Post by François Valmont on May 17, 2007 1:38:30 GMT -5
Player
[/u][/center] Alias: Ruth/Nana
Gender: F
Contact: (optional)
Location/Time Zone: UK GMT
Character
[/u][/center]Name:François Valmont
Gender: M
Age: 35
City: Corus
Status:Ambassador for Tusaine
Personality
François is probably best described as brusque. He sees no problem in slapping someone down verbally if he thinks they are wrong, and there are a lot of people he thinks are wrong.
Not being a noble and very much a son of the revolution, François doesn't hold much with rank and title. He despises the nobility as a rule and sees his role as ambassador as a necessary evil too keep an eye on the decadent nobility and bourgeoisie of Tusaine's neighbor and to maintain Tusaine's access to sea routes. As such he sees palace balls, masques and other such frivolities as a wasteful and disrespectful to the hard working common man who's taxes pay for such things.
François, simply put, passionately believes in the ideals of a true republic and the representation of the working class. He sees the nobles as an outdated pariah and secretly longs for Tortall to throw off the nobility in the same way that Tusaine has.
His involvement in the 'scourging' of certain noble families in Tusaine doesn't sit well with some of his Tortallan colleagues but for François it was necessary and ideologically justified. This is an immovable belief and to some extent shows that François is very dogmatic and also will ruthlessly maintain his political ideals.
Whilst François is very blunt and frequently uses the fierce rhetoric of a revolutionary, he is also very articulate and is an excellent public speaker although at times he can be a little fiery for Tortallan tastes.
When he is moved off the topic of politics, he shows a deep intelligence and an ability to think quickly, one of the qualities that let him to a high ranking in the Republic of Tusaine in the first place. He has a great love of music and literature and can happily engage people in lively conversation for hours.
He is not socially incapable and can press the flesh with the best of politicians but he makes clear that whilst he will happily talk to anyone, it neither means that he will pander to them nor fawn over them and people have to be willing to stick up for themselves if they engage him in conversation.
François is most happy in a simple tavern, drinking with comrades and friends and enjoying good wine and good company.
Personality Flaw:
François' dogmatic beliefs, his refusal to ultimately recognise any other political viewpoint than his fierce revolutionary ideals means that ultimately he will happily destroy lives or even friends on the basis of them being born in to the wrong social class. He thinks that this is merely what the nobility have done to the working classes for centuries and the world is simply turning. It's a questionable morality/ideal.
Appearance
François is of average hight at 5ft 9. He is lean but carries some muscle rather than being scrawny, he believes in keeping himself in reasonable physical shape as best he can.
His complexion is fair, with a spattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. His hair is black and worn shoulder length and his eyes are hazel.
He is not by any stretch of the imagination traditionally good looking. His face is very angular and his nose a little over-long. However, his face has character and is very animated when he speaks, a raised eyebrow from François can speak volumes.
He dresses mostly very simply, in darker colours. His clothes are of good quality but are not the over the top dress of the nobility.
Appearance Flaw:
He walks with a pronounced limp due to a congenital deformity of his left foot which means some of the bones are fused, this causes him considerable pain at times.
History
François grew up in a typical Tusaine working class household, the youngest of two. His parents owned a small dairy farm making as best a living as possible and although money was tight from time to time, they made a reasonable living. François' family were close and he had a good relationship with both his father Marc, who taught him to shoot and his mother Estelle who sat with him through the days that he took ill trying to ease his pain.
Despite his problems with his foot which sometimes kept him in bed in agony, François was an active child. He received a good education at a local school and he helped out on the farm and trained his beloved gun dog, Belle. The pair of them would spend many hours hunting for birds and game and François became a mean shot in the process.
François was devoted to his older sister, Lissa, three years his senior. She would read him stories and happily indulge his active imagination. The two would go walking and put on little plays for their parents based on their favorite stories.
When he was 15 a famine struck Tusaine. With money and food scarce François parents were forced to sell off their farm to the local nobility, the Marquis of Namur, after endless pressure from him and his men, and move the family to one of the larger cities. François was devastated, he'd always imagined growing old on his family's farm with a family of his own.
François was appalled by the squalor that he and his family had to live in compared to the beauty of the farm that they'd lost and the decadence of the upper classes in the city.
In his later teens city life hardened him and his family were sad to see the carefree nature of his youth slip away from him. He still took time to read with is sister as always, but it wouldn't be long before his focus wavered from the book they were reading and back on to his preoccupation with the wrongs of the society the lived in.
His anger at their position and the subsequent illness of his beloved sister drove François towards the fiery tavern politics of the Revolutionary Party. He fell in with party members and quickly became part of the inner circle, becoming devoted to the politics that aimed to redress the social balance and put land and wealth back in the hands of the people. He would spend hours writing political pamphlets or walking the streets of the slums where he lived, talking with people or giving speeches perched on top of a crate.
François never forgot his family, however. He took over the care of his family, feeling that he needed to repay them for looking after him and caring for him in his youth.
Waves of plague followed in the wake of famine and when François was 20 many in the cities were killed including his parents. The illness and hunger and the King's apparent indifference to the suffering and pleas of the ailing Tusaine poor lit the spark for revolution.
After his parent's death, the devastation that he felt was poured in to his politics. François was at the forefront of the street riots, rallies and finally the violent purges that took place as the royalty were overthrown, frighteningly quickly.
His devotion to the cause led to him being made a junior minister in the new republic. He played an active role in rounding up those nobles who hadn't already fled and putting them on trial and having them executed public and took great pleasure in having the Marquis of Namur's lands seized and he and his family executed.
François spent the next 14 years working in various ministerial positions and working on the reconstruction of Tusaine before it was decided that his unswerving political beliefs and general ability to be both articulate and to hold his own in the face of challenges was best suited to representing Tusaine at the Tortallan court.
In this time his politics was his life and although he frequently went to spend time with his sister and her family in the countryside and was a devoted uncle. He never married himself, seeing a wife as a destraction from the true cause. François is not a lonely person and although he has had lovers they are fairly secondary to his needs. His great love in this time was still being amongst the common people, drinking, talking and taking in simple pleasures.
He left Tusaine a year ago to head to Tortall with a small retinue of people. When he arrived in Corus he saw not a beauteous city, but an effigy of everything he loathed about decadance and nobility and he has most certainly made his presence felt in the palace and the city ever since.
Family
Father - Marc (deceased)
Mother - Estelle (deceased)
Sister - Lissa (38 - married)
