Absalom Hayes

Absalom, is a pretty wild collection of contradictions: The stern, competent captain, the calm and collected stoic, nearly expressionless and honestly almost creepy - but also such a genuinely, deeply nice person, gentle, patient and kind and full of love for everybody and everything, who may not be showing much emotion, but has ALL THE FEELS, ALWAYS, who’d stop the world to help an injured animal or try to save a damaged plant, whose dream would be settling down with the man he loves and living in a tiny cottage with a huge overgrown garden full of wild roses, who would give his life to save his crew from danger, but who is also dangerously intelligent, the farthest thing from naive and perfectly capable of being incredibly ruthless and calculating, yet chooses not to be, who looked at history and the world around him and concluded that the universe is a cold, uncaring place full of needless cruelty, and decided that he was having none of that.

Somewhere deep down lurks a surprisingly wry sense of humor - Absalom generally keeps his mouth shut, but he's always there, watching, observing, finding patterns in the actions of his companions, and he's pretty good at expressing those observations in a poignant if somewhat uncomfortably honest manner. 

He's got a bit of a blind spot for romance, though - Absalom dearly and honestly loves a lot of people, but almost never romantically, so he has preciously little experience. It takes him years to figure out that he's in love with Severin, and he still hasn't realized the the feeling is mutual. Then again, to his credit Severin was a babbling, heart-eyed mess from the second he first spotted Absalom, so he's never had a chance to observe Severin without a terrible crush on him. 

Absalom loves reading and knowing things, and is an endless source of trvia. His two favorite topics are history and botany - especially botany; he's also very good at gardening. Unfortunately, both his former and his current occupation involve being as far away from plants as it gets... but as soon as he sets foot on solid ground you can find him fawning over some random roadside weeds.

He is B A D at taking his own safety and well-being into account, which is honestly pretty damn unfortunate, since he physically has to fly the ship and without him they're all Super Stuck

Basically, he's always thinking, planning, calculating, but has a bit of a tendency to miss the obvious.

Absalom is good at his job, but he's most certainly not infallible.

Absalom's lack of visible emotions is often misunderstood, particularly in conjunction with his Evil Cheekbones (TM), "I-am-staring-into-your-soul-and-judging-your-deepest-secrets"-gaze and his unfortunate habit of moving very quietly and appearing unexpectedly in strange places like something out of a horror movie.

Meanwhile, Absalom quietly dreams of the open skies and maybe, sometimes, of settling down in a small cottage by the sea, with a huge overgrown garden, the love of his life by his side, surrounded by flowers and maybe a cat.

Born in a small village by the sea, in the south of Coversano, the country he is from. His dad was a navy officer of halfway decent standing, his mom was a tailor. He also has a younger brother.

When he was 11, his dad died. His mom was a very good tailor, but there's only so much business you get in a village in the middle of nowhere, and his mother steadfastily refused to give up her house and move to the city.

Money grew tight, and when Absalom was 14, he left and joined the navy as a midshipman (of his own volition and against his mother's wishes, though she didn't protest as much as she could have) to reduce the financial strain on his mother and brother, giving up his dreams of being a teacher along the way.

His first captain was competent and fair, and recognized Absalom's many strengths very quickly - along with the unfortunate weaknesses. 

He rose through the ranks at a pretty decent pace, becoming a Lieutenant aged 20 and a Captain at age 27 or so, but was never truly happy in the navy - killing people disgusted him, enemies or not.

When he was 17, his mother suddenly died. He stayed in the navy, not knowing where else to go. A year and a half later, Absalom's brother ran away, sick of his doting but constantly absent brother and sick of being cooped up in an emty house, and Absalom never heard from him again.

In his early 20's, shortly after passing his Lieutenant's Examination, he first met Severin, the later love of his life, at a social function. They became very close friends, and carried on a written correspondence for the next decade-and-a-half, even though this was extremely difficult due to their respective jobs.

At around the same time, Absalom saved the later crown prience (then just a regular prince) Valère from an assassination under great personal risk, but declined any sort of reward or recognition, out of humility and a desire to avoid too much attention.

The princeling was only five years old then, but already as prone to scheming and as clever as he would always be - he had an uncanny ability to find Absalom whenever he was in town and rope him in as an unoffocial babysitter. Neither of them knew the Queen was aware of it, but of course she was - she was Valère's mother, after all.

Eventually, when Absalom was 32 years old, the ship he was captaining sank under mysterious circumstances. The admiralty seemed to know more than they let on and absolved him of any and all responsibility for the disaster, but they also hinted that it would be wise for Absalom to leave the navy.

He did, and ended up with the Royal Postal Service instead - the Princeling may have had a hand in it, but nobody will ever be able to confirm or deny that. 

After losing his ship, he also lost contact with Severin, whom he had fallen in love with over the course of their correspondence - Severin had encountered problems of his own, and was temporarily assumed to be dead.

Years later, the Princeling is abducted, and somebody decides it's a good idea to set Absalom on his trail, and that's where the main story starts.