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OOC INFORMATION
Name: Bennu
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himewako, Discord - bennu#5513
Are You Over 18?: Yes
Other Characters: Inosuke Hashibira
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Richard Plantagenet
Age: 19
Canon: Requiem of the Rose King
Canon Point: End of vol. 7
CW: Requiem of the Rose King is a very dark canon. While I'm going to avoid going into detail as much as possible, I will need to mention or allude to emotional abuse, incest, suicide, and rape in this application. I will also need to discuss Richard's struggle with his gender identity as an intersex person in a society with rigid gender roles and limited understanding of the human body and the negative self-image he develops as a result. I have an opt-out post in his journal already because of these issues.
Character Information:
Requiem of the Rose King is loosely based on Shakespeare's plays Henry VI and Richard III. Richard's canon point is technically Act V, Scene 6 of 3 Henry VI. Because it's based on something written for the stage, there's a definite blurring of time and space and reality and illusion in the manga that frequently makes it unclear if some aspects of the story are really happening or if Richard just perceives them as happening, especially where anything that happens in the forest and his visitations by spirits are concerned. I'm going to continue to keep those things ambiguous when it comes to playing the character.
Richard was born on a night filled with ill omens and that alone would probably have been enough for his mother to denounce him as a demon. However, he was also born feet first, with a mouth full of teeth and a full head of black hair. His mother was immediately hysterical and she may have fully rejected him if it wasn't for his father's quick intervention. Richard, Duke of York accepted him enthusiastically as his son and gave him his own name. Because of this pronouncement, very few people ever found out that Richard was also born intersex, but his mother knew and his father's acceptance only led her to hate, resent, and fear her son more, seeing him as a unnatural creature that bewitched her husband.
Richard grew up knowing he could never win his mother's love and that he would never match up to his older brothers. Both Edward and George were tall, handsome and fair like their father and Richard was always small and slight and looked very little like either of his parents. He knew his had his father's unconditional love, though, and came to love and admire him to an unhealthy degree. Part of this manifested as an obsession with helping his father regain the throne as King of England. Richard pushed himself to become a knight who could fight at his father's side and pushed his father to go to war to regain his birthright. However, as the War of the Roses raged on, eventually the Duke of York fell in battle and Richard fell into despair. He couldn't put his father on the throne, so he resolved himself to kill everyone responsible for his father's death and to put his brother Edward on the throne instead. However, it became quickly apparent that Edward wasn't the man his father was and Richard began to feel unease with his situation.
One major factor that contributed to Richard's growing sense of unease with living in a world without his father to anchor him was his strange connection to the forest. When he was a child, he was warned away from “the witch's forest,” yet found himself there anyway and began to be haunted by the ghost of Joan of Arc, who taunted him endlessly about his inability to live a normal life because, like her, he lived in a liminal space between man and woman. From that point on, the forest always seemed to be within reach, whether he walked there himself or found himself transported there as an effect of Joan's haunting. Almost all of the important meetings in his life seemed to happen there, like his life was being directed by an invisible hand. It was where he met Anne Neville as a child and made his first friend. It was also where he met a strange man named Henry and fell in love for the first time.
After his father's death, Richard became more and more attached to Henry, who was easily old enough to be his father (and who was, in fact, older than the Duke of York). Henry seemed almost childlike in nature, though, and spoke of wanting to live a simple life as a shepherd in the woods. He was happy and friendly and immediately extremely attached to Richard, something someone as affection-starved as Richard found irresistible. The forest always seemed to bring them together, too, no matter where Richard happened to be at the start. In fact, the more turmoil there was in Richard's life outside the forest, the more likely it seemed that he would find himself there with Henry, like they were both being enticed to stay there.
Richard's life was indeed full of turmoil almost all the time after his father's death and his brother's subsequent victory in battle and coronation as King of England. His brother Edward's philandering nature was something he disapproved of deeply and when Edward chose to marry Elizabeth Woodville, a woman who would give him no political advantage, his disapproval and sense of unrest only deepened. It was then when two new forces entered his life, one supernatural and one all too real. The young Earl of Buckingham stopped him in a hallway shortly after Edward's marriage to point out to him that Edward's poor decision making was going to make war with France inevitable and that the following unrest would create a situation where anyone could become king. Buckingham, even as a child, was determined to be a kingmaker and he set his sights on Richard that day, planting the seed that would eventually bind them together in villainy. Not long after, Richard began being visited by the spirit of his father, who urged him to let his name live on, pressing him to take the throne for himself.
