Utaku Calus
Calus is the one male-born child of Utaku Naomi and Kakita Kiyoshi. Unable to be a battlemaiden, he grew up in the tradition of stablemaster. His connection with animals is stronger than his sisters', although he is forbidden from riding a horse into battle. He was gifted Hida-chan, a riding bear that his mother was gifted during her courtships from one of the Hida family and named for the man who gifted him to her.
Like an Utaku Warhorse, Crab Riding Bears are paragons of their species, prepared to carry heavy armor and thick, stocky crabs into battle, and long lived, besides. For Hida-chan, the small Utaku boy was light as a feather. They went on adventures across the Empire together, and Calus wasn't particularly interested in the arts of war like his sisters.
On one of these travels, Calus ended up meeting Matsu Kentaro. The Lion was charming and flirtatious, and Calus had never been openly flirted with before. He fell quick and fell hard. He sung to Hida-chan of love and romance and marriage and destiny, and he kept every letter Kentaro wrote him over the next year in a small carved wooden box made of a fallen treebranch that he treasured immeasurably.
When Kentaro became Daimyo of the Matsu Family and formally asked for his hand in marriage, his mother was appalled at the very notion. He had to beg her to give him permission, and even then, her face looked immeasurably irritated when she said yes after a steep negotiation for compensation for the Unicorn's loss. He was so happy, and his marriage was a small, intimate affair with mostly close family invited, neither Lion nor Utaku much for bucking tradition and neither overly excited by same-sex unions.
His first few years married were like heaven. Kentaro was even chosen to become the new Shogun, taking up the position when his mother retired for the new Emperor Toturi V, Toturi Taro.
Then that first child showed up on his doorstep. A young, tired woman saying she could not take care of a child, saying it belonged to the Shogun. Calus took her in, and named her Tora, for a tiger. He forgave Kentaro his indiscretion after a long talk--it was a momentary weakness, he was told.
The second child showed up without a mother at all, two years later. He was 3 years old, and told Calus his mommy had said that his daddy lived here and he would be taken care of. Calus could see his husband's features in the child, and he extended his hands and took the child in. Arakan was his name, he told Calus, and so Calus said he was his new dad, and introduced him to his younger sister. This time, Calus' letter to his husband was cold and angry, but Kentaro apologized with poetry and gifts and promises, and Calus believed him, again.
The third child happened not six months later, and came with blackmail. She wouldn't be the last woman who thought she could get money out of him. A young crane peasant who had worked at the palace sent a letter to Calus threatening to reveal her affair with a threat that her child looked just like the Shogun. Calus asked to see the child. The girl was about 4 years old, and it was no question whose daughter she was. She had his eyes. Calus took her mother into a back room and made a counteroffer--she would leave the child with him and she would disappear, or he would remove her from this celestial coil. The woman was frightened, but unwilling to give up her child. Calus killed her in that room, took on her face with an illusion, and calmly explained to the 4 year old that this was to be her new home, before leaving her behind. While the impact of the abandonment left the child with some trauma for some time, Calus was overly doting and careful with her.
That day, Calus snapped. He had killed a woman in cold blood for being a threat to his family, and that was Kentaro's fault. The storm that brewed that day when he called the Shogun home and told him he did not love him anymore shook the foundations of their household. None of Kentaro's apologies reached him. No excuse healed the rage, but the worst part was that Calus still did love him.
Two more children would come to him. A boy first, without ever meeting his mother, a heinin geisha who had fallen on hard times, become terminally ill, and just hoped for a better life for him. The five year old was hurting, and Calus supported his mother until her death a year later. Calus sent a letter to Kentaro, but had no other communication over the situation.
And Matsu Yuuko was the final child, also five when she was brought up by her mother as a scheme for blackmail. The Kitsu woman was low on the totem pole and was looking for a way to rise in the ranks--she thought Calus the best way to do that. After all, at this point, many people whispered about the infidelity of the Matsu household--nobody was sure, but people whispered. Calus showed up at the home of the Kitsu Daimyo. He went on the offensive, and demanded the daimyo demand her death. She was given the choice to commit seppuku or be stripped of her clan name. She committed seppuku. The child she left behind had been hidden away as a bargaining chip, and Yuuko was malnourished and quiet, more hair than girl. Calus took her home that day and nursed her back to health, and the fight with Kentaro again was loud and shook the foundations of the house. Yuuko was nursed back to health, and became an enthusiastic and loud member of their family.
Calus has never held the mistakes of their father or mothers against any of his children, and he loves each of them and believes them a blessing, despite the pain he went through to get them. He tries not to act hostile to Kentaro around them, allowing them to love and be loved by their father, but some of them have picked up on the tension and have chosen which one of them to blame.
