Profile
Val - technically Valère, Prince of the Southern Realms, is the Queen of Coversano's second and youngest child and heir to the throne after his older sister died when he was 15 years old.
Despite a political education that's pretty poor by royal standards, he'll make a fine ruler one day: He's smart and level-headed and fair and really good at strategizing and risk management.
Personally, though, he's honestly a bit of a brat; impulsive, inconsiderate and an insufferable know-it-all. He... (sigh) he tries, he's just not very practiced at the whole "interacting with regular human beings" thing.
He enjoys sneaking out and causing trouble in the city incognito - he also managed to pick up a boyfriend along the way (who can be just as insufferable as Valère).
- Mischief
- Archery
- Elaborate plans
- Sunsets
- Responsibilities
- Violence
- People hurting his loved ones
Quick note: His uniform design is outdated (or rather his backstory is terribly outdated) - nowadays, the red stripes are missing from his collar; it's just all solid grey.
Not very tall, of average build, somewhat athletic. Skin usually somewhat tan. Dark brown, curly, long-ish hair and equally dark brown eyes, large and expressive and with long, dense eyelashes. Sharp, dense eyebrows.
Great posture, always upright and self-assured with the body language to match. Surprisingly graceful.
Usually wears the uniform of the Coversanian postal service during the story; otherwise vaguely early-19th-century court clothes.
Bratty, demanding and impatient in day-to-day life, though he's fully able to hunker down and get his actual job done in a surprisingly wise and benevolent way. He's gracious and kind to his subjects and has endless patience with political dignitaries... but once he's doing stuff on his own time? Whooo boy. He does generally mean well, though, he's just been going through some stuff over the last ten years of his life.
Notably, the young prince is also snarky as hell and a terrible wise-ass; quick-witted in the most annoying way possible; he also enjoys manipulating people for the fun of it, just to see if he understands them well enough to pull it off. It's rarely malicious, but still pretty invasive.
Val is also fiercely protective of the people he loves, and the best was to get yourself into serious trouble with him is by threatening or hurting Absalom or Lionel or any of his family memebers.
Val is the youngest child of the Coversanian royal couple. He was never meant to rule much of anything, but his siblings died off one by one for a variety of reasons (as did his father) until Val became crown prince. He did Not want the position, but didn't have much of a choice. As such, he's still adjusting.
His childhood generally went decently, though not amazingly well - his parents genuinely loved their children and tried their best to be there for them, but he was still mostly raised by nannies and governesses and felt pretty ignored much of the time.
As a young kid, he first met Absalom Hayes when Absalom saved him during an attempted assassination, by shielding the child from falling rubble from a collapsing roof and ending up stuck with the young prince underneath said rubble for several hours. He never forgot the then-Lieutenant's kindness and roped him in as an unofficial nanny whenever he was in town - he had his first awkward teenaged crushes on the man (to Absalom's mortified horror), and Absalom was the only person he willingly told about his grief for his siblings and his princely worries.
As a teen, he first started sneaking down into the city incognito, and eventually met his future boyfriend, Lionel Cerys, in a cafè, who ended up tipping him off when somebody started poisoning the queen - Valère's mom.
Comments