Politically, England continued to be in a state of upheaval. The former king, Henry VI, was taken prisoner and Richard, overcome with rage, sought to kill him in revenge for the death of his father. The voice on the other side of the cell door, however, was distressingly familiar and it stayed his hand long enough for Edward to tell him to stand down. Worried about Richard's erratic behavior, Edward sent him away to live with the family of the Earl of Warwick, father of Richard's (only) friend, Anne Neville. Getting to spend time with Anne was healing to Richard's heart for a time, but Joan's taunting words twisted it and turned it against him. It was really the first time he'd ever spent around a girl his own age who liked him and who he liked very much in return, but his heart still belonged to Henry. Being with Anne could bring him a happy, normal life on the surface, but he struggled with not knowing whether he wanted to be a man who could be with her or to be a woman like her who could lead a normal, happy life with Henry, all while knowing neither life was possible for him. However, things took a turn for the tragic when Richard overheard Anne vehemently rejecting her father's suggestion that she marry Richard. In truth, Anne was doing it because she cared about him and didn't want to be made into her father's tool, but Richard thought she was rejecting it out of disgust. Things worsened further when Warwick turned traitor against Edward and allied himself with the House of Lancaster supposedly to put Henry VI back on the throne, but with the actual intent to put Edward and Richard's brother George on the throne instead.
Warwick's rebellion was so unexpected that he quickly gained the upper hand over Edward, taking him prisoner as the first step to returning Henry VI to the throne of England. It fell to Richard to rescue his brother and try to regain the upper hand. He chose to disguise himself as a woman to infiltrate the castle where Edward was being held captive, but his mission was interrupted when he ran into Edward of Westminster, son and heir of Henry VI.(Every man in England is named Richard, Henry, or Edward and I'm sorry.) Edward was already convinced that Richard was a woman from a time they met in their childhood and he was extremely infatuated with “her,” leading this interruption to become a significant detour because he was extremely hard to shake. It turned out that Edward was also planning to rescue Richard's brother as a way of forcing Warwick to rely more heavily on the House of Lancaster. It wasn't a plan that made a great deal of sense because Edward was, frankly, not that bright, but it worked to Richard's advantage, so he was stuck with him until they successfully managed to rescue Edward IV.
Warwick's power play continued. He married his daughter Isabel to Richard's brother George and then decided that, since Anne refused to marry Richard, it would be to his advantage to marry her to Edward of Westminster instead and secure his ties to both York and Lancaster. Edward IV, furious at George's betrayal, sent Richard to pressure him to give up on his rebellion, as Warwick successfully managed to reinstate Henry VI as king. On his way to confront his brother, Richard was attacked by Lancaster nobles who assumed he was coming to attack someone in their care. Injured, he fled into the forest where he ran into Henry. Henry treated his wounds and cared for him as he recovered.
Being in Henry's presence again only reminded Richard of how much he loved him. It was a terrifying feeling and he was incredibly conflicted about what to do about it. He knew Henry loved him in his own way, but feared that he would reject him in disgust because of his body if they were to become intimate. It turned out, however, that things were even worse than he feared. Because of childhood trauma stemming from his mother's infidelities and further trauma caused by his wife's insistence on conceiving an heir whether Henry gave his consent or not, Henry was disgusted and repulsed by the very idea of sex. Richard was faced with loving someone who could never love him the same way in return no matter who he was, someone who thought of their relationship as pure and platonic in a way that Richard didn't feel himself capable of. It was devastating, and though he swore to meet Henry again, it left his feelings for him in a state of upheaval.
Ultimately, Richard's plans to get George to return to Edward IV's side were successful and the tides of battle began to turn. In the heat of battle against the forces of the House of Lancaster, Richard found himself faced with the spirits of his father and Joan of Arc. Joan urged him to go to the forest to meet Henry so that they could live their life together. The Duke of York urged him to follow him across the battlefield so that he could meet Henry VI and finally get his revenge.
Richard chose his father. And discovered that both spirits were attempting to guide him to the same person. The Henry he'd fallen in love with was the same man he'd sworn revenge against.
