Gwyneth Duxtour

When Beourjens speak of their first ruler and High Commander, they denote the title to Phaedrus Balassar. But there is always an addendum: Phaedrus' story as the first head of the Army is quickly overshadowed by his daughter, Gwyneth Duxtour.

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A New Life

She used to tell me of it late at night, how she was born and raised with our nation. While her father and Minos Tiergarn squabbled just outside of Armistace, her mother strained under the duress of both the sweltering heat and the weight of her unborn child. Gwyneth Balassar was birthed along the Blood Route, and Phaedrus Balassar carved into a tree just north of the site and asked the High Arcanist Marnise to tattoo it with his and his children's blood.

Her mother's identity has been lost to time, though she was presumed to have been one of several lovers her father took.

My father never spoke of her, and so all I have is a ring and surname. No one else spoke of her either. I have asked A[delaide] about it, and her only response was that it was best left unsaid.

Mareven Cintoré

Much of her youth was spent in Mareve. She has told me endless stories of its infancy, her home changing and growing as rapidly as she herself was. Her two half-brothers took care of her in the very beginning while her father attended to his theoretical fourth child - the Mareven Cintoré. Later, she joined her brothers and father throughout the surrounding land as the capital was established.

Gwyneth was naturally skilled with a blade as well as particularly gifted with coin and trade, and Balassar fostered these interests as best he could. She says - claimed, really - that these gifts are in my blood as well. A steady round of tutors, governesses, and blade-masters filled her days throughout her early adolescence. Gwyneth stood by her father's side at Councils, went on hunts near weekly, and traveled along the Obsidian border to collect taxes with her eldest brother.

By the time she was sixteen, she had asserted her desire to follow in her father's steps as Commander more than once. Balassar offered her a position on Mareve's Curias Guard on the stipulation that she would marry. His reasoning, she once explained to me, was so that she would have someone to watch over her household if she was ever to leave on campaign with the army.

We met at the Curias. Some council having to do with the Beourjen and Sovrik Army relations, we were both very young and the council itself was unmemorable. In the evening we were reacquainted at a tavern in Mareve's market district. Er. . . frankly, I don't remember much of my stay there either, though I would not necessarily call that part of my journey unmemorable. And after that - after only having met four days prior, and knowing little more about one another than our physical inclinations, she asked if I would marry her.

- Esca Sharriven

Balassar didn't approve of her eloping with father, but conceded to let her serve in the army anyway.

Before the Fall

The following fifteen years were, from what she's told me, unremarkable but steady. Gwyneth worked her way up the ranks, and served as her brother's proxy on the new Council.

Her father was forbidden from serving on the Council, so he put his sons on it instead and used them as siphons for his political ideas. It was rather clever, albeit rather callous as well. And Gwyn was aware of the manipulation. She went along with it, growing more and more discomfited as the years went on. When I left for Mareve much later, she kissed me farewell and then warned me of it. He might be gone, she said, but they grew under his wing as much as I did.

- Osaren Kaseirv

Fall of the Imperium

My mother often said that her life did not truly begin until the Fall of the Imperium. It is a dark irony, that so many lives ended during this time and yet only through this tragedy did she begin to gain her freedom. But it was following the initial desecration of Cravv that she led the bulk of eastern Beourjen's forces to the Cravvik Isles against the Ethanians. She held the title of Lieutenant Commander, under her father. His orders were to secure Cravv, Yrvaega, and Port Jzakaar, perhaps save what Cravvik survivors they could, but mostly to focus on taking out both the Ethanians and Vladicans.

When we met, I was stranded with a group of other survivors in the caves on Yrvaega's southern coast. I had only recently come into Vojek's association as well, hadn't looked twice at a ratty outcoast mariner. I did look twice at Gwyn when she arrived - golden hair in waves over shimmering silksteel armor. She had her army with her. And she made Vojek laugh. She cut off his rotting leg, and asked about his murdered pedeír, and then she made him laugh.

- Osaren Kaseirv

Sar and I had both lost. All Cravviks had. But Sar had lost her husband, and I - I had lost too. Gwyneth painted this idea of a new life back in Beourjen. Each day, for months, she sailed around the Isles, fighting the Ethanians, making deals with the Vladican warhead, and at night she'd return and tell us stories. She was thirty-one, thirty-two? The same age as Beourjen.

- Vojek

She said it was choosing the lesser of two evils, negotiating with the Vladican warhead. They wanted the Ethanians to pay for what they'd done in the most animalistic way possible, and Gwyneth agreed to it because she knew she could not fight two empires at once. Eventually, her father made plans to come to the Isles himself.

Life

1262 1332 70 years old

Title/Profession

High Commander of the Beourjen Army

Lady of House Duxtour

Even when we first met, there was a tautness to her relationship with her father. They were very close - Phaedrus saw each of his children as prospects for furthering his lineage and influence, and his care for them reflected that - but she had this constant notion that she wouldn't live up to her own ambition. To her father's ambition.

- Esca Sharriven

by Elias van Nijmegen

We were separated for most of this time. I kept serving in Sophre, and she in Mareve. We visited every so often, and it was always exciting. Perhaps moreso due to the time we'd been apart. I find our love is made more potent through the intermittent separation, and more easily shared with the others later.

