HIGHBORN, mordecai redwyne

MORDECAI REDWYNE

IT KILLS TO KNOW THAT YOU HAVE BEEN DEFEATED

He is born alongside another, part of someone else; a pair, a duo, a set of two.

He and his twin sister are birthed like a tempest that rises slowly, whooshing and whirling out of the sea. They are saltwater and sea foam, bitter and sharp and all too tempting.

He is raised in the Arbor, under the Redwyne banner: the second male in the family’s heritage, sharing the spot of third child overall. His two elder siblings are nearly a decade older — he and his twin, it seems, are not quite meant to happen. They are an accident, a surprise, though their parents assure them they are no inconvenience.

(Sometimes, they worry this is not true. A pair of troubled twins in a noble home: they learn to rely on each other and, sometimes, each other alone.)

Where his older brother is the lord and the heir — a strong, capable leader and public figure — Mordecai learns to guide from the sidelines. He is a strategist, a tactician; he is clever in the face of adversity, using wit to outmanoeuvre brute force.

He knows how to get what he wants, and how to avoid what he doesn’t:

The first day his father plans for him to train with swords, Mordecai is reluctant — combat, or any sort of physical strain, is not his thing. He spends the session distracting his instructor with philosophical debate; the man leaves both confused and enlightened.

(Mordecai does not have to pick up his blade once.)

He slinks through the keep like a shadow, listening and learning, calculating and cunning. He quickly discovers that information is a better weapon than any sword — and he hones his skill, knowing how to wield it: when to share, to hide, to manipulate.

At the age of sixteen, he is pledged to a young girl of House Velaryon; it is a political marriage set for a familial allegiance, one that proves even better still when, a few years later, his betrothed’s older sister marries King Aenar II Targaryen. As the Redwynes are bannermen of the Tyrells, his wedding forges stronger ties between the Crownlands and the Reach — regardless of his own opinions on the matter.

But Mordecai has always been one for a good gamble, a deal and a debt to be paid. He learns to love (truly, wholly, fully) the one he is vowed to, boy and girl growing together into man and woman.

When he moves to King’s Landing, he adopts a habit of writing ravens to his twin, who resides still in the Arbor — they have remained close throughout their years and, alongside his wife, she is his closest friend and confidant.

In the years following, he is blessed with a child; truth be told, he had not been ready. Regardless, while a man like Mordecai can hardly be described as paternal, he learns quickly that he cares and loves the soft, small youngling in his arms.

He had never thought himself a family man, under his parents’ household — and yet, as the decades come and go, he has made his own. They have become his driving force: wife, child, sister.

He pledges himself to the kingdom, but more than that, he swears his soul to his family.


N/A

[b]BIOSHOCK, robert lutece[/b] as [i]mordecai redwyne[/i]