Richard was overcome with grief and anger. At first, he was able to channel it into strength on the battlefield, but once he was alone, he had nowhere to turn it but against himself. His attempt to end his own life was thwarted when Buckingham interrupted him. Richard saw Buckingham's face overlaid with his father's urging him to kill and kill until all the enemies of the House of York were defeated. Richard took up his sword again, heart empty, and fought in the climactic battle that would put his brother on the throne once more. By the end of it all, Warwick was dead at Buckingham's hand and Edward of Westminster was killed by Richard, dying peacefully because he had the chance to see him one last time. Henry VI was once more captured and imprisoned and Richard vowed to kill him once and for all, seeing no other way forward with his life. His first attempt failed when he was faced with a Henry whose mind was well and truly shattered, who didn't recognize or remember him and who had retreated entirely within himself. He steeled his resolve and made a second attempt, faltering again when faced with the man he loved. He tried desperately to appeal to him, to try to find the man he knew once more. He bared his soul to him, confessed every secret he'd been hiding about his feelings and about his body, but it all went horribly wrong. In a moment of lucidity, Henry rejected him with utter disgust, denouncing him as the demon he'd been told he was his whole life. In a fit of grief and rage, Richard stabbed him in the eye with the knife he'd brought to kill him. (And that's the end of vol. 7.)
Personality:
Richard grew up as a stark contrast to his father and brothers. Though he was surrounded by friendly, outgoing, charismatic people, he himself is a very reserved, serious person who doesn't seek out any sort of social activity unless it's because of some sort of ulterior political motive. He generally doesn't speak unnecessarily, keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself as much as possible. He's slow to trust people for the most part and does his best to keep them at arm's length. He maintains a cold, aloof exterior and has no problems being rude or unfriendly if he feels in control of a situation. When things are beyond his control, he will frequently clam up entirely and withdraw however he can. Because of this, he has few friends and nothing resembling a social circle. He isn't even particularly close to his brothers, though they make a perfunctory effort to be friendly. The only person left that he can really count himself as close without any sort of reservation is Catesby, his attendant who has been with him since he was a child, and even then their difference in station creates a barrier between them.
Richard has based a great deal of his self worth on his ability to be a knight worthy to serve his father. It's clear that he's devoted a lot of his time and energy into training for combat. It becomes a coping mechanism, a way of regaining control. When he's grieving or lost, he immediately turns to the battlefield with a determination to kill whoever stands in his way. He hinges his ability to go forward in life on his desire for revenge and he is determined to get that revenge in as bloody a way as possible. He's extremely aggressive in combat and kills ruthlessly without a hint of compassion. Even when faced with Edward of Westminster, whose feelings for him he is fully aware of, he kills him without hesitation with nothing but cold hatred on his face. When faced with a choice between living in peace with the love of his life or murdering the person he blames for the death of his father, he chooses murder.
Richard also suffers from deep, crippling insecurity stemming from his mother's abuse throughout his life. She has always told him that he is unnatural and that no one will ever love a monster like him, and he has internalized that in a very damaging way. For one thing, his mother's rejection led to him to become desperate for his father's affection in a way that turned into a romantic and sexual fixation because he felt that his father was the only one capable of loving him in any way. Later, after his father's death, he transfers his feelings to Henry, another much older man, and trusts him implicitly when he has no reason to simply because Henry says he loves him. This isn't even the last time that Richard will let down his carefully maintained guard entirely because he's starved for the love of another person. Many years beyond his canon point, he'll transfer his focus to Buckingham in a last, desperate attempt to be loved.
Richard's centering of his father as an ideal, coupled with the internalized self-loathing brought on by his mother's treatment, has caused a certain rigidity in Richard's thinking. He has very set opinions about himself and the world around him based on what his parents have imparted. His father is the ideal man, knight, and politician. Anything that departs from his ideals, especially Edward IV's party boy lifestyle, is absolutely unacceptable and abhorrent to Richard. The Duke of York is exactly what a man should be and Richard's inability to be a perfect mirror of his father makes him especially susceptible to his mother's abuse. His relationship with gender identity can be toxic and it's a constant struggle within him. He can't be exactly like his father and brothers, so he isn't enough of a man, yet he's so alienated from his mother that he's never had a positive female role model in his life and has no real concept of what it means to be a woman beyond “someone who is in love with and married to a man.” There is a brief moment in his life when he's living with the Nevilles and spending a lot of time around Anne where it seems like he may find his footing, create a positive, healthy relationship, and grow past his trauma...but then Anne's father's betrayal cements the fact that Richard's life story is destined to be a tragedy.
