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Name: Lily R
Personal Journal: fonsetorigo
Contact: LilyRex (plurk)
Timezone: +10 (East Coast Australia)
Current Characters: Elizabeth Tudor
→ CHARACTER INFORMATION;
Character Name: Balian of Ibelin
Character Journal: riseaknight
Canon: Kingdom of Heaven
Canon Point: Battle of Kerak
Canon Building: His blacksmith workshop in France. It’s where he grew up and where he feels most comfortable and at home.
History:
Balian is the bastard son of Godfrey, the Baron of Ibelin, and a knight who is part of the crusades that serves under the current king of Jerusalem, Baldwin the IV. Balian spends his life growing up in 1100s France as a bastard, becoming blacksmith. At some unspecified point, he marries a woman who he cares for deeply, but when they first attempt to have a child she loses the baby in a miscarriage, mad with grief, she committed suicide. It’s after her death that we first meet Balian, when his father Godfrey comes to claim him, as due to a previous injury in battle (an arrow through his testical) Godfrey has never had another child of his own, revealing that Balian is his son by an Noble French woman. He asks if Balian wants anything of him as his father, and if he wants to be his son and heir of the Ibelin lands. Initially Balian rejects him, thinking his place is in his village and Godfrey tells him that he probably won’t see him again as they ride for the crusades, and if he does want to join him at some time later, that’s where he should follow him.
However that night, the priest in charge of his wife’s burial tells him that he should go anyway, since none of the villagers want him there, and going to Jerusalem is the only way that he can relieve his wife’s position in hell, as she was a suicide and suicide is considered a mortal sin by the Church. It’s not until he tells Balian that he had his wife’s corpse decapitated (as was the custom for suicides), and Balian sees that he’d stolen the cross he’d made his wife that Balian goes into a fury and murders the priest and sets him on fire. Balian then flees to catch up with his father and the other knight’s on the road, telling him that he’d committed murder of a priest. Godfrey doesn’t seem to care, happier to have a son, and almost immediately, Balian begins training as a Knight himself with the other crusaders on the road.
They are eventually caught up with by guards of the bishop who have come to arrest Balian for murder of a priest, however Godfrey says he’s innocent (or that they should fight and let God decide), which in the resulting battle, half the crusaders die, and Godfrey takes an injury to the side, which another crusader, a very wise Hospitler treats and says he’ll either be fine and live, or it’ll get infected and he’ll die. Godfrey and Balian talk, where Balian insists that he should have let himself be taken, and Godfrey says it’s not that they didn’t have a right, but he had just as much right to protect his son. They continue on the path to the Holy Land, how Godfrey’s condition becomes worse and Balian continues to learn as a knight. Eventually, Godfrey succumbs to his wounds but not before knighting Balian himself and charges him with protecting the king, and if the king is no more to protect the people. After which he dies immediately, repenting all his sins but the one of adultery. It is in the port of Messina that Balian meets Guy de Lusignan, who will one day be the King of Jerusalem through his wife, the next in line to the throne, Sybilla. They don’t get along, as Guy insists that Godfrey is a traitor to Christendom for befriending Muslims and Saracens.
After that, Balian continues on himself to the holy land, however on the way there, there is a storm at sea, and everyone but Balian on board dies. After losing the only horse he could find when he washes up on shore, Balian wanders the desert until he reaches an oasis, where the horse has also comes to drink. He catches the horse thinking he’s found a way out, until an Arabic lord turns up and insists the horse is his as this is his land; Balian refuses to give up the horse and fights the Lord, taking what seems to be the servant captive, saying that he is the new Baron of Ibelin. But as soon as they reach Jerusalem, he lets the man go as he refuses to keep slaves or captives as he hated being near to one himself.
Having already made a name for himself as a fighter from defeating apparently a great lord of Syria, he begins to learn of the tensions in the Holy Land after claiming his position as Baron of Ibelin. That most especially between the Templars, who want a holy war, and everyone else, who want to keep the peace. That men like Guy and another important Templar Knight, Richard de Chatillion, who was caught raiding a peaceful caravan, continue to try and ruin this. However Baldwin and Saladin, the respective kings, keep the peace between them even still. After meeting the protector of the city, Tiberius, he meets the Princess Sybilla formally, and is openly insulted by Guy some more, who insists that Balian will never be a nobleman.
