Lord Alexandre-Sebastien de Beaubier

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Gender: Male

Age: 23

Hair: Blond

Eyes: Blue

Distinguishing Marks: Despite numerous battles, countless raids, and innumerable duels, Alexandre-Sébastien is remarkable for being utterly unscarred.

General Appearance: Alexandre-Sébastien is strikingly handsome - and, unfortunately, knows this entirely too well. Tall, golden and confident, with broad shoulders and a lean waist, he is well-muscled and athletic but could never be called brawny or stout. He favors sleekly tailored, impeccably luxurious attire with an undeniably maritime flair. That he is proud of his lineage could not be more evident: there is almost always a lion motif somewhere on his person. His features are refined, his cheekbones high, his jaw angular and defined, a face born of a thousand years of rarefied blood. He wears his hair, which is gold with an undertone of honey, cropped fashionably short. His eyes are his most remarkable feature, crystalline blue and surprisingly cold.


HISTORY

Personality: Alexandre-Sébastien is bold, impulsive, charismatic, and arrogant. Firstborn son of the main-line Beaubiers, heir-presumptive to Mercoeur, and foremost scion of the House of Lions, he was born to power and privilege. All his life he has wanted for nothing and it shows. He enlivens any gathering and can be quite generous with those fortunate enough to be in his favor, and is perhaps surprisingly straightforward and unfond of deceit. It's perhaps also a surprise that he's not particularly easy to rile, though this is because he simply can't be bothered to care about most things a would-be rival might insult. Something along the way - a lifetime of effortless entitlement, perhaps, or perhaps something deeper - has made him jaded and fickle, impatient and quick to boredom. He flits from acquisition to acquisition, pleasure to pleasure, and rarely lingers on the same favorite for long, be it object, hobby or person. Of late, he's been chasing increasingly dangerous thrills. Despite his golden, chosen-son exterior, there is a darkness in Bastien; he is a formidable duelist and, if you believe the rumors, a pirate prince who's committed his share of hair-raising sins over the past two years at sea. There are those who whisper he has acquired quite the taste for conquest and blood out in the blue unknown. Perhaps most unnervingly, his fury is more frost than fire, and his cruelty always hides behind a smile.

Sexual Preferences: Heterosexual; a libertine; eager to indulge; careless of others. Has a surprising dominant streak.

House (Major or Minor House): the House of Beaubier. Epithets: the House of Lions. The House of the Sea. La Maison de Beaubier; la Maison des Lions, la Maison de la Mer.

About the Character:
"Bastien? You couldn't ask for a better friend. When my bitch of a mother turned me out for -- well, it's not important for what -- Bastien put me up in his guest manor for three months. Debauchery every night. Best summer of my life."
- Pierre de Roubaix, Baron of Vitre-sur-Limoune, old friend

"Alexandre-Sébastien? I spit on his name. Bastard swived my wife, swindled me at cards, and sank my shipment to the bottom of the sea. If I ever see him again I'll cut his heart out."
- Richard Marmount, Earl of Dormouth, aggrieved party

"Alexandre-Sébastien! Prepare to die -- gkk!"
- Gérard du Mont, Viscount of Gironde, deceased

A true son of the House of Lions, Alexandre-Sébastien -- Bastien to his friends -- learned to read, write, ride and duel practically from the time he could walk. He is well-spoken, urbane, magnificently charming and effortlessly scathing by turns, and above all utterly irresponsible. Having spent the first two decades and change of his life chiefly in wild pursuit of his own pleasure, he has traveled the known world, become embroiled in any number of scandals, broken any number of hearts, made any number of enemies, and dueled any number of angry husbands. His bloody record of duels began early. At fourteen, he challenged a vassal of his mother's for behaving dishonorably toward his sister. The outcome was nasty, short and brutish: a carving knife, a slashed throat, and a thoroughly ruined banquet. Bastien was summarily packed off to Blackmoor to foster with Otto von Roehm. It's unclear if the intended effect was achieved. Bastien returned a fiercer duelist than ever, but without much of the discipline his mother had hoped Otto would instill.

