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. 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 looks young for his age.

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. His kindness knows little to know bounds, and he has a certain zeal with which he goes through life that matches that of his own mother in her golden years. Having grown up as the third child, he never expected to be lord, and would much rather be loved than be feared, as during his career as a tourney knight he fashioned himself into a sort of champion of the people, a persona aided largely by his undeniable natural charisma.

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. Though no paragon of virtue, he sees the good in all things, and strives towards bettering himself, as well as the future of his kingdom and his smallfolk.

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, despite his 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.

When Baelor was eleven, he began squiring under his 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.

Adulthood
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. He couldn't quite place his finger on it until the eve of his nine and tenth nameday, when during the early morning hours, a servant spied Jocelyn entering his chambers in naught but a sleeping shift, with a small candle in hand to light her way. 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.

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 Thaddeus named Unwin, for his own father.

Oddly enough, even though Unwin's parentage was as plain as day, he insisted until the day he died that Unwin was his trueborn son, and viciously persecuted those that would dare to say otherwise in his presence. He would come to defend the other myriad of children that came from Jocelyn, despite the fact that they all more or less were spitting images of Baelor, from eyes, to facial structure, to hair, and any combination of the three.

When the rumors reached the ears of Reynard, he had Baelor brought back to Goldengrove at once, but his will would end up circumvented as Thaddeus and Jocelyn soon followed, with their small contingent of Baelor's bastards, or the "Rowanseeds", as they would come to be referred to. By the year 430, they counted four in number, but four more would join their ranks in the coming years.

Utterly furious with his disgraceful son, Reynard meant to have them all sent to differing corners of the Reach to be fostered with whatever houses would take them, but Jaehaera intervened. After impassioned protests that servants could hear ringing throughout the corridors of Goldengrove for months on end, Reynard finally relented, and allowed the Rowanseeds to take root at Goldengrove, where they would be tutored and raised. But the schism brought on by Baelor's actions never healed, and Reynard and Jaehaera never shared the same bed for as long as they lived.

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.

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, and his two children from his first marriage, Gerold and Maegalle, as well as Ser Thaddeus Oakheart, and one of his 'trueborn' daughters, an infant named Selyse. Devastated by the toll the plague had taken on his family, Baelor sequestered himself in Goldengrove for the better part of a year in mourning. Despite the rift between his two sides of his family, he had loved his siblings and father a great deal, and their loss severely affected him, as well as the survivor's guilt he later found.

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 the death of her husband, 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. Instead, they continued as they had before the plague, and had 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/re-dubbing of all his children as "Rowans", rather than "Oakhearts" or more accurately, "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