| Sir Edmund Kyriell, Earl of Cambridge | 
Age: 42 (born 9 April, 1439)
Spouse: Emma Alderman (40, b. 25 July 1441)
Traits: 6 pts
+3 Personal Combat
+2 Battles (base 1, +1 from 'Confident' trait)
+2 Survival
+1 Wealth (5% income bonus)
-1 Charisma (from 'Bloodthirsty')
Temperaments:
Sanguine - dominant:
- Confident: This character is very self-assured, brimming with confidence and difficult to shake even under pressure. However, taken to an extreme, they can show a suicidal disregard for their life and the lives of others, and fail to take...well, failure into account when planning. +1 battle rolls, +1 to rout rolls against this character.
- Upbeat: Nothing seems to get this character down. They're perpetually smiling and looking on the bright side of even the darkest developments, truly the kind of optimism that can be infectious...or delusional, if the situation is bad enough. +1 to surviving non-battle death rolls, -1 to post-battle rolls (captivity, death, wounding).
Choleric - subservient:
- Bloodthirsty: This character is hotheaded and loves to jump into fights, lethal or otherwise. This is not something others find endearing off the battlefield, though. +1 Battles, -1 Charisma.
Edmund is the eldest son of Sir Thomas Kyriell and his wife Cecily Stourton, and the closer of the two to their father. Thomas's busy life, particularly his service in France, kept him away from home for most of Edmund's childhood, but he never failed to bring the lad some trinkets bought in Normandy or Calais on the rare occasion that he did return, and was the man who arranged for him to be taken in by a nearby family of other Kentish knights as a page. When the Wars of the Roses began, Edmund practically jumped at the opportunity to fight alongside his old man and set out with fellow Kentish Yorkists to join the army of Richard of York as a squire, which was where he met his father again for the first time in years. He ably served the Yorkists from Blore Heath onward like Thomas did, in the process gaining a reputation for displaying reckless bravery and bloodthirsty passion, and had so distinguished himself at Mortimer's Cross that he was knighted on the same day that his father was made a Knight of the Garter with the support of the Earl of Warwick.
Unfortunately those ceremonies would be the last time that father and son would see each other, as Thomas was executed eight days later at the conclusion of the disastrous 2nd Battle of St Albans: Edmund was still with the army of the Earl of March alongside his brother Roger and thus was not present to even attempt to save their father. The knowledge of his father's execution (or murder, as he would call it on account of being a Yorkist who recognized only Edward of March as his King) at the hands of the Lancastrians instilled a burning hatred for the House of Lancaster in Edmund's heart and made the war personal for him. As the head of his shrunken family, he now continues to fight for the House of York and considers avenging his father by helping to destroy the House of Lancaster in any way he can to be his chief priority, with personal enrichment naturally coming in a close second.
Edmund has lived quite well since the Battle of Towton, having first been elevated to the Order of the Garter and awarded the Earldom of Cambridge almost immediately after the Yorkist victory. Though not a particularly proficient politician unlike his much slicker brother, he did make the honorable and - as it turned out - right choice to back his sister-in-law Elizabeth Woodville against Margaret Percy in the clash of the rival queens, resulting in him eventually gaining wardship over Woodville's young son with Edward IV: Edward of Grafton, Prince of Wales and future King of England. Though the bookish and reedy royal lad did not prove to be nearly as martially inclined as his father or Cambridge himself were, Cambridge came to understand this and placed more emphasis on military lessons for the mind - there were still lessons on equestrianism, archery and sparring with various weapons, of course, but they were gradually eclipsed in importance by wargaming and the reading of books on the wartime exploits of history's great leaders, from Julius Caesar to Alfred the Great to the Black Prince. And though the King had commanded Cambridge to impose a strict schedule on his son, there would always be time between/after lessons and on Sundays for Grafton to play with Cambridge's own children who had followed him to Ludlow: his relatively level-headed eldest Harold, until of course he had to depart to squire under the Duke of Buckingham in 1477; his second son Thomas, the one most like the father in looks and belligerence, until he too left Ludlow to squire for Lord Hastings of Northampton in 1479; and his natural daughter Soleil, the Prince's friend since they were toddlers, before Edward's mother had been recognized as Queen and he as heir to the kingdom. When the war in France called him away, Edmund nonetheless continued to direct Edward's tutors and the Ludlow staff as best he could and wrote letters to the Prince and his daughter himself, and noted that both of them had better handwriting than he did.
All in all, with a tight daily schedule six days of the week; a variety of capable tutors ranging from humble Franciscan friars, to stern Dominicans, to academics from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge who could recite obscure historical details off the top of their heads; filling but modest meals such as ginger-and-greens soup or fresh trout baked in clay or honey-basted rabbits, with the truly lavish and kingly foods restricted to holidays; and moral lessons on the importance of virtue and the responsible wielding of power, often issued by himself and later directly demonstrated when Edward became old enough to accompany him as he administered justice across Wales and the Marches, Cambridge has done the best he can to raise Prince Edward into a king capable of leading England into a golden age, all without spoiling him. As he beholds the kindly and intelligent young man the Prince of Wales is growing into, the Earl cannot help but feel pride and satisfaction, both in having fulfilled his duty (as far as he was concerned, anyway) and in having witnessed a boy he has come to care for like a third son turn out well. His hope is now for the lad to take the throne of England, and to reign long & justly in his own right - with not a soul to weigh him down with their strings, ideally.
Edmund is a bold and passionate man: always up for a good fight, often blunt to the point of harshness with his words on the rare occasion that he isn't smiling or jesting, prone to rambling and spewing streams of consciousness at the nearest listener when agitated, and possessed of a fiery loyalty to the House of York like his departed father. Still, he does not lack a gentler and more understanding side (as the Prince of Wales and his children can surely attest) and is overall a more trustworthy man than his brother Monmouth, a consummate politician who is more willing to lie and engage in intrigue than his straightforward and (sometimes brutally) honest self. He has a wife, the daughter of a member of London's Worshipful Company of Mercers, thanks to a marriage his mother had arranged: he had never met the girl Emma Alderman, two years his junior, before, but on the occasion that he wasn't off fighting battles he found her presence bearable - at the very least she did not stink of fish, as a daughter of one of London's Fishmongers would surely have. Having been raised in fairly poor conditions for the gentry, the barely literate Edmund is also close to the peasantry and shares many of their strange superstitions to the point of carrying a pouch of lucky charms in his pocket at all times, which his better educated brother scoffs at. |
| Cambridge's family |
- Emma Kyriell, née Alderman, Edmund's wife - 40, b. 25 July 1441
- Harold Kyriell, Edmund and Emma's son, betrothed to Elizabeth Bourchier (b. 1464, daughter of John Bourchier 6th Baron Ferrers of Groby jure uxoris) - 17, b. July 24 1464. Presently squiring for Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham.
- Thomas Kyriell, Edmund and Emma's son - 14, b. March 25 1467. Presently squiring for William Hastings, Earl of Northampton.
- Soleil of Berwick, Edmund's daughter with a camp follower from the Borders - 14, b. October 7 1467
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Westenhanger Castle and the estates of Kyriell of Cambridge
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