Other than the stint in Blackmoor, Bastien's life has been what one would expect from a Beaubier: spent within sight of the sea, whether on the rimed shore or on the swaying deck of a ship. However, some two years ago he took to the seas and hasn't been back since. It's an extended sojourn even for the Seaborne House. No one knows what triggered his departure, nor what he's been up to. Most assume he's been sailing with the privateers that lurk in the shadows of his House, doing heaven knows what, where, and to whom. His ship is the Bleu Exquis, a lean, maneuverable cutter as swift, beautiful and vicious as her master. Whatever scrapes and tangles she's been involved in, she has left no survivors to tell the tale.

Thus, despite being the Grand Duchess's only son and heir-apparent, Bastien has thus far managed to avoid all responsibility. When his father the Duke consort was lost at sea a year ago, it was widely believed his grieving mother might simply abdicate the seat to him. However, Bastien shockingly failed to even return home to honor his father's memory, let alone take up the Grand Duchy. Since then the relationship between Delphine Beaubier and her son has been strained. The Grand Duchess has not only continued to reign, but has also refused to make any definitive statements on succession. There are rumors that his mother has threatened to disinherit him in favor of a worthier candidate, and that privately, he has been warned that one more stumble would cost him his future Grand Duchy. Now that he has been unwillingly brought to heel by royal decree, it is not inconceivable that Delphine may consider this a sort of final examination. Leaving Rosemont emptyhanded and wifeless just might, in his mother's eyes, constitute the proverbial last straw that breaks his inheritance.

If Bastien had any attachments in life, it would be his sister, Lady Camille de Beaubier, and his cousin, Lady Estelle de Beaubier. They don't look much alike -- he golden as sunlight, the girls bewitchingly dark -- but they share an easy physicality, a joie de vivre, a wildness of spirit, a fondness of the open sea.


About the Grand Duchy of Mercoeur:
Mercoeur is a narrow, long seaside duchy hugging the northwestern shore of Breiton, including a sprawling, rocky archipelago just off the coast. Conquered hundreds of years ago by oceanfaring barbarians from the far north, it has since been in the control of the House of Valðír, so named for the ancestral hold from whence they hailed. Soon after settling the area and adopting its customs, the Valðírs Mercoeurienized their name to Beaubier, by which the Great House is widely known today.

In the north mainland of the grand duchy, the terrain is craggy and wild. Storms, wreckages and lighthouses abound. In the west lie sandier, warmer shores, and it is here that the Beaubiers have one of their two seats of power - Bellefalaise, built just fifty years ago, a large, sunny, sprawling palace, opulent to the point of gaudiness. The second, ancestral seat, Sjóspíra, is an ancient fortress in the archipelago built when the Beaubiers were still the Valðírs: a forbidding, impenetrable grey stone structure that was as much carved out of the stone upon which it sits as it was built atop. Located on a large island and surrounded by razor-sharp rocks that tear apart any who don't know the waters, it is incredibly dangerous to approach, and tradition holds a Beaubier heir must make the approach alone and unaided by map or compass before he is considered worthy of the ducal coronet. More than one second son has unexpectedly risen to inheritance as a result. Due to its geography, the island fortress is incredibly difficult to assault and has never been successfully taken. It is also small, cramped, uncomfortable, cold and clammy, and the irregular, harshly vertical terrain on which it sits means it is asymmetric and ungainly, full of twists, turns, stairs and oddly placed bridges; unpleasing to the eye. In times of peace the Beaubiers proudly lounge about their shoreside palace; in times of war, they aren't too proud to batten down the hatches in their island fortress. Sjóspíra was constructed as the first formidable spearpoint of the Valðírian conquest; should the House of Beaubier ever fall, it will surely be on Sjóspíra that they make their last stand.

