Post by Ramiel Corus on May 8, 2020 21:55:35 GMT -5
Face Claim: Clive Standen
OOC Name: Magpie
CHARACTER NAME: Ramiel Corus
AGE: 36
CURRENT RESIDENCE: Aralore
APPEARANCE: Ramiel is tall and muscular, clearly a warrior. He dresses that way too; after years as a royal guard, he simply thinks, walks, and dresses like one. He is hardly ever without his axe and at least some leather armor. He prefers to keep his hair long, and usually wears it up in a bun to keep it out of the way when he is doing anything that requires his full attention. He'll leave it down for formal events.
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried, childless.
FAMILY MEMBERS: None. His parents passed away when he was only 15.
POSITION/OCCUPATION: Former Royal Guard
GRAMARYE GIFT (if any): none.
PERSONALITY: For most of his life, Ramiel was a man focused on law and order. His father was a guard to the king before he was, and he had always aspired to follow in his footsteps to uphold the law and protect his king. After the death of his parents, he became closer and closer to Nicholas. The two were practically inseparable, and Ramiel looked on him as a brother. Ramiel made most of his life choices based primarily on what would get him closer to his goal of becoming one of the King's personal guards and neglected all else. He had almost no personal life.
After recent events (see below) Ramiel has been shaken to his core. He believed that the law of the king was just and that there was a reason that God had led James to take the throne after the death of his father and brother in law. He wanted to see justice done. When he found that it had all been a lie, he was left to question whether there was any justice in the world at all, or if he was simply chasing a pipe dream. He has been stripped of his core beliefs and is now trying to find a new path. Right now, he has determined that he needs to right the evils that he sees as being caused by his own inaction.
HISTORY:
Ramiel Corus, son of Nimue and Gabriel Corus, was raised to be a royal guard. From a young age, he learned to fight with a variety of weapons, training with his father, who had been trained by his father before him. He was always eager to follow his family's legacy, as he believed it was his fate to do so. He saw it as a great honor to serve so closely with the king and help protect the rulers of his home.
When Ramiel was only 15, his parents were killed. He never knew the exact details, only that his father had died protecting the king, and that his mother had tried to defend him despite being unarmed. Luckily, the king and his son had escaped thanks to his father's actions. The king promised Ramiel that as soon as he was old enough, he would become his personal guard.
Ramiel had already been friends with Nicholas growing up, but after his parents' death, the two became closer than ever--Ramiel saw Nicholas as the only family he had left. The king noticed this and had Ramiel's postings stationed near Nicholas whenever possible, as he looked upon both young men fondly.
Ramiel was promoted to be one of the king's personal guards on his 18th birthday, and began spending more and more time around him and his family. He admired the king's dedication to peaceful means whenever possible, and the way he treated his family with consideration. He noticed that the king seemed to find Nicholas more responsible than his own son, James, and couldn't help but agree--the way that James was always eyeing his friend made Ramiel uneasy. He never said a negative word about the prince, of course, but he suspected that James had noticed the way he tensed up whenever the princed entered the room.
He was overjoyed when Nicholas and Nemeris were engaged--he believed that it was an excellent match, and that two people he respected greatly should be more than happy together. He admired Nemeris's keen mind and intuition, and hoped that his best friend would see the same beauty in her that he did. The two seemed to get along fairly well, and he fell easily into seeing Nemeris as part of his family, even if he still treated her with the respect due to a princess.
The king's death devastated Ramiel. He saw the man as a sort of foster father, paired with an extra dash of hero worship thanks to the fact that he was king, and to lose him after losing his own parents was a heavier blow than he could ever have imagined. Distraught, he turned to his best friend for support. Nicholas and Nemeris were his family more than ever in his mind, and he redoubled his efforts to be an exemplary guard to them both.
When his best friend died as well, and James pointed the finger at Nemeris, Ramiel was too shocked to chase more evidence than he was given. He was in disbelief at first, as he had never known Nemeris to be power hungry, and she had appeared to love her father. Once Nemeris's own son rejected her, along with much of the kingdom, Ramiel was willing to trust even James, as it was his duty to serve the king. He was torn, when Nemeris was exiled rather than executed--he had felt that burning her was far too cruel, even for a murder sentence, but his need for vengeance, for closure, was startling even to him. It was simple in his mind: the law said the punishment for murder was hanging. He trusted in it. But James was already beginning to trust the law to his own whims, and as the absolute monarch, he could so as he wished.
Over the next few years, Ramiel became a much less open person. He had no friends, save the young prince, and contributed no conversation outside that demanded by his role. Where the old king had often asked his thoughts on current events, or chatted with him about his children, James was harsh and secretive, treating Ramiel more as hired help than a noble worthy of attention. Ramiel was resentful of this, but didn't try to befriend this king.
With Christian, the young prince, he was like another man, teasing and laughing, helping him to practice his sword work and debating current events. He felt comfortable with the young man who reminded him so much of himself and Nicholas at that age. He did his best to balance out the paranoia and merciless values that James pushed on his nephew by demonstrating values of fairness, loyalty, and justice. He hoped that he could help the boy distinguish right from wrong, but he was never able to tell which side was winning out in the young man, as his moods seemed to flicker in an instant.
When Ramiel arrived early for his shift, one morning, he hesitated outside the King's chambers as a bitter argument raged inside. The king and his mother were arguing.
"You're running our land into the ground, James! You must listen to me, you need to--"
"You're the one who wanted me on the throne, mother dearest. We killed for this. And now you're telling me that I'm running this country into the ground? If we followed your pathetic ideas, we'd be no better than those savages in Aldsage."
"If we followed my ideas, at least we'd be making a profit from something."
"If you wanted a puppet, mumsy, I should have left father alive. Perhaps he would have been easier to lead by the nose in his doddering old age."
"Oh yes, and I suppose you'd have left Nemeris and her fool of a husband to rule as well? Pah!"
"Hah! You're right on that at least, I could never have let that blind idiot Nicholas rule. It was a pleasure to finally rid myself of him."
Ramiel waited for the queen to leave, then confronted James. The king laughed in his face when Ramiel threatened to tell the whole kingdom of James's betrayal and treason. He told Ramiel that no one would believe him--and he was absolutely right. James didn't even see him as a threat because he was so confident in his own rule--it wasn't until his mother heard of it and convinced him to do something about it that he sent other guards to find him.
While he knew he could not overthrow the king on his own, Ramiel knew he had to speak with Prince Christian, to let him know that they had all been wrong. Midway through his explanation, his desperate pleas to the young boy to understand that his mother was innocent, a more loyal guard found him. Ramiel was arrested, beaten, and thrown into the stocks for people to torment. When he was forgotten overnight, however, Ramiel managed to break himself free.
His time in the stocks had been a good time to think--betrayed, frightened, and furious, he had taken all the blame onto his shoulders for letting this happen. He believed that because he had been blind to his friend's manipulations, and Nemeris's innocence, he had allowed all of it. He should have stood with the true queen, the one who actually deserved his loyalty--the one the first king had actually trusted. He immediately gathered what he could from his home and fled the island, determined to find Nemeris. His goal is to find a way to return her to the throne, or at the very least make sure that she was able to reclaim her son who had been taken from her.
He doesn't know how he will do this, but he is clinging blindly to the idea that he can somehow make things right. The law of the land and his king failed him, but he is still determined to do what is just.
