Description

Personality

Likes: books (especially poetry), mathematics, the elderly.

Dislikes: social events, bodies of water (she cannot swim), horses.

Fears: the further misfortunes of her House, her sister Margaret's death, marriage and childbirth.

Skills/Talents: she is full of book learning, especially in mathematics, and has a tactician's mind.

Weaknesses: though a woman, she is not skilled in any of a woman's arts: dancing, conversation, needlework or 'catching a husband'; nor is her tall, plain appearance considered beautiful. She flounders in politics and merely follows the House of Winsler in its decisions, finding it hard to fathom the complicated intrigues of the court, or to deeply understand how other people may think.

General Personality: reserved and serious to strangers, Jane has the air of an older woman, though those closest to her know her to be light of heart and quick-witted when comfortable. She enjoys speaking about intellectual and philosophical matters. The business of the Iron Throne, and the rivaled Houses, is not foremost in her head, though she is sworn to Winsler and truly dislikes and fears the Damians. (After all, they've crushed her house and killed generations of its men for years.) Despite her serious reserve, however, she has an underlying eagerness to 'act the part' of a noblewoman. It never fails to irk her that she feels she's pretending, while Margaret, still a child, is clearly born and bred.

History

There is nothing the House of Strake knows so well as misfortune.

Jane has always known of the troubles that beset the walls of her House: devastated in battle against the Damians every time it had dared to rise, saddled with the dowries of ten daughters, and without a son and heir for the past thirty years. It was Jane who delivered the news of her father's death in battle to her mother; she lay dying in childbed, devastated once more by the birth of a useless daughter.

"Poor Jane," her mother whispered. "It will end with you."

It was not the best blessing for the new Lady of Strake, but Jane's head was a clever, sturdy one, a fact reinforced by her parents from the moment she could understand it.:

"If you have no brother, Jane, and pray every night that you do, you will be the head of our House. You are not beautiful and you are not charming. If you are to rely on anything, it is your mind."

It was true. Jane was always strangely tall for her age and sex, plainly dressed for both practicality and necessity (let no one say that Strake is wealthy), with mousy, brown curls around a pale, narrow face. With the help of the old (sometimes addled) counselors that her father had kept, Jane learned all that she needed to know about the management of her house from the amount of candles to keep and how to reuse them, to the painful methods of scrounging up future dowries for her sisters. There was hardly time for merriment in her long, studious days, and she never truly mastered the arts of needlework, dancing, or fine conversation.

In truth, she was raised as more of a scholar than a noblewoman.