There isn't much arable land in Mercoeur. The plainsfolk are mostly sailors and fishermen, traders and sea-merchants. In olden times they raided their neighbors viciously, but a century or so ago, Grand Duke Guillaume the Navigator reformed the realm and its laws, setting the course from raiding to tradecraft. His daughter, Kateline la Glorieuse - better known to her enemies as la Chevalière for a certain vicious and dogged rumor - expanded Mercoeur's mercantile empire to the farthest reaches of the world. Mercoeur's chief exports are sea-based luxuries -- pearls, whale blubber, delicacies -- but its true wealth and influence comes from the fact that a staggering portion of Breitonian overseas trade is carried in the holds of Mercoeurien ships. The Beaubiers' complex network of maritime trade routes spans most the known world, and it has made them rapidly, astronomically rich. Resultantly, the other Great Houses see them as the nouveau riche, loud and unrefined, little better than jumped-up marauders and merchants, and they are perhaps justified in thinking so. Despite the Beaubiers' newfound wealth and status, seafaring and warmaking still runs in their salty blood. When the Crown calls, every able-bodied man is expected on deck. In honor of their roots, it remains something of a tradition for Beaubier youths to sail the seven seas for a few years, exploring the unknown and embracing their wildest natures. More civilized Houses think la Traversée a barbaric tradition, and they're not wrong.

The Caromont range abuts the eastern border of Mercoeur. To the south lies the deHavilands. Mercoeur is pretty geographically isolated from the Liddels and the von Roehms, though the Mercoeuriens can reach their neighbors by sea or by navigating the rivers. Despite the distance, the Beaubiers visit their allies the von Roehms with some regularity, and Blackmoorish ales have become quite popular in Mercoeurien taverns.


OPINIONS

Beaubier: We're filthy rich, we're wicked fun, we're unspeakably gorgeous, and we'll sink you to the bottom of the sea if you get in our way. If you hate us, you know it's only because you want to be us.
Camilla: My wild, adventurous little sister. We might not look much alike, but I assure you, we are cut from the same glorious cloth. If you fuck with her, either she'll split you open neck to navel or I will. Doesn't matter much to me who does it.
Stella: Stella, Stellamaris. We saw her so often when we were children she may as well be a second sister to me. Sweeter than Camilla and I, though, which likely means she's softer. I should probably watch out for her while we're here.

DeHaviland: Take the concept of insufferable, dress it up to the nines, and give it a forked silver tongue. Voilà, you've got a DeHaviland.
Allana: Well... perhaps not every DeHaviland is insufferable.
Anyalis: Pretty. Prissy. In short, a DeHaviland.
Hawthorn: If that boy winds himself any tighter, he's going to implode.
Tilliana: Imagine being that plain with cousins that beautiful.

Genkei: That's a pretty long way to go for a bride. Are there no women in Chikara, or just no women who want a piece of Lord Kimura?

Hallgood: Who? What? Why should I care?

Liddel: They keep to their path and we keep to ours. I don't know much more than that.
Alister: Ah yes, the luckiest bastard in Breiton. All it took was a few accidents and - would you look at that - suddenly a nameless bastard is the heir to a Grand Duchy. A man makes his own luck. Do I need to spell it out clearer?
Charlotte: Does she come with an interpreter, or am I just supposed to guess?

Von Roehm: Honest, straightforward, fearless. The men are warriors and the women might be witches. What's not to like?
Bertrun: She gave me a bouquet of poison flowers and psychedelic mushrooms. I think that means we're friends.
Élise: Like ships in the night. Or something.
Godwin: I didn't realize they made von Roehms in miniature.
Markus: Good man. Solid. I like him.

Wyndham: Windbags, you mean. Not quite as bad as their bosom buddies the deHavilands, but it's close. I'm not sure why they don't just intermarry into a single unbearable house, but I thank the Maker that they haven't.
Alessandra: Don't know her.
Alessandro: Don't know him.
William: Rather wish I didn't know him. Is he addled from the traveling, or was he half-witted to begin with?

King Stephan: Why. Just why.

Cardinal Goode: More insufferable than a deHaviland. That's saying a lot.

...just for flavor. Ask before IC use.