- Esca Sharriven

The Cravvik Isles

Gwyneth spent several years in the throes of King Minos' invasion, slowly weaving her way across the turbulence of the Isles and picking through the pieces Minos left in his wake. She met with the Vladican warhead in an effort to ally against the Ethanians, and reallocated the Army's funds to support the rescue of Cravvik survivors. Her father sent multiple missives detailing the possible repercussions of her actions; Gwyneth did not respond to him.

Even before I arrived at the Isles with the Sovrik Army, Gwyn was asking questions in her letters. What was Sophre's political atmosphere like right now? Did they support Balassar? If he were to be deposed, what would they do? Her urgency grew worse upon my arrival.

- Esca Sharriven

If things had gone differently. . . if Armistace forces had arrived before Balassar had. . . I don't know, I truly don't.

- Hyanna Bahrajyv

Phaedrus Balassar's Assassination

How did she put it? We were not entirely faultless for the viability of the Imperium's fall. We - and by this I knew she meant her father - helped King Minos. And then we turned all blame on him so the world would cut him down.

I wed both her and Vojek in the Imperium tradition shortly before Balassar was due to arrive. And then I left with my children and Gwyn's personal guard for Mareve. I was to kill Balassar's wife, it was very simple. Then assert my influence as a Lady of Gwyneth's House on the new Council. That part was not so simple.

- Osaren Kaseirv

We held a dinner for Balassar's arrival. The entire plan was Gwyn's, I still felt as though suddenly swept into something terrible. She spoke so sincerely to him, apologizing in such demure manner all through dinner. At the very end Esca and I held him down while she slit his throat. We don't tell it as such to the children though.

- Vojek

She poisoned him throughout the dinner. Bid him good night, and when she went to check on him later in the evening he appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

by mirescosmo

Armistace

It was relayed to me that Beourjen's Commander had been assassinated shortly before I got at the Isles, but it wasn't - was just another tick on the list of anarchy I was walking into.

— Hyanna Bahrajyv

Beourjen was on its way to a griping victory when Armistace forces arrived to diffuse the situation. They took Ethanians, Beourjens, Vladicans, and Cravvik alike all into custody to be tried at Armistace. My mother, along with father and pa, went willingly.

Gwyneth - and most Beourjens tried in Armistace - was found nearly free of all guilt, though Gwyneth had to stay much longer to stand as witness to the rest of the negotiations. Eventually she was granted leave to return to Beourjen due to her becoming pregnant. The trials were put on hold for several months as well, due to the strain taken hold over western Vladica.

At the time, I had never been to Beourjen in all my travels. But I found it to be a fledgling of a great nation. Even the infrastructure was half-built, uncertain, like a clever child's first iteration. Everything had been put on hold for the draft to aid with the Imperium's fall. Most of the laborers had gone to fight against Minos, and a little more than half had returned.

— Hyanna Bahrajyv

She knew what she was returning to in some ways, and yet in others she did not. The Inner Council had begun to rearrange itself, trisected and denoted as the Triadic Councils. Her brothers were still there, but there were many new, younger faces on it as well.

And my ma had done her job all too well. Lady Balassar had fallen to a strange illness, her daughter disappeared. Osaren had weaseled her way onto the Triadic herself, and begun spreading her ideas on how to repair the economy and army. When Gwyneth returned, the pieces were already settling into place.

Return to Mareve

He was born on 24 Ostlaet, 1300. It is a small gift of the gods that we were all present for it.

- Vojek

The Triadic was divided on whether Gwyneth ought to be revered for the assassination of Balassar, or executed for it. But Osaren had something of a silver tongue, appeased them with a finely spun tale of how Gwyneth had stolen the Isles from Minos' hand. And Gwyneth was charismatic enough to follow such grandeur with promises to finish building the great empire that Balassar had put in all their minds. However wary the Triadic might've felt about my mother's position as High Commander, the people loved her.

Through Osaren's voice on the Triadic, Gwyneth was able to carry forth a rapid succession of appeals and reforms to help resuscitate Beourjen's depleted coffers as well as accommodate the sudden influx of Cravvik refugees into the eastern provinces. Many of the old Aveaan-influenced codification was updated with more modernized values, and new infrastructure was established in education and labor economy.

What Calyxus likely won't mention but should be noted is that these 'labor economy' reforms included mass amounts of indentured workers, thus securing Beourjen's caste system. Gwyneth, though a remarkable woman, was still an aristocrat and her politics are informed by that privilege.

- Hyanna Bahrajyv

A Farewell

My mother spent the latter half of her life ruling over eastern Beourjen, albeit unofficially.  Even after Hyanna was called back to Armistace, and Esca left to fight for Sophre in the Northwestern Trade, she and Osaren continued to build up what her father had begun. Esca later returned with Hyanna's child - my sister. She was an arcanist, not entirely welcome in eastern Beourjen, and so ultimately he chose to raise her alone in Sophre. Hyanna never returned herself.

Later on, Gwyneth's brothers' spite over her family and money would come back to haunt her, slowly tearing at her resolve. It would culminate in an Inheritance Trial. . . concerning me specifically.

by mirescosmo

Calyxus. Best we not end on too grim a note, eh?

— Esca Sharriven

Oh. I mean - all right then.