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[ungod]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Laura
Contact: jojonium
Age: 23
Current Characters: n/a


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Canute
Age: 17
Canon: Vinland Saga
Canon Point: chapter 52: Legend of the Hero

Background: Here in general, but just for Canute:

Canute is the second son of Denmark's King Sweyn, 17 years old in 1014. Sweyn is doing his best to take over England, and the Danes have been locked in a war with the English for a while now because of it. Canute spends his childhood mostly overlooked; he's the younger son and not very warlike, compared to his people, which puts him in the unique position of purposely going unnoticed for a long time. He learns to keep his head down, do as he's told by his father, and not express anything of his own personality for fear of being scolded for it. He's more or less raised by an attendant named Ragnar, who treats Canute like his own son and tries to raise him like a normal boy-- teaching him to fish and cook, and so on. None of these "normal boy" things are viewed as acceptable by Sweyn, so it doesn't do Canute any favors.

By the time he's 17, Canute has been sent off with a small army to join the war against the English. His older brother is off doing the same somewhere else, with one important difference: Canute has been sent out to die. King Sweyn does not intend for or want him to return, basically because he doesn't love him. Rough. While he's out, Canute winds up caught between two groups of mercenaries: Askeladd's group and Thorkell's (on the English side). Whoever has possession of Canute has an advantage over Sweyn or can climb into a position to earn his favor, both groups think, and Canute reacts to this by doing not much at all except keeping his mouth shut as a survival strategy. Eventually he winds up with Askeladd and company, who are aiming to escape Thorkell's group's pursuit and go back to the king. Canute opens up slightly as he's made fun of until he does, really, and things proceed normally-if-awkwardly until Askeladd uses Thorkell's approach as an opportunity to kill Ragnar and blame the other group on it.

From here, Canute loses it a bit. He's forced to acknowledge his own faults, Ragnar's faults, as well as the faults of all mankind and also God in a very short period of time, while around him Askeladd and Thorkell's groups slaughter each other and still keep trying to play tug-of-war with him. In the end he breaks out of his self-imposed shell of silence and takes command, quite thoroughly, of the men who are left; he's going to go home and deal with his awful father and send God a big middle finger, and they can come along if they want. They do; the group returns to where King Sweyn is amidst political tension, because again: Canute was not supposed to make it back alive. Sweyn tries to get rid of him by offering him territory, and meanwhile Canute and his gang of miscreants weigh their options and wonder what the best way would be to kill Sweyn and take the crown.

Canute pops in from just when this happens, actually; Askeladd is totally about to mouth off to Sweyn, and Canute is a little uncomfortable with him making waves.

Personality:

Canute is a young man whose personality is dictated by the political atmosphere around him, largely. Early in his life he's seen to be timid and quiet, learning as a child to keep his head down and his opinions to himself in order to steer clear of the violent political struggles that go on in royal Danish households in the early 11th century. If he's quiet, if he's out of the way and doesn't make any waves, it will be better for everyone involved--such is the mindset he grows up under, and he isn't encouraged to break out of it for a long time. His long-time attendant, Ragnar, takes him under his wing and raises him like his own son; when they're far away from the castle, Ragnar has Canute fishing and learning to cook. Unfortunately, the way Ragnar raises him is viewed as unfit for a prince, as Canute should be learning to fight and honing a strong thirst for power instead of doing servant work like cooking; King Sweyn makes this abundantly clear by reacting violently and hatefully when Canute presents him with a dish he cooked in hopes it would bring him closer to his father. The end result is Canute becomes even more withdrawn, staunchly refusing to speak to most people on a daily basis.

He does not, however, actually stop doing the things he's been told are unfit for someone of his rank. Demonstrating a stalwart conviction that doesn't show through until he's really pressed (by rowdy vikings, of all people), Canute still continues to practice his "lowly" hobbies in private and keeps an eye and ear trained on the conversations around him. In this way, while his timidity at first seems to be wholly because he's just a wimp, by his own admission it's a strategy of self-preservation. He says he has to use his words carefully each and every time he speaks, lest he accidentally spiral his father's name and his country into some kind of war or scandal. Being quiet and offering no suggestion or opinion protects him not only from Denmark's enemies, but from his own family as well. This is an obvious point of pressure for him, as he explodes in anger when he's finally pushed into speaking about it and Ragnar comes to his defense about how difficult it is to be a member of a royal family that's wracked with political strife more often than not. Canute is pressured by his station, shuts down because of it, and is pretty lonely and awkward as a result. He can barely talk to Thorfinn (who is no great show of social acumen himself, but still manages to come away thinking Canute is awkward and a loser) without stumbling through the experience.