5-10 Key Character Traits: reserved, aggressive, ruthless, wary, serious, loner, opinionated, vengeful, insecure
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits
Opt-Outs: Shade
Roleplay Sample: Here
Name: Bennu
Contact:
Are You Over 18?: Yes
Other Characters: Inosuke Hashibira
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Richard Plantagenet
Age: 19
Canon: Requiem of the Rose King
Canon Point: End of vol. 7
CW: Requiem of the Rose King is a very dark canon. While I'm going to avoid going into detail as much as possible, I will need to mention or allude to emotional abuse, incest, suicide, and rape in this application. I will also need to discuss Richard's struggle with his gender identity as an intersex person in a society with rigid gender roles and limited understanding of the human body and the negative self-image he develops as a result. I have an opt-out post in his journal already because of these issues.
Character Information:
Requiem of the Rose King is loosely based on Shakespeare's plays Henry VI and Richard III. Richard's canon point is technically Act V, Scene 6 of 3 Henry VI. Because it's based on something written for the stage, there's a definite blurring of time and space and reality and illusion in the manga that frequently makes it unclear if some aspects of the story are really happening or if Richard just perceives them as happening, especially where anything that happens in the forest and his visitations by spirits are concerned. I'm going to continue to keep those things ambiguous when it comes to playing the character.
Richard was born on a night filled with ill omens and that alone would probably have been enough for his mother to denounce him as a demon. However, he was also born feet first, with a mouth full of teeth and a full head of black hair. His mother was immediately hysterical and she may have fully rejected him if it wasn't for his father's quick intervention. Richard, Duke of York accepted him enthusiastically as his son and gave him his own name. Because of this pronouncement, very few people ever found out that Richard was also born intersex, but his mother knew and his father's acceptance only led her to hate, resent, and fear her son more, seeing him as a unnatural creature that bewitched her husband.
Richard grew up knowing he could never win his mother's love and that he would never match up to his older brothers. Both Edward and George were tall, handsome and fair like their father and Richard was always small and slight and looked very little like either of his parents. He knew his had his father's unconditional love, though, and came to love and admire him to an unhealthy degree. Part of this manifested as an obsession with helping his father regain the throne as King of England. Richard pushed himself to become a knight who could fight at his father's side and pushed his father to go to war to regain his birthright. However, as the War of the Roses raged on, eventually the Duke of York fell in battle and Richard fell into despair. He couldn't put his father on the throne, so he resolved himself to kill everyone responsible for his father's death and to put his brother Edward on the throne instead. However, it became quickly apparent that Edward wasn't the man his father was and Richard began to feel unease with his situation.
One major factor that contributed to Richard's growing sense of unease with living in a world without his father to anchor him was his strange connection to the forest. When he was a child, he was warned away from “the witch's forest,” yet found himself there anyway and began to be haunted by the ghost of Joan of Arc, who taunted him endlessly about his inability to live a normal life because, like her, he lived in a liminal space between man and woman. From that point on, the forest always seemed to be within reach, whether he walked there himself or found himself transported there as an effect of Joan's haunting. Almost all of the important meetings in his life seemed to happen there, like his life was being directed by an invisible hand. It was where he met Anne Neville as a child and made his first friend. It was also where he met a strange man named Henry and fell in love for the first time.
After his father's death, Richard became more and more attached to Henry, who was easily old enough to be his father (and who was, in fact, older than the Duke of York). Henry seemed almost childlike in nature, though, and spoke of wanting to live a simple life as a shepherd in the woods. He was happy and friendly and immediately extremely attached to Richard, something someone as affection-starved as Richard found irresistible. The forest always seemed to bring them together, too, no matter where Richard happened to be at the start. In fact, the more turmoil there was in Richard's life outside the forest, the more likely it seemed that he would find himself there with Henry, like they were both being enticed to stay there.
Richard's life was indeed full of turmoil almost all the time after his father's death and his brother's subsequent victory in battle and coronation as King of England. His brother Edward's philandering nature was something he disapproved of deeply and when Edward chose to marry Elizabeth Woodville, a woman who would give him no political advantage, his disapproval and sense of unrest only deepened. It was then when two new forces entered his life, one supernatural and one all too real. The young Earl of Buckingham stopped him in a hallway shortly after Edward's marriage to point out to him that Edward's poor decision making was going to make war with France inevitable and that the following unrest would create a situation where anyone could become king. Buckingham, even as a child, was determined to be a kingmaker and he set his sights on Richard that day, planting the seed that would eventually bind them together in villainy. Not long after, Richard began being visited by the spirit of his father, who urged him to let his name live on, pressing him to take the throne for himself.
