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Description

Lillian stands an average height for most women of the day, sporting her mother's coloring of dark blond hair, and grey green eyes. She is unfashionably tanned from work and much time spent outdoors. Like her mother, Lillian is quite pretty, with large round eyes, proportionate features, and no deformities, but unlike her mother, Lillian has a much slighter and aristocratic bone structure (though not lacking curves) that has raised questions about her absent and never mentioned father. Lillian usually wears course woolen dresses custom of peasants.

Personality

Lillian is a woman of conviction and strong will. She is a person whose mind once made up, is not easily changed, and is a survivor. Bad luck has followed Lillian around since before her birth, but instead of feeling bitter or sorry for herself, she chooses to look past it and constantly move forward. She also can be seen sproting a more optimistic dispossition than most around her.

Equipment

A small dagger, as well as some knowledge, if not skill at the craft of Blacksmithing.

History

Lillian’s mother was a pretty young serf of a lord in northern Flanders married to a scornful, jealous, shrew of a woman who was increasingly bitter over her inability to conceive an heir. Understandable in such an unhappy marriage, the lord turned to other women for his pleasures, and Lillian’s mother was his favorite, even getting her with child. Unfortunately for Lillian’s mother, the Lord whose bed and protection she enjoyed, died in a hunting accident during the middle of her pregnancy. Desperate for an heir to protect the holdings that had suddenly become her’s the Lord’s wife imprisoned Lillian’s mother inside the castle for the rest of her pregnancy, desperately assuming the child would be male. When Lillian was born however, and revealed to be useless to the Lady, she banished Lillian and her mother from her lands in a rage.

From there, Lillian and her mother were forced to travel around Flanders, living off odd work and charity. When Lillian was around seven, she and her mother settled in southern Flanders, her mother working as a serving wench and light skirt in the local tavern, while Lillian tried finding work as a farm hand in exchange for food. It was a painful time thebe around her mother, as she degraded herself for money, and was shunned by much of the community. Seeing the pain her mother had been forced to go through, Lillian resolved never to resort to such work, even if it made life more difficult for herself.

When she turned fifteen however, life seemed to finally take a turn for the better, as Lillian’s mother fell in love with and married a blacksmith who lived father out of town, and no longer needed to work in the tavern. For two years the make shift family worked, and Lillian had never seen her mother so happy. It was on tragedy’s wings that Lillian’s mother died of a bad fever, cutting short her brief happiness. Having no where else to go, Lillian stayed with her step father, even learning a bit about the craft of blacksmithing from him. A little over a year later however, Lillian’s step father had a confrontation with a nobleman over a sword order, which became deadly. While Lillian and her step father were traveling to market, they were attacked by the nobleman and two of his men. Her step father was murdered, and Lillian was raped and badly beaten, left for dead along the roadside.

Lillian likely would have died, had she not been found by Sir Martin of Essex, and an Arab woman he was traveling with. Sir Martin, returning home from an already long and exhausting journey, stayed in Flanders for another two months, nursing Lillian back to health and hunting down the nobleman and his men, challenging each to a duel and defeating and killing all three. Once justice was served, and Lillian was healthy again, she begged to go with them, as she really had no else to go now, and felt a certain debt to Sir Martin. Reluctantly, after much and repeated pleading and threatening to follow if he wished her along or not, Martin agreed, and Lillian self pronounced herself Martin’s faithful servant, joining the less than talkative group on their merry way back to England.

Lillian of Flanders's Story