What brings about the largest change in Canute's personality is the death of Ragnar. After Ragnar is killed, Canute is forced to face the fact that he is absurdly dependent on him to get through life in general, as Askeladd and the other vikings catch onto rather quickly; Ragnar does his speaking for him for the bulk of his introduction, even, while Canute shrinks into the background. By the time Askeladd has Ragnar killed, Canute has opened up just a bit more, but Ragnar's death hits him harder than anything he's experienced before. He goes into shock at first and then a fit, screaming that he won't go anywhere without Ragnar until the attitude is quite literally slapped out of him. This event causes him to almost withdraw into himself again, until he actually faces the fact that he's alone (a dream-Ragnar helps give him closure, at least). Now alone, Canute essentially has two choices: collapse and allow the warring states to do what they want with him, or stick up for himself.

He goes for the latter; boy, does he go for the latter. It's worth mentioning that up until this point, Canute has been devoutly Christian, believing that God's salvation is a given and Heaven will be better than mortal life on Earth. The change comes when he's given a theory: the only time man is full of love is when he is dead. Canute espouses this theory entirely, choosing to view all love men feel in life as prejudice (including the love Ragnar had for him, as it led Ragnar to do things like allow innocent villagers to be killed for Canute's safety). He then decides that if all love is prejudice and all consequences of it are suffering, including the madness of war, that God is deplorable. The paradigm shift from a paranoid prince interested primarily in protecting himself to a prince set on protecting his people is almost instant; within minutes, his despair has dried up and he's left looking at the world full of love and wondering why God saw fit to force men to suffer to attain salvation.

He's not really pleased about the idea, in the end. Where he was content to sit back and let the world happen around him before, now Canute has a conviction and ambition that drive him to take matters into his own hands. His newfound purpose in life is to create a paradise on earth, solely to stick it to God and fix the violent, needless bloodshed that is his people's way of life. All at once he comes to terms with the fact that the only person who has ever loved him is dead, and from there he decides he needs to deal with things in his own way; he takes on a king's duty and becomes a leader with the attitude to match. This new ambition is already deep in his core; when he's convincing Thorkell to join him with his men, Thorkell remarks that Canute has a look in his eyes like he's looking through everything to something beyond, something that normal men cannot see-- very quickly, Canute has gone from shuffling awkwardly through life to marching over life's back with confidence and purpose. He pities fighters who waste their lives on violence only to die, and takes it upon himself to save them-- pragmatically, because a good number of them will have to die before he has the power necessary to get what he wants.

So. While he's driven and focused, Canute has not been at bat with these things for very long, and so he does still have the humility and reason to know when to back down, what battles to fight, and when to seek counsel from people more experienced than he is. However, he still hasn't gotten any less awkward; the confidence he wields now is that of a young king (or king-in-waiting, as it were), giving him presence as a leader and true member of a royal family, but in terms of socializing... He can still be awkward, naturally or just because behaving like a prince to lower-ranked people makes him come off as curt and arrogant. That he believes in his ideals now is clearly evident; he does not make room for other people's opinions very easily unless they align with his own. Still the element of surprise is on his side, more around people who knew him as a quiet, wilting thing but also around those who didn't know him before-- he looks for all intents and purposes like a weak-willed reject, but his surprisingly cunning and confident mind help in swaying others to his side (or at least not to oppose him outright). Sometimes he can still be overcome with nerves (he's never killed someone, for example, and doing so for the first time nearly makes him faint), but he doesn't shy away from what he's decided to do.

He still retains the attitude of being very aware of what he's saying at all times that he cultivated when he was young: he discusses plans in the open, where it would be harder to send a spy; Askeladd, Thorfinn, and Thorkell are his servants before they're his allies; he'll say important things around people he doubts the trustworthiness of to keep up the illusion that he does trust them. With allies he can be quite casual, though he still maintains a distance of rank-- despite being the leader, he's still willing to casually banter about fights with Thorkell (who makes some untoward comments that no other royalty would allow, so). He has allies of varying degrees before he has friends (honestly he has no friends), and this suits him just fine. Following his view that love is prejudice and behaving as instincts urge leads only to meaningless suffering, well... of course he's not the most openly friendly young man. He pulls rank and is more concerned with his men as a whole than as individuals. While he regrets it when his men have to die, he considers that a small price to pay for his plans and anything that might happen to him as a result a small price to pay as thanks for their help. The sudden impetus to make him more independent (ie, Ragnar's death) did so in spades and while he isn't perfect (far from it, conspiring to kill his father to take the crown), he's leagues above the willfully clueless thing he was before. His bursts of temper have cooled into slightly more regal ones, leaving less distraction from his no-nonsense, all business leadership style.

On top of that, he's smart and capable, with the harsh realities of war under his belt to keep him grounded. Disillusioned with his life so far, yes, and without much to do with himself outside of politics, yes... but with a drive to create his paradise, he manages.

Essentially, Canute has gone from a wallflower pawn waiting for something to happen to a fiercely ambitious (almost) king who is quite tired of living in a world he can't believe in.

Abilities: Nothing supernatural or superhuman, but he cooks pretty well...

Alignment: Going with Elios, as basically all of his character development hinges on his issues with feeling and responding to love.

Other: Nothing.

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: here, and an assortment of somewhat shorter threads from the same game

Questions: none!