Politically, England continued to be in a state of upheaval. The former king, Henry VI, was taken prisoner and Richard, overcome with rage, sought to kill him in revenge for the death of his father. The voice on the other side of the cell door, however, was distressingly familiar and it stayed his hand long enough for Edward to tell him to stand down. Worried about Richard's erratic behavior, Edward sent him away to live with the family of the Earl of Warwick, father of Richard's (only) friend, Anne Neville. Getting to spend time with Anne was healing to Richard's heart for a time, but Joan's taunting words twisted it and turned it against him. It was really the first time he'd ever spent around a girl his own age who liked him and who he liked very much in return, but his heart still belonged to Henry. Being with Anne could bring him a happy, normal life on the surface, but he struggled with not knowing whether he wanted to be a man who could be with her or to be a woman like her who could lead a normal, happy life with Henry, all while knowing neither life was possible for him. However, things took a turn for the tragic when Richard overheard Anne vehemently rejecting her father's suggestion that she marry Richard. In truth, Anne was doing it because she cared about him and didn't want to be made into her father's tool, but Richard thought she was rejecting it out of disgust. Things worsened further when Warwick turned traitor against Edward and allied himself with the House of Lancaster supposedly to put Henry VI back on the throne, but with the actual intent to put Edward and Richard's brother George on the throne instead.
Warwick's rebellion was so unexpected that he quickly gained the upper hand over Edward, taking him prisoner as the first step to returning Henry VI to the throne of England. It fell to Richard to rescue his brother and try to regain the upper hand. He chose to disguise himself as a woman to infiltrate the castle where Edward was being held captive, but his mission was interrupted when he ran into Edward of Westminster, son and heir of Henry VI.(Every man in England is named Richard, Henry, or Edward and I'm sorry.) Edward was already convinced that Richard was a woman from a time they met in their childhood and he was extremely infatuated with “her,” leading this interruption to become a significant detour because he was extremely hard to shake. It turned out that Edward was also planning to rescue Richard's brother as a way of forcing Warwick to rely more heavily on the House of Lancaster. It wasn't a plan that made a great deal of sense because Edward was, frankly, not that bright, but it worked to Richard's advantage, so he was stuck with him until they successfully managed to rescue Edward IV.
Warwick's power play continued. He married his daughter Isabel to Richard's brother George and then decided that, since Anne refused to marry Richard, it would be to his advantage to marry her to Edward of Westminster instead and secure his ties to both York and Lancaster. Edward IV, furious at George's betrayal, sent Richard to pressure him to give up on his rebellion, as Warwick successfully managed to reinstate Henry VI as king. On his way to confront his brother, Richard was attacked by Lancaster nobles who assumed he was coming to attack someone in their care. Injured, he fled into the forest where he ran into Henry. Henry treated his wounds and cared for him as he recovered.
Being in Henry's presence again only reminded Richard of how much he loved him. It was a terrifying feeling and he was incredibly conflicted about what to do about it. He knew Henry loved him in his own way, but feared that he would reject him in disgust because of his body if they were to become intimate. It turned out, however, that things were even worse than he feared. Because of childhood trauma stemming from his mother's infidelities and further trauma caused by his wife's insistence on conceiving an heir whether Henry gave his consent or not, Henry was disgusted and repulsed by the very idea of sex. Richard was faced with loving someone who could never love him the same way in return no matter who he was, someone who thought of their relationship as pure and platonic in a way that Richard didn't feel himself capable of. It was devastating, and though he swore to meet Henry again, it left his feelings for him in a state of upheaval.
Ultimately, Richard's plans to get George to return to Edward IV's side were successful and the tides of battle began to turn. In the heat of battle against the forces of the House of Lancaster, Richard found himself faced with the spirits of his father and Joan of Arc. Joan urged him to go to the forest to meet Henry so that they could live their life together. The Duke of York urged him to follow him across the battlefield so that he could meet Henry VI and finally get his revenge.
Richard chose his father. And discovered that both spirits were attempting to guide him to the same person. The Henry he'd fallen in love with was the same man he'd sworn revenge against.
