Baelor Rowan

Baelor Rowan is the current Lord of Goldengrove, Marshall of the Northmarch, and Head of House Rowan. Born in 409 to the late Lord Reynard Rowan and Princess Jaehaera Targaryen, the youngest of three children, he assumed Lordship at the age of six and twenty, when a terrible plague broke out in the Northmarches, ravishing the northern borders of the Reach, with only he and his mother surviving.

Appearance and Personality
Baelor is broader than most, with sinewy, but deceptively capable muscle, and of average height for his age. He has bright lavander eyes and a curtain of stark, silver-blonde hair, nearly white in appearance, occasionally tied off in a single tail or braid. He looks young for his age. Baelor has the same sharp, exotic features of his mother, with high cheekbones and sallow cheeks, and a jagged, narrow jaw. He has dimples when he smiles.

He oft dresses in any combination of the colors of his parents houses, preferring simple, yet extravagant cuts of clothing. He usually wears an ash grey cloak with his personal sigil, the Targaryen dragon and the golden tree of Rowan quartered on the steel ronnels.

By nature, Baelor is boisterous and showy, but also incredibly generous and openhanded. He aspires to the very definition of chivalry, a reverence for knighthood instilled in him from a very young age, which has become the embodiment of everything he strives towards, ultimately wishing to better himself until he has reached his peak potential in all things.

In his youth, Baelor was hotheaded and hotblooded, preferring swords to quills and women to piety. But as time has grown on, he has found though his tastes haven't changed overly much, but he has gained a modicum of maturity in the way he goes about himself. Though his love for the art of warfare and blade has not diminished, he has also learned that peace is something to be savored. He has grown much more amicable and much less like to draw blades at the smallest slight.

History
Baelor Rowan was born the youngest of three, and the only child from the union of Lord Reynard Rowan and Princess Jaehaera Targaryen. Having met in Oldtown, the two were married while sent to the Vale as emissaries to the Arryns. After the war, they returned to Goldengrove, where they began their new life together. Two years later, in 409 AC, their first and only son together, Baelor, was born. He was named for his maternal grandsire, the Master of Laws, Baelor Targaryen.

Youth
Baelor was a happy child, robust child, who made it his mission to make family and servants alike smile. He found from a very early age that he greatly enjoyed seeing people pleased with him, forming an unhealthy dependence on the approval of others that persists today. Despite his relative isolation from his siblings, both due to the age difference between them, as well as the intentional extra attention he was awarded by his mother, Jaehaera, which thoroughly vexed Reynard, who wanted nothing more than to bring the two families together into one, though, for all his efforts, seemingly the opposite effect occurred. For the rift that initially separated Jaehaera and Baelor and Reynard's children only grew wider with time, and there became a point in Baelor's life where he felt as though he were sharing a household with complete strangers, which was only greater exacerbated by his later time spent away from Goldengrove.

Squirehood
When Baelor was eleven, he began squiring under his uncle, Ser Thaddeus Oakheart, the knight husband of his paternal aunt, Lady Jocelyn Rowan. While he stayed with them at Old Oak, he grew quite close to both Jocelyn and Thaddeus, a relationship that would continue to blossom well into his majority. Baelor stayed with them for five years before being knighted at sixteen by Thaddeus. He had always had a natural affinity for the blade, and preferred training with wooden swords and shields than playing with other children, often challenging them to duels long before he would ever come to touch live steel. And when he did end up training with a real blade, he found he loved it more than he ever dreamed he might, and began devoting himself wholly to it's study and practice.

For his prowess and skill, he was knighted at a younger age than most. Though his life there at Old Oak had not quite yet come to a halt. He stayed with his aunt and uncle for another five years, much to his mother's chagrin, enlisting in tourneys and taking a great deal of time to hone himself into a formidable warrior, and eventually, an even more capable tactician. He grew to love warfare even more than the act of making it, and had a mind for tactics like none of his peers. Baelor made it a routine to study battles of old, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, which came as a great surprise to many, as he had always had great difficulty reading, let alone studying or finding enjoyment from more erudite interests. As it turned out, all he needed was an interest in the materials, and he soon excelled at it, though his troubles reading still persisted well into adulthood (to this day, he can only read out loud, and still with great difficulty).

