Jacques Berrineaux

Frequently regarded as the founder of the Enlightenment movement, Jacques Berrineaux was a radical atheist and important thinker. He was also drop dead gorgeous. So Jacques was born into a well off aristocratic family, but his claim to any inheritance was minimal, so he decided that it was far better to lounge around at home writing opinion pieces for a newspaper and being the typical playboy. His brother, however, joined the church as many younger aristocratic sons did. And so began Jacques' life-long dislike for the church. The two brothers famously hated each other, and everyone around them knew it. Jacques' brother was also far more interested in ministering to his own pockets than to the people, and that was something that Jacques fiercely disliked considering that it went against every statement of humility and piety that was supposed to govern the church. So Jacques got to writing down his angsty thoughts about religion, the government, and organized anything in general. The diary was supposed to be private, but his servant took a peek while Jacques wasn't around and decided that the angsty ramblings made perfect sense. So, in secret, he spent every free moment copying down the diary and adding some of his own notes. And then when he was done a few months later, he distributed it among his friends. And they thought it made perfect good sense. Of course people should be allowed to think for themselves, and no one needed a master to tell them how to be good. They were intelligent people able to analyze facts and come to rational conclusions. That was a really good idea. Now, the servant told all his friends that Jacques didn't know anyone had ever seen the diary, so they shouldn't try to contact them. And one of the friends, a guy called Asselin Rouzand, thought that it would be a good idea to write to Jacques Berrineaux and be an absolute fanboy. Jacques appreciated having his ego stroked, and promptly wrote back with more enlightened words of wisdom and an offer to meet up at the house and maybe bang. When the servant heard about this and who his master was meeting, he was ticked. But it was all good, Jacques wasn't offended, and so Asselin and Jacques hit it off and started talking. Their visits and discussions were weekly, and they eventually took to meeting up at cafes. The thing about talking in a cafe is that literally anyone who walks past can hear you. And some people who walked past stopped, listened, and joined in the discussion. And for a lot of upper class guys, the whole enlightenment thing sounded great. Just the sort of upper class intellectual thinking that they wanted. So the cafe chats turned into more organized meetings with a dozen people all debating and discussing with logic and reason. After awhile, the church heard about this. Specifically, Jacques' brother. Which didn't go down well at all since Jacques was now apparently speaking openly against the church, and his brother needed nearly no reason to call Jacques to a trial for blasphemy. But Jacques was extremely good looking and somehow managed to convince the courts with logic that it made no sense that he wasn't allowed to discuss hypotheticals even if they went against church teaching. It was, after all, hypothetical and was not blasphemy. I mean, it's not like he believed anything he said, he just said it. So the courts let him go with a minor slap on the wrist to maybe not shout things from rooftops that might be interpreted as serious rather than blasphemy, and that his brother should really go back to ministering to the people like a good priest. Except by the time Jacques got back to his friends, the news of his trial had reached them, and they were all suitably impressed. And because it made it to the newspapers, more people got interested and a bunch of women too. At first, Jacques didn't want women in his men only club, but more women meant more people to bang, so he was quickly okay with it. So, after a couple years, his new fangled movement gained popularity abroad, and only a year after the world discovered that religion wasn't such a great thing always, there were cafes and meetings springing up absolutely everywhere. But by now, the church was really pissed off at all these people not wanting to go to church or pay tithes. So they arrested Jacques again saying that he started a very detrimental movement, but he waggled his butt in front of the courts, told them that he had no idea in distributing his ideas, which was sorta the truth. He didn't do any of his personally, but he certainly knew about it and never stopped it. But the courts weren't impressed and sentenced him to death. Which would have happened had there not been an angry mob of thinkers the day he was to die, and that distracted everyone enough for a smaller group to help Jacques escape. So he went into exile in Gora Nos where the poorly unified government was too busy with themselves to mind one more person. And Jacques wrote more books, published them under a false name, but literally everyone who was a thinker knew that it was him. Well, the church heard about all these new publications and ran around Tamaris trying to figure out who the hell was publishing such inflammatory stuff, but since the author never existed under that name, they basically looked like a bunch of idiots. In Gora Nos, some of the clan leaders took a liking to Jacques and asked them to be involved in their politics. And so started his political career and practically turned half of Gora Nos against the established church. Which wasn't good, so Etra and Verona declared war on Gora Nos, but Astoria who didn't know that Jacques was really behind a lot of the anti-religious politics got the bright idea to ally with Gora Nos and invaded a good chunk of Verona including some islands. So there was a war for a few years, and Jacques was nearly captured again. Actually, he was arrested, but escaped that same day, so it kinda doesn't count. By now, Jacques has a pretty serious bounty on his head from the church. And Gora Nos is literally the only country that wants to deal with him after he got kicked out of Samoir and the rest of the world is controlled by the church. So he runs around Gora Nos evading attempts by the Veronans and Etrans who want to kill him. And that's how he died. After a good eight years of running around, a rival clan in Gora Nos that is chummy with the church gets the drop on him. Jacques mounts his horse and takes off galloping through the hills and forests. He spends weeks on the run swapping horses and trying to evade capture, but his problem is that he's super recognizable as the totally hot guy even when he's filthy. So his pursuers are always really close behind. They eventually corner him in eastern Gora Nos near a pretty big cliff in the hillside. There's a massive show down, and Jacques beats off a good number of his attackers. Eventually, surrounded by the bodies of enemies, he swears to prove that God doesn't exist because after all, if God was real, he'd make sure the church could arrest him. So he yanks his horse into a rear, and the two fall over the cliff and die. Except it turns out there's a river beneath the cliff, and Jacques' body is washed away and out to sea. So it was never recovered, his followers think that his death was seriously brave which is exactly the sort of way a great thinker should die.