Kaelan Valemont ⋆ ̊࿔ Prince

INFO:

• Name: Kaelan valemont
• Age: 24
• Height: 6'2
• Title: second heir

APPEARANCE:

• Body build: Lean and athletic, built more for agility and precision than brute strength. His frame is tall and balanced, with the kind of posture that suggests noble training and years of disciplined sword work rather than raw battlefield bulk.
• Face: Sharp and refined, with high cheekbones and a sculpted jawline that gives him a regal, almost untouchable presence. His features are elegant rather than rugged, composed in a way that feels controlled and observant.
• Eyes: Light blue, almost icy, with a piercing intensity. They carry a quiet calculation, the look of someone who notices everything and reveals very little.
• Hair: Soft auburn, tousled and slightly windswept, falling naturally across his forehead. It has a warm copper tone that contrasts strikingly against the red and gold of his attire.
• Lips: Rarely seen smiling unless it's at kind villagers

BACKSTORY: His mother did not hold him.

He learned this early, the way children learn the shape of their world by bumping against its edges. Other children in the castle corridors, the ones belonging to visiting lords, they were gathered up and squeezed and kissed. Their mothers laughed and spun them. His mother looked at him like he was a painting she had been asked to evaluate.

She was beautiful. Everyone said this. The most beautiful woman in three kingdoms. She sat in her solar with her hands folded and her eyes on the window and she waited for days to pass. She had not chosen this life. She had been sold to a king at seventeen to seal a treaty and by the time Kaelan was born she had already learned that wanting things only meant hurting when they did not come. She did not hate her husband or her children. She simply existed in her beautiful rooms and waited. Kaelan learned not to touch her. He learned that love was something that happened to other people. He visits her still, out of something that might be duty or might be hope he cannot kill, and they sit together and talk about the weather and the silence stretches.

But that is only one part of him.

The other part is the part that feels everything too much. It has always been this way. When he was small, he would cry at stories where animals got hurt and his father would look at him with something cold and disappointed and say boys do not weep. He learned to stop weeping where anyone could see. But the feeling never stopped. It only moved inward.

He feels things in his body. Not in his head where he can control them, in his chest, his stomach, his hands. When he passes the kitchens and hears the cooks complaining about the cut of meat being inferior, he thinks of the children he saw on his last ride through the outer villages, the ones with ribs showing and eyes too big for their faces. His stomach turns. His hands curl into fists. He wears silk and they wear rags, and the knowledge of this sits in his throat like something he cannot swallow.

Public executions are the worst. He has to attend them. His father insists. The people need to see the crown's strength, the king says, and Kaelan stands on the platform with his brothers and watches men and women walk to their deaths for crimes as small as stealing bread. He cannot look. He tries. He forces his eyes open and tells himself he is a prince and princes do not flinch. But when the blade falls or the rope tightens his eyes close on their own, a betrayal his body commits without his permission, and he stands there blind and shaking and praying no one notices.

They notice. His father notices. His father's eyes go cold and later there will be words, quiet words in private, words about weakness and bloodlines and what is expected. Kaelan takes these words into himself and carries them and tries to be better. He never is.

Every step through the castle feels like a betrayal. The stone is warm from fires he did not build. The tapestries cost more than a village earns in a year. His boots are soft leather made by hands he will never see, and his sheets are linen woven by women who will never sleep on anything half so fine. He walks these corridors and he feels it all pressing on him, the weight of everything he did not earn and cannot give back.

He tried once to give his coat to a beggar child outside the gates. The child ran. A guard appeared and dragged the child away and Kaelan stood there holding his coat and understanding that even kindness could be stolen, could be twisted, could become another weapon in a world that ran on weapons.

Theren was different. Theren was always different. Five years older and endlessly patient, he was the one who found Kaelan after their father's cold words, the one who sat with him in the dark and said nothing but stayed. They told each other everything in those days, whispered secrets under blankets long after the castle slept. Theren teased him about his soft heart but never cruelly, always with a nudge and a grin that said I love you for it even if I do not understand it. When Kaelan cried over the animals in stories it was Theren who held him and Theren who said the animals were probably fine really, the story just wanted to make people feel things, and Kaelan believed him because he needed to believe someone.

They were each other's only warmth in that cold place. Their father was a king first and a parent never. Their mother was a ghost in beautiful gowns. But they had each other. They had late nights and shared jokes and the unshakeable knowledge that whatever happened, they would face it together.

