby sister made the perfect princess stand-in, her brother the treacherous dragon dividing them. Heather felt more comfortable in the forest surrounding her ancestral keep than inside the place itself, namely because it was more familiar to her; from a young age her adventuring was governed by "go here, not there" or "this place is off limits". There was an ancient feel to the place, the cobwebs spawning on seemingly every surface attested to that, but Heather knew the reasons went well beyond the natural in her father's mind. Her grandmother, peculiar a figure as she was, was not the only Lynderly of legend: aunts who sung over kettles in the dark, second cousins dancing naked in the moonlight, eccentric lords who buckled under the weight of their despair. In many ways the Snakewood seemed more like a story than anything she read in her books. So small was her family that she felt the only way to know them was through the stories, though it became quickly clear to her as she grew that they were just that: stories. In the year of 424 AC it became evident that life could never be anything like a story.

Recent Events
TBD.

Family and Household
Lord Jon Lynderly b. 375 AC d. 406 AC

m. Rohanna Lynderly b. 376 AC d. ???
 * Baela Lynderly b. 391 AC d. 410 AC
 * Lord Edmund Lynderly b. 399 AC d. 435 AC
 * m. Arrana Waxley b. 398 AC d.
 * Lady Heather Lynderly b. 415 AC
 * Alaric Lynderly b. 417 AC d.
 * Arwyn Lynderly b. 420 AC
 * Alys Lynderly b.400 AC -d. ???
 * Lysa Lynderly b.400 AC d. 432 AC
 * Tyta Lynderly b. 406 AC d. 435 AC