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Personality

Sullen and taciturn as Unna is, it's a wonder they want to venture out of the tall cloisters of their academic life at all. And they don't really want to venture anywhere, anyway, much preferring to stay safe and sedentary at home. They can read all the books they want, and write to their heart's content, there. Still, they have a soft spot for the found family that they've made of their friend group, and they'd go to the ends of the earth for those friends.

They'd happily do the same for any new friends they might make on the journey, but making those friends will prove to be the hard part. They are intentionally snippy and antagonistic when they do talk, and they'll do anything they can to cut interactions short. That said, they do have a passion for their life's work, and are happiest in discussion with fellow academics of any kind - though they prefer to communicate in lengthy letters which they can revise at will.

If they're honest with themself - and that's rare - Unna's scared of their future, when they know someday they'll need to "graduate" from being a scholar into being a politician. Part of that is a lingering imposter syndrome. They've been surrounded with brilliant minds from a young age, and it's difficult for them to understand that they really are, well, a genius. Still, they can't think of any other way their life might turn out right now. There aren't many other practical applications for their life's work, and they can't live off their parents' fortune when they're gone. They do ardently desire to make their family proud, and compared to their friend group they share a deeply intimate connection with their siblings and parents. [wc: 291]

History

Unna is a youngest-child, born strong and healthy and very pretty. That much would've made them an ideal candidate for marrying off to form an alliance to the benefit of their wealthy noble family, but even so the idea was quickly left behind when they realized that this was the opposite of what Unna wanted from life. While they'd always attracted positive attention within their social groups, Unna preferred to hide at the heels of their siblings instead. The one thing that could pull them away was study. Their voracious mind and astute analyses of treatises and decrees from a precocious age made further schooling the clear answer.

Unna left home with reluctance: they'd never found it easy to connect with people outside of their family. Still, they've always felt they had a duty to contribute to the glories of their family name, and school should theoretically have been no hardship for them. Tutors had always praised their wits, after all, and it would prepare them, theoretically, for a career at court.

Unfortunately, school was tough for them. Academically there was no real problem, but where they'd once been a studious pre-adolescent, they became a depressed teenager who easily isolated themself from the world around them. They threw themself into their work, making many sleepless nights for themself, worrying constantly that they'd disappoint their family by being anything less than a genius. They found it difficult to reach out to anyone and couldn't bear to ask for help.

They'd like to say they found their own way out of that mire. Instead, it's their friends who found them. Due to their precociousness, their fellows were usually a few years older than them - daunting, to the mind of a teenager. But their eventual friends had never cared a whit. They all shared a deep passion for their own courses of study, and Unna's interest in the whys and hows of political maneuvers led them to deep academic discussions with their peers. Those peers had a persistent curiosity in common: helpful for their budding academic careers, but quite annoying for a young bovine who'd never trusted easily. Their lengthy academic discussions turned them into constant companions in the library, and their consultations on each others' missives led to support for each other in other aspects, too. Unna can't really believe that they've managed to make friends now with such radiant people. What can gloomy, quiet Unna give them?

Really, it was probably Ioriel Bahyrst's discovery of his powers as a mage that cemented their friendship. It's one of the few situations where Unna has ever truly felt useful in a practical sense. That brief assurance of their competence has them longing for a repeat, and that more than anything has motivated them to accompany Ioriel and a few of their other best friends on a journey to learn more before something truly awful can happen. Learning is what they do best...right? [wc: 489]