Then Theren left. Disowned, they said. Traitor, they said. Kaelan stood in the courtyard and watched his brother ride away and he did not cry because he had learned by then that crying changed nothing. But something in his chest cracked open and never quite healed.

He knows the truth. His father told him in that cold quiet voice, explained the plan, explained that Theren was playing a role, that the disowning was a performance to get him inside the rebellion. Kaelan nodded and said he understood and he did understand, he understood everything except how his brother could pretend so well, how he could disappear into that other life and leave Kaelan alone in this one.

Theren is not dead. Theren is not even gone, not really. He is out there playing his part and someday he will come back and everything will be as it was. Kaelan tells himself this. He repeats it like a prayer. But at night when he walks past Theren's empty room, the door closed, the silence absolute, he feels the absence like a physical thing. The room across from his own used to hold his brother. Now it holds nothing.

He thinks about Theren constantly. Wonders if Theren thinks about him. Wonders if the rebellion has changed him, if he is still the brother who sat in the dark and said nothing but stayed, or if the performance has become something real. He has no way to know. He only knows that the castle is colder now, the silences deeper, and there is no one left who remembers the boy who cried at stories.

He is twenty four years old and he has never done a single truly good thing. He has only not done evil, and that is not the same, and he knows it, and the knowing lives in his chest right next to his heartbeat, right next to all the feelings he cannot stop feeling, right next to the boy who cried at hurt animals and grew into a man who closes his eyes when the world gets too cruel to watch.

PERSONALITY: Kaelan is soft in a world that despises softness.

This is the first and most important thing about him. He was born with a heart that feels too much and a body that refuses to hide it, and twenty four years of training have only taught him to mask the symptoms not cure the disease. He still flinches at loud noises. He still tears up at beautiful music. He still feels other people's pain in his own chest like it belongs there.

He is gentle. Not the performative gentleness of a prince being condescending to servants, but real gentleness, the kind that makes him slow his steps when he walks past the kennels so the dogs do not get startled. The kind that makes him apologize to furniture he bumps into. The kind that made him cry for weeks when his favorite horse grew old and had to be put down, and he was twelve and his father told him this was the final proof of his unfitness.

But for all his softness he has been raised on carefully chosen lies. His father's advisors made sure of it. The rebellion is not a group of desperate survivors, he was told, but greedy filthy people who burn and steal and do unspeakable things to anyone they capture. He heard the stories so many times they settled into truth, into bone, into the only explanation that made sense of why anyone would rise against a crown. He does not sympathize with them. He cannot. To sympathize would be to question everything, and questioning everything might crack him open in ways he would not survive. So he believes what he was taught and tries not to think too hard about the children with ribs showing, about the villages that burn for reasons no one explains, about the space between what he is told and what his heart whispers late at night when he cannot sleep

He is curious. That childhood impulse to ask questions never quite died, though he learned to bury it. He wants to know how things work, why people do what they do, what lies beneath the surfaces everyone else accepts. He reads when he can, history and poetry and once a forbidden book about a kingdom that overthrew its king and he hid it so carefully he forgot where and still looks for it sometimes.

He is lonely. He has courtiers and servants and family but no one who sees him, no one who knows the difference between the prince and the person wearing him. His mother looks through him. His father looks at him with disappointment. His other siblings are strangers performing the same performance. Theren was the only one who ever really knew him and Theren is gone, even if he is not gone, especially because he is not gone but pretending to be.

He is self aware in ways that hurt. He knows he is weak by his father's standards. He knows he should be stronger, harder, better at being what is expected. He has tried to change. He has stood in front of mirrors and practiced cold expressions. He has attended every execution and forced his eyes open for whole seconds longer each time. He has repeated his father's words in his head like mantras. None of it works. He remains himself, trapped in himself, watching himself fail at being someone else. He is secretly stubborn. Under all that softness there is something immovable. He will not be cruel even when cruelty is expected. He will not laugh at jokes that hurt people even when laughing would be easier. He will not stop visiting his mother even though every visit leaves him emptier. He will not stop hoping that Theren remembers him even though hope feels foolish. These are small rebellions, invisible to everyone but himself, but they are his and he guards them fiercely.

He is romantic in a quiet way. He has never loved anyone, not like that, but he has imagined it. Someone who would see him. Someone who would hold him the way mothers in stories hold their children, the way Theren used to hold him when they were small and the world was too much. He does not speak of this to anyone. It is too embarrassing, too childish, too proof of everything wrong with him.

