Aeterdust Family/Irulan

Irulan was once described as resembling a fallen angel looking for ways to get back up again. She has hair the color of the sun in midday and the same Aeterdust grayish blue eyes as her cousins, she walks with such grace as if she is floating and when she smiles she can light up the darkest of nights. Yet in her eyes one can see the constant search, restlessness and melancholy of the seeker that can never find home. As long as Irulan can remember she has never belonged to a place. Until the age of 8 she lived a rich, courtly life at her family’s estate in Sirion. Yet she clearly enjoyed the unrefined company of the children of lowborn families working there more than the aristocratic manners her mother hoped she would adopt. The lady of the house could not bare see her only daughter mingling with such scoundrels as she would call them, so, as Irulan celebrated her eighth birthday she was forbidden to ever seek their company again or walk outside the manor unless chaperoned. The only servants attending to her were to be the most trusted of the house and her handmaiden would not be some lowborn wench, but the daughter of a distant (and impoverished) relative, an Aeterdust. She was to have the strictest lessons so she would grow up to become a refined lady. And so she did, till the age of 14. She learned the manners in which a lady should act, which she always despised. She learned to speak with eloquence, walk with poise, dance with grace and ride with elegance. She studied arts and languages, history and politics. And she felt miserably almost constantly. But her chance to change that came, both fortuitously and not, when her mother fell sick and died of pneumonia.

Her father, Lord Paulus, not lacking the sense of observation his late wife did, understood when his only daughter told him that she wished to become a warrior dame. He ignored Lady Helena’s wish that he start welcoming suitors for their daughter and granted Irulan’s. He hired instructors for his ambitious and strongwilled daughter and sent her to the best of schools so she would be able to serve as a Dame of Sirion when the time came. And so it did, when Irulan turned 17 and pledged her allegiance to the Lord of Elmbar, Andrei Darkbyte.

The only good that came out of her mother’s insistence she learn proper manners and stay in the company of well-bred individuals were a few close friends, such as Cyprian Gothicus.

Serving as a knight gave her a lot of satisfaction, but still, she did not feel as she belonged to Sirion, it was not her home, but she did not know where home was. Especially after her father’s death in her 20th year. She told herself that she was to live there until faith showed her a path to take that would lead her to a place she could call home, if there actually was such a place.

Fate it seems, had complicated plans for her and they did not yet include leaving Sirion. Still in search of a place in the world where she would fit in, Irulan decided to become a bureaucrat and joined the Sirion Army of Bureaucracy, using the ways of the pen rather than those of the sword from then on. In a few months of service she was named marshal of the army, to lead and guide all bureaucrats of Sirion. And there was more holding her in Sirion than duty towards her army and her people, it was something concerning the matters of the heart as well.

When she finally felt as if Sirion could offer no more opportunities to her, she left for Beluaterra in the company of that who held her heart, Moby Scallywag. They both settled in the realm of Heen where they started making a new life for themselves. But as their fame grew throughout the realm, the two of them grew apart. The day the lord whom she had sworn allegiance to, Tanis Mosher, Lord of Watto, was suddenly removed from office and another put in his place, Irulan felt as if there was nothing tying her to Heen anymore. She felt drawn back to the East Island, which she was confounded to realise she had missed. She did not miss the talks, politics and battles of Sirion, but she missed the lands.

So she left her realm once more, to return to the continent of her youth. At the suggestion of Cyprian, whom she had kept some correspondence with, she settled in the newly formed realm of Westmoor.