During the dinner, Sybilla takes Balian to meet the king, Baldwin. It’s there that Balian is given his charge, to go to his land and protect the pilgrim road that runs through it, and most especially protect the people. After receiving his orders, he goes to his lands only to find them largely ignored and in need of serious repair, so he begins to do so. Making his land as prosperous as possible, and succeeds very well at it. During this time, Sybilla comes to visit him to stay for a while and they become lovers.
Meanwhile over in the land of Templars like to do whatever they want and start holy wars: they start a Holy War. Reynald raids a peaceful Saracen Caravan and Saladin declares a war over it. The first place he attacks is Reynald’s hold at Kerak, which is the land next to Balian’s. Instead of hiding away with the others and leaving the people defenceless, Balian rides out with his one hundred knights against the many more hundreds he faces. He doesn’t win, however he manages to protect the people, but passing out in battle after a blow to the head.
Personality:
“What man is a man that does not make the world better?”
Balian is every bit the stereotypical knight that people make up; to his very core he is a moral man that lives to the knight’s code to safe guard the helpless and do no wrong in his own mind. This in the end is his greatest fault, as Sybilla says; he refuses to even do a lesser evil for a greater good. He’s remarkably stubborn, refusing to be moved by greater men of power. This is what makes him dangerous at times; he’s unpredictable where that is concerned. But even if outwardly he can seem cold and stand off-ish, and arrogant because of his confidence in his abilities and lack of need to answer to others, he is a very generous man that sees the good in others, even if he’s not sure he sees it in himself. He will help them if they need it and it’s in his ability. Even if it isn’t in his ability, he’ll try any way.
Outwardly, he does not express very much, nor is inclined to talk unless he’s got something useful to say. He is exceedingly patient with most things, from waiting for crops to grow to waiting out other people’s political games. He’s a planner as he needs to be, he doesn’t mind waiting a long time to get things done. But he can be rash when angered, such as when he murders the priest for what he did to his wife’s body, though it is very rare as often he ignores his own desires.
He is a man of deep faith, not so much in religion, but in God and the greater good. But it takes him his time to learn the difference between the two through the counselling of the Hospitler Knight. He works tirelessly to such ends, to keep his mind open to others and their troubles as well as perceived differences in faith. It’s what sees him through the changes in his life, he applies the same principals to everyday duties as well as the greater ones. His morals as a knight is what keeps him grounded but also enables him to learn from his own and other's mistakes. Though to begin with, he is happy to be merely subservient to his lords, but through his relationship with his father to start with who teaches him about respect and respecting himself as a man, not just a skilled worker. He comes think for himself truly, not just be stuck in his perceived need of redemption through services to others. After Godfrey dies, it’s from the King that Balian learns how to be a leader, who instructs him to truly care for those that he serves and commands in equal measure, to not just be a pawn. He comes into his own as a strong knight and more than capable leader to face his challenges, and live by his motto of trying to better his world.
Imported Character History:
Powers/Abilities:
→ SAMPLES;
First Person Sample:
[this is a previous network post I have written for him]
[He’s writing, in a careful hand, Balian writes out numbers, numbers and amounts and little notes of supplies that are needed. The loose linen of his shirt is splattered with ink at his wrists. He sighs after a moment, running her finger down the healed scar on the side of his face. After a moment, he rises, going to find a blanket to wrap around him so he could continue his work.]
I think I’ve spent too much time in the desert. I know better now how to deal with the heat. It’s not been so cold since France… [Even though he’s sitting, he’s not working again. Or at least not yet.] Even if the desert can be half so cold at night. [Now he takes up the pen, fiddling with it in his fingers.]
No matter. Or at least, no matter here. [and he resumes writing again.]
Third Person Sample:
Balian had his tools in hand. Simple things they were, metal to bend metal, to shape and to craft. There was simplicity to it. It calmed his mind, where he thought too much, gave him purpose where otherwise it seemed flat, and empty.
Some moments, he could still hear his wife’s laughter. The happy gurgling of his would be child. Memories, and imagination. Such little use it was to spend wandering in his mind. But the snow was silent, the horses shifted in the cold. There was no laughter, only the other villagers with their sad glances and pointed avoidance. He’d have to be blind to avoid it. Only so much of him didn’t care, he missed her too much. They were nothing to that ache.
So he enjoyed the work, because the work was uncomplicated. He didn’t have to think, or speak. He took his tools, and made himself a tool with no other purpose but to do his work. It made sense, perhaps not a great purpose, but it was something he could do without fail.