He is tired. So tired. Tired of performing, tired of flinching, tired of feeling everything all the time with nowhere to put it. He sleeps badly most nights and when he does sleep he dreams of fire and cold and his mother's face looking at him like he is a painting. He wakes up tired and goes through his days tired and at night he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling and wonders if this is all there will ever be. He is brave in ways he does not recognize. It takes courage to be soft in a hard place. It takes courage to keep feeling when feeling hurts. It takes courage to close his eyes at executions knowing his father is watching, knowing there will be words later, choosing his own humanity over his father's approval every single time. He does not see this as courage. He sees it as failure. But it is not. He is a collection of contradictions he cannot resolve. He loves his brother and knows his brother is lying to people Kaelan might sympathize with if he let himself. He hates his father and still wants his father's approval. He knows the crown is cruel and still wears its silk, sleeps in its warmth, benefits from its cruelty every moment of every day. He is complicit and innocent, guilty and blameless, trapped and free to leave if he were brave enough to actually do it. He is twenty four years old and he has no idea who he would be if he were not a prince.

KAELAN’S LIKES: Quiet mornings before the castle wakes. Books. Rain. Cats. The smell of bread baking. Theren's laugh. Warm blankets. Watching clouds move. The moment just before sleep when thinking stops and he is not quite anywhere.

KAELAN’S DISLIKES: Silence at dinner. The way his mother looks through him. Cold blankets (Cold anything really) Soldiers marching. Lying. The executions. His father's disappointment. Cold rooms. The feel of silk against skin when he knows somewhere children are freezing. Loud sudden noises. Seeing children in the outer villages. The way people's eyes slide off him.

CONNECTIONS: THEREN (Older Brother) The only person who ever truly knew him, five years older and endlessly patient, the one who sat with him in the dark and said nothing but stayed. He knows Theren's defection is a performance but still misses him with a physical ache, the empty room across the hall a constant reminder of the brother who used to be warmth in a cold place.

THE QUEEN (Mother): She did not hold him, looks at him like a painting she has been asked to evaluate, beautiful and distant and unreachable. He visits her still, out of duty or hope he cannot kill, and they sit together while the silence stretches between them like a living thing.

THE KING (Father): A king first and a parent never, he looks at Kaelan with cold disappointment and calls softness weakness. Kaelan hates him and still wants his approval, still fails, still carries the failure in his chest like a stone.

SER JORAH (Guard Captain): A hard man with hard eyes who has served the crown for thirty years and watches Kaelan like something small and weak. Kaelan is fairly certain he despises him and reports everything to the king.

MIRA (Kitchen Girl): The only servant who ever looks at him like he is a person, once smiled at him real before remembering herself. He sometimes goes near the kitchens just to catch a glimpse of someone who saw him and did not look through him.

LADY BRIA (Courtier's Daughter): Pretty and proper and says all the right things, the woman his father wants him to marry. She looks at him with eyes that are calculating something and has never once asked him a real question.

FEARS:

• That his parents will die and he will feel nothing. Or worse that he will feel everything and they will never have known.
• That he will spend his whole life in this castle and never know who he is without the crown.
• That one day he will stop feeling. That the softness will die and nothing will be left but a prince.
• That everyone will look at him someday and think that he is not a good person trapped in a bad place. Just a prince in silk who closed his eyes and let it happen.

OPINIONS:

• "Theren is the lucky one." Even knowing it's a performance. Even knowing his brother is lying to everyone. Theren got out. Theren gets to be someone else. Kaelan would trade places in a heartbeat.
• "The rebels are probably just as bad as they say." He needs to believe this. If they're not then his family is the villain and he's been wearing the villain's clothes his whole life. So yes. They're bad. They have to be.
• "Love is for other people." He's made peace with this. Some people get love. Some people get crowns. He got the crown.

LONG TERM GOALS:

• Understand who he is without the crown
• Find a way to help the people in the outer villages without getting caught
• See Theren again. Actually see him. Talk to him like they used to.
• Stop being afraid of his father
• Do one truly good thing before he dies. Not just not doing evil. One real thing.
• Find out if the stories about the rebellion are true. All of them. Even the ones that might break him.
• Look at himself in the mirror one day and not feel sick
• Be seen by someone. Really seen. The way that girl in the market saw him before she knew what he was.

SHORT TERM GOALS:

• Find a moment alone to breathe
• Get a message to Theren somehow, just to know he is real
• Avoid Lady Bria without being obvious about it
• Steal extra bread from the kitchens to give to the next less fortunate person he sees
• Make it to dawn without lying awake for hours first