Richard was overcome with grief and anger. At first, he was able to channel it into strength on the battlefield, but once he was alone, he had nowhere to turn it but against himself. His attempt to end his own life was thwarted when Buckingham interrupted him. Richard saw Buckingham's face overlaid with his father's urging him to kill and kill until all the enemies of the House of York were defeated. Richard took up his sword again, heart empty, and fought in the climactic battle that would put his brother on the throne once more. By the end of it all, Warwick was dead at Buckingham's hand and Edward of Westminster was killed by Richard, dying peacefully because he had the chance to see him one last time. Henry VI was once more captured and imprisoned and Richard vowed to kill him once and for all, seeing no other way forward with his life. His first attempt failed when he was faced with a Henry whose mind was well and truly shattered, who didn't recognize or remember him and who had retreated entirely within himself. He steeled his resolve and made a second attempt, faltering again when faced with the man he loved. He tried desperately to appeal to him, to try to find the man he knew once more. He bared his soul to him, confessed every secret he'd been hiding about his feelings and about his body, but it all went horribly wrong. In a moment of lucidity, Henry rejected him with utter disgust, denouncing him as the demon he'd been told he was his whole life. In a fit of grief and rage, Richard stabbed him in the eye with the knife he'd brought to kill him. (And that's the end of vol. 7.)
Personality:
Richard grew up as a stark contrast to his father and brothers. Though he was surrounded by friendly, outgoing, charismatic people, he himself is a very reserved, serious person who doesn't seek out any sort of social activity unless it's because of some sort of ulterior political motive. He generally doesn't speak unnecessarily, keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself as much as possible. He's slow to trust people for the most part and does his best to keep them at arm's length. He maintains a cold, aloof exterior and has no problems being rude or unfriendly if he feels in control of a situation. When things are beyond his control, he will frequently clam up entirely and withdraw however he can. Because of this, he has few friends and nothing resembling a social circle. He isn't even particularly close to his brothers, though they make a perfunctory effort to be friendly. The only person left that he can really count himself as close without any sort of reservation is Catesby, his attendant who has been with him since he was a child, and even then their difference in station creates a barrier between them.
Richard has based a great deal of his self worth on his ability to be a knight worthy to serve his father. It's clear that he's devoted a lot of his time and energy into training for combat. It becomes a coping mechanism, a way of regaining control. When he's grieving or lost, he immediately turns to the battlefield with a determination to kill whoever stands in his way. He hinges his ability to go forward in life on his desire for revenge and he is determined to get that revenge in as bloody a way as possible. He's extremely aggressive in combat and kills ruthlessly without a hint of compassion. Even when faced with Edward of Westminster, whose feelings for him he is fully aware of, he kills him without hesitation with nothing but cold hatred on his face. When faced with a choice between living in peace with the love of his life or murdering the person he blames for the death of his father, he chooses murder.
Richard also suffers from deep, crippling insecurity stemming from his mother's abuse throughout his life. She has always told him that he is unnatural and that no one will ever love a monster like him, and he has internalized that in a very damaging way. For one thing, his mother's rejection led to him to become desperate for his father's affection in a way that turned into a romantic and sexual fixation because he felt that his father was the only one capable of loving him in any way. Later, after his father's death, he transfers his feelings to Henry, another much older man, and trusts him implicitly when he has no reason to simply because Henry says he loves him. This isn't even the last time that Richard will let down his carefully maintained guard entirely because he's starved for the love of another person. Many years beyond his canon point, he'll transfer his focus to Buckingham in a last, desperate attempt to be loved.
Richard's centering of his father as an ideal, coupled with the internalized self-loathing brought on by his mother's treatment, has caused a certain rigidity in Richard's thinking. He has very set opinions about himself and the world around him based on what his parents have imparted. His father is the ideal man, knight, and politician. Anything that departs from his ideals, especially Edward IV's party boy lifestyle, is absolutely unacceptable and abhorrent to Richard. The Duke of York is exactly what a man should be and Richard's inability to be a perfect mirror of his father makes him especially susceptible to his mother's abuse. His relationship with gender identity can be toxic and it's a constant struggle within him. He can't be exactly like his father and brothers, so he isn't enough of a man, yet he's so alienated from his mother that he's never had a positive female role model in his life and has no real concept of what it means to be a woman beyond “someone who is in love with and married to a man.” There is a brief moment in his life when he's living with the Nevilles and spending a lot of time around Anne where it seems like he may find his footing, create a positive, healthy relationship, and grow past his trauma...but then Anne's father's betrayal cements the fact that Richard's life story is destined to be a tragedy.
5-10 Key Character Traits: reserved, aggressive, ruthless, wary, serious, loner, opinionated, vengeful, insecure
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits
Opt-Outs: Shade
Roleplay Sample: Here