HIGHBORN, LEONA ARRYN

[attr="class","bioheader"]personality.

[attr="class,"bioentry"]Leona is decisive, but patient and prudent. She is very patriotic of the Tyrell's words and is known to speak proudly of it and much less of the Arryn's "As High As Honour." Despite her open support for unity, she is extremely competitive and vain that if she did not already sit as the most powerful woman in the Vale, she would not be as generous as she is now. She openly denies the jests of how brighter the future of the Seven Kingdoms would be with her as queen but privately takes them in serious consideration. Though it was her who needed the husband when she could already be considered too old for a first-born, Leona considers it to be her husband lucky to have her.
[break][break]
Despite the hidden conceit, Leona isn't particularly ambitious. If she wanted the praise of others, she would have done more than well as the ideal lady and wife, as was thought of her before her sudden interest in riding. She would have not exchanged her slim, tender flesh for the muscular fitness of a rider. She is of free spirit and only does she stay loyal to her duties because she can adapt them to her ways. She is lucky to have picked a horse and not a sword.
[break][break]
While Leona is known to have good humour to most, she is a completely different person when riding is involved. She is especially stern and frightening when teaching, and have gotten involved with a spat with a lady of another house for making a highborn boy cry. Leona never talks about her beloved horse and condemns the use of horse meat. Since she did not succeed in barring horse meat in the kitchen, she swore to never eat any kind of animal meat even in the table of another lord's. Her handmaidens are forbidden to speak of the strips of jerky stashed in her room.

[attr="class","bioheader"]history.

[attr="class,"bioentry"]Born in the nameday of the eldest Tyrell, she was thought to be lucky. As the sun pulled out of the sky, she came into the world crying, her hair as dark as the night. The handmaidens thought she was going to be a special Tyrell, but her mother had always feared that the destiny might not be as wonderful. She had Leona sleep in her bed with her lord husband until she was eleven, and when the quiet attachment soon left the child, she would run off on her own as if she were walking for the first time, trembling and swaying. She would fall and not cry, but the lady mother would smear kisses over her face anyway, whispering a thousand comforting words.

[break][break]

Leona made a wonderful lady, knowing her stitches, her songs, her dances. She said she wanted to be a bard one day, but was told that all bards were men and that she could sing to more if she were a married lady of a great house. This did not satisfy her, though she did not understand why.

[break][break]


At fifteen, she slowly showed a more dynamic behaviour unexpected of her. It was about time, they thought. She could not stay within the shell her mother had kept her in for so long. So they gladly let her be. They let her ride a horse when she asked. When she got good, they let her do it by herself. When she got better, they let her run courses with it. It started with simple games with the common folk and then she was challenging nobles left and right for a race. They called her "the splendid rose," beautiful, graceful, and above all her peers. Among her suitors, it was said that the only way to win her hand in marriage was to catch her horseback.

[break][break]

But it wasn't because of Leona that marriage talks fell early on. Her mother quickly disapproved of many suitors. Those that she liked, she learned to dislike in a fortnight. Leona only laughed, always certain that the next she would find would be an even greater man than the one before. But as she neared the age where she ought to already have children, her lack of betrothal became an insult and she was no longer amused by her mother's incessant complaints.

[break][break]

Leona took matters on hand on their way to the Eyrie for a talk between a marriage between Leona and the Lord of the Vale's brother. With two days to cover to arrive at its gates, she suddenly took off on her own. On horse, no one could catch her. When she arrived by nightfall, haggard and in pain, they thought they had been attacked and the Lord of the Vale was immediately informed. When Leona came to be, she heard the lord outside the room and rushed out to settle her betrothal by herself. But the lord she found was not Lord Arryn, but his firstborn son, who Leona was decided to marry at the end of her stay in the Vale.

[break][break]

But the risk Leona took came at the price. Midnight, her beloved horse, passed away at the break of dawn from the exhaustion she had put through him with. For the seven years Midnight have lived, Leona mourned for the following seven after. She wore mourning clothes even in her marriage day, for which she became known as "Lady Black Rose" despite becoming a falcon of the Vale that day. Even at the end of her mourning, she continued to wear the black cape skinned from her horse, which took away all the sunshine of Highgarden left in her.

[break][break]

Leona became a heavy drinker despite disliking the wine in the Vale. Before bedding with her husband, she would consume a bottle for herself and be quick with the duty on her bed. It was believed that this habit was what led her to have fever dreams while pregnant. She would dream of chasing after a black wisp in the mountains. Moments before she could grasp it with her hand, morning would come and the wisp gone. Believing it to be a sign, she would leave her newly-born babes to the wet nurse once she was well to search for Midnight's spirit. Since she would come back at morning and sleep through the day to continue the search, she would not remember her children until they could walk and talk.

[break][break]

But things changed with her third-born child, third-born like she was. She still drank the night of the bedding, but Arbor wine was brought for her to remind her of home. While pregnant, she dreamed not of the Vale, but of Highgarden. She did not dream of darkness, but of light, and though she did not see Midnight, she remembered riding in that dream. Leona was quick to love her third-born child and for a while, she seemed to return to her former Tyrell self.

[break][break]

Leona made her presence known as the lady of the Vale by extending her knowledge on riding to highborn girls and boys, women and men. She noticed that a common education among them helped strengthened bonds within the houses. She spoke to the ladies and maesters of the Vale's houses in an experiment to teach the children under a common curriculum starting from a certain age and within an approximate number of years. Though Leona was the one to come forward with the idea, she had left the project to more capable hands to pursue a bold undertaking of creating a cavalry that could move efficiently in rough terrain by raising ponies alongside goats and training riders to move in no plains rider would.

[attr="class","bioheader"]inventory.

[attr="class,"bioentry"]Vale Destrier - Better than the average destrier and trained with the skill to ascend and descend steep terrains without losing speed and balance. Certainly cannot be ridden by just anyone, not even by a master rider from the plains.

[attr="class","bioline"]52

[attr="class","bioline"]female

[attr="class","bioline"]heterosexual

[attr="class","bioline"]6'0"

[attr="class","bioline"]160 lbs

[attr="class","bioline"]highborn

[attr="class","bioline"]LEGEND OF KORRA, kuvira

[attr="class","bioline"]egao

[attr="class","bioicon"]