Majority
As Baelor grew, so did his skill at arms, and his charms too, as ladies high and low, old and young began throwing themselves at him for marriage, both with and without their father's consent or blessing. But strangely enough, he found that they all provided little interest for him. Reynard was untroubled, he was glad for it, as he saw it as a sign of maturity that he didn't go tumbling in the hay with every servant and highborn lady he set eyes on. He would marry with time, when he found the inclination, and a worthy match would be easy thanks to his natural charisma. None could have known the real reason, for even he didn't, until one fateful night.

On the eve of his nine and tenth nameday, during the early morning hours, a servant spied Lady Jocelyn entering his chambers in naught but a sleeping shift, with a small candle in hand to light her way. What went on between them is hardly difficult to guess, as they had grown great affection for each other over the years, where people would come to question precisely how appropriate it was for a boy to be just so close to his aunt, a lawfully wedded woman, at that. Neither of these things seemed to stop the two of them, however, and thus began the worst kept secret in all of the Reach; the ongoing affair of Lady Jocelyn Rowan and her nephew, Ser Baelor Rowan.

Affair with Jocelyn Rowan
There are a myriad of rumors surrounding what exactly drove them towards each other; some say that Baelor had proclivities similar to those of his maternal family's, and as a result, tended towards those of his own blood; some say that after a year of marriage, Lady Jocelyn was disappointed with her lack of children, and wanted to ensure her husband had an heir, one way or another; some say it was just lust or love, for the nature of man can be unknowable when thoughts of carnal pleasures come into view. But a year later, she gave birth to a lavander eyed, lusty little boy, with hair of silver gold on his head, whom Jocelyn named Jaehaerys, for Baelor's own mother.

In spite of the rumors of the unborn child's parentage, Thaddeus stalwartly defended his wife's honor for the course of her pregnancy, until the babe itself was born. With one look at the boy, silver haired and violet eyed, a black rage overtook the knight, a betrayal of uncanny proportions. For Thaddeus had come to look at Baelor as a son of his own, for he had no children by his wife until this day. And indeed, they were close as any father and son ought to be, Thaddeus had taught Baelor how to be a man, how to fight, and how to live up to the virtues of chivalry. He had defended him from the rumors, and his wife too, for he had never imagined that the two people he loved most in the world would betray him in such a disastrous way, but when Jaehaerys was born, and named such by Jocelyn, Thaddeus was overtaken by a wroth so fierce, that none would ever call him the Sleepy Oak again.

Trial By Combat
Waking Baelor immediately, he dragged the naked youth out of bed, and threw him in the cells beneath Old Oak, without the consent of his lord cousin, and accused him of adultery, perjury, and heresy, all punishable by death according to the Seven Pointed Star. Though Thaddeus wanted him and the boy executed immediately, Lord Oakheart had other plans, being more levelheaded than Ser Thaddeus; he allowed Baelor a chance to prove his innocence in a fair trial, as befits all high lords and lordlings. Of course, with little else choice, Baelor instead defaulted, by lack of evidence, to calling a Trial by Combat, which Lord Oakheart obliged. Thaddeus was chosen as Lord Oakheart's Champion, and Baelor decided he himself would act in his favor.

When the rumors reached the ears of Reynard, he had word sent to Old Oak at once, demanding his son be released immediately or else incur the wrath of Goldengrove. While Reynard intended instead to take the matter before their lieges of House Tyrell, Lord Oakheart denied his request, and the trial took place before Baelor's father could further intervene.

As the day broke, Baelor was let out of his cell, and armored himself in glittering white plate armor chased with redgold and black, while Thaddeus donned his own colors of House Oakheart. Baelor chose a greatsword, while Thaddeus brought a morningstar and shield, a combination with which he was infamously deadly, having accidentally killed several men in a melee years past.

It was over in an instant. Though Thaddeus fought valiantly, his rage had kept him up all through the night, and he was haggard and unprepared for the duel. Baelor immediately shattered his oaken shield with a single blow of his blade, and after parrying a wild, uncoordinated swing of Thaddeus' morningstar, he split Thaddeus in half with one swing of his greatsword, rending through his helm and gearing down through his torso in one clean strike. Thus having been exonerated according to the King's Law, Lord Oakheart was forced to let him and the child go. Casting the two out, as well as Lady Jocelyn, he forbade them to return to his lands, or he would have their heads. All too happy to leave, they made for Goldengrove later that evening.

