Lady Taliene Deepwood
She will win who knows when to draw her blade and when to sheathe it.
Description: Tall, pale, and vibrant, Taliene is bright where her older brother and sister are dark. The blood of Bravery and Hope running true. She has striking blue eyes and long pale blond hair that flies like a banner itself on a battlefield. Her movements bear the hallmarks of training for both court and combat, a balance of grace and coordination.
Personality: Some call Taliene lucky. Others, perceptive. Whatever the mechanism, Taliene has a gift for being in the right place at the right time or choosing by seeming happenstance a favorable outcome. She is deeply insightful and able to make connections others might not, or see the underlying patterns where others do not. She can seldom articulate what she understands, but has learned to trust this inner knowing implicitly. With such keen insight, sometimes she sees more than she cares to and she often has trouble meeting anyone's eyes directly or for very long.
Background: Taliene Valardin was a child of the White City, and grew up pampered amongst the old stones of an ancient fortress that has never fallen to a siege. The youngest daughter of a cadet branch of the House, Taliene was raised a little differently than her siblings. By agreement, she was sent young to Gemecitta, fostering with her grandparents. Though raised far from Sanctum, as a trueborn daughter of Valardin, expectations for greatness were heaped on her. She turned a brilliant and precocious mind to learning as much as she could.
Like Talwyn, she loved to lose herself in books. Her days were filled with whispering parchment, books of history, songs, lineages, battles, and more. Like Terese, she pursued all things martial, war, swordplay, the art of conflict. But she was like neither of them, something essential keeping her apart. A strange, bright alloy of her elder siblings.
Talwyn and Terese were visiting Taliene in Gemecitta when the Tragedy fell on Sanctum. She had invited them to attend her first falconry exhibition and in accepting, they were spared. Eventually they all returned to Sanctum to rebuild. Taliene began to study war in earnest with Sanctum's best tutors and strategic minds. She showed promise, surprising tutors who frequently discounted the colt-like girl who wouldn't meet their eyes. She was rapt for tales of war from Knights and soldiers and enthusiastic in worship of Limerance, and might have become a knight herself, or Godsworn, but tread a different path.
In Sanctum, she grew from a rangy, awkward girl into a striking young woman, long and tall, who learned to harness her natural grace into all the pursuits expected of a scion of Valardin: martial training, artistry, scholarship. Despite being raised in the Lyceum, she found she was not meant for political maneuvering of any sort, but did recognize the value of her blood to forge ties with the Crownlands. She learned her lessons and traveled as much as possible. A quick mind is her blade, her body its expression, her insight into others her armor.
As is often the case with younger princes and princesses, she was married out of Valardin to ensure ties to other fealties. For Taliene, Valardin to the Crownlands by marriage into Deepwood. It is hard to say if the marriage would have been a good one, Bennet died fighting in the Saffron Chain, They produced no offspring, but Taliene remained in Deepwood, learning from Marquis Rymarr until his death.
She is taking great strides on the path of learning how and when to bend, when to attack, when to send a scout instead of a warrior, when to take a loss to ensure a greater victory.
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