Return to Goldengrove
Utterly furious with his disgraceful son, Reynard reportedly struck his son for the first and only time upon his return, knocking him from his horse, causing him to fall on his hip and shatter his upper leg, a wound that would take years to fully heal, and still causes phantom aches from time to time. He forbade Baelor and Jocelyn from seeing each other, and so it was for a moon's turn, until later on she was found to be with child again. After nearly three years of clandestine liaisons resulting in new bastard children, Reynard relented, and allowed the two to continue as they had before, thoroughly sickened and entirely disappointed in his son. As recompense for all of the damage wrought by Baelor, Reynard married both his children from his first marriage to someone from House Oakheart, hoping to smooth over the wounds. Lord Oakheart called the debt paid, but still forbade Baelor from returning to his lands, which Reynard accepted without quarrel.

Baelor found acclaim in other realms other than childbearing, though. As he grew better and better with a blade, he began enlisting in tourneys, and before long became a regular at any sort of gathering determined to show off skill-at-arms, those hosted by the highest of lords and the smallest, it made no difference to Baelor, who had fashioned himself into a prolific tourney knight.

Three Banners War
Baelor's mettle was first truly tested during the Three Banners War, though in no significant way. In order to prevent the conflict from bleeding further into the Reach, he was sent with a small army to block the Ocean Road with the assistance of Lord Oakheart, who sent a contingent of his own to fortify the Northmarch.

His first real battle was nothing more than a short skirmish. The van of a small expeditionary force from Silver Hill had stumbled upon their encampment, and before they could rally for an ambush, the horns were sounded, their own scouts having spotted the force. The battle was little more than a slaughter, as they had outnumbered their enemies five to one, but Baelor's own acumen and tactical prowess was proved that day when only two men died on the field of battle. Taking advantage of the flat fields they had camped in, he ordered a shield wall to bridge the gap between the two large hills overlooking their camp. Leading the cavalry charge himself, Baelor directed them around the hills quickly, and they descended from behind, the hammer smashing the Serrett Van against the shield anvil. Jocelyn, who had ridden with him in the charge, was wounded, a pike slashing her cheek deep, so deep that the bone beneath was visible when she was taken to the maesters after the battle. They managed to patch her up well enough, however, and Baelor was able to call it a near perfect victory. Riding high off his first win, they sat there for the remainder of the war to ensure no other armies dared to march into Reach territory, and much to his own chagrin, none did.

The Northmarch Plague
In the year 435 AC, a great plague swept through the Northmarches, decimating the smallfolk population. Death, being impartial as it is, found itself at the doorstep of many a lord and landed knight, high and small, rich and poor, weak and strong. The plague carried off many, including Lord Reynard Rowan, his heir, Gerald Rowan and his wife, and one of Baelor's own bastard daughters, a newborn babe named Selyse. Stricken with grief at the loss of so much family, Baelor sequestered himself in Goldengrove, scarcely leaving his chambers for nearly a year, only permitting Jocelyn to enter and attempt to raise his spirits, which she sorely failed at.

Lordship
After nearly a year of mourning his lost loved ones, Baelor reluctantly assumed the mantle Lord of Goldengrove, and plunged himself into his duties in order to help stymie the growing rift within him. His relationship with his mother deteriorated with time, and she eventually came to seldom leave her own chambers, their shared bitterness over the loss of family turning each other against one another, as well as his choice in consort. With her husband long dead, Jocelyn became Lady of Goldengrove in all but name, as Baelor was still reluctant to wed her due to the stern gaze of the Faith bearing down on him. Baelor and Jocelyn one more child together before Jocelyn announced that her childbearing days were well over. Still without trueborn heirs, the succession remains uncertain, but some have begun to suspect that Baelor wishes to appeal to the Iron Throne for the legitimization of all his bastard "Rowanseeds", as they're often called, as true "Rowans" rather than their bastard name of "Flowers."

Family
(Will be listed later, but for the sake of my sanity and my sleep schedule, the link will have to do for the moment)

Skills
Attributes: Imperious, Gregarious