20 Facts about Nealan of Queenscove
1. Neal was the youngest child in his family. His had three older brothers and two older sisters. His grandmother often commented that his parents should have stopped at four.
2. He had lived at the royal palace for as long as he could remember. The few memories he had at Queenscove were not happy ones.
3. One particular one of those memories included Dom pushing him into a fountain in the middle of winter. Dom claimed it was an accident, and amazingly enough his parents had actually believed him. Neal had never forgiven Dom for that.
4. Neal was allergic to pickles. He knew this thanks to Dom, who raided the kitchen pantries and force-fed him an entire jar just to be sure.
5. The Immortals War broke out when he was twelve. He started page training when he was fifteen. In those three years, he learned how to stop internal bleeding, saw the Queen shoot a Stormwing in the throat, and lost both his brothers. In other words, he grew up.
6. When he told his mother he wanted to be a knight, she told him he was raving mad. In hindsight, Neal thought she was probably right.
7. The next eight years were the best and worst of his life. In addition to meeting his best friend, worst enemies and all the people in between, he discovered that some horses had strange tendencies to act like humans, Yamani women were flatly quite dangerous, and that Lord Wyldon was immensely fun to bait.
8. Bandits, spidrens and Scanrans aside, Neal had long made the conclusion that he was the only sane one in the bunch of determined idiots otherwise known as his year-mates.
9. Neal found it particularly cruel that his knight-mistress seemed to delight in waking him up at dawn to practise sparring, and often told her so. Like everyone else, Alanna generally ignored him.
10. During his time as Alanna's squire, Neal only met two of Alanna's children. After an exhausting day of tea parties, piggyback rides, and hermit crab races, Neal thought this was probably just as well.
11. Neal had never inherited his grandfather's aptitude for chess. He proved this by losing spectacularly to Kel three times in a row.
12. Neal once had an enormous crush on Kalasin. That was until Roald found out. The Prince, he learned, was a very protective big brother.
13. His Ordeal was terrifying. He sometimes dreams of the dead bodies and sightless eyes, and always wakes up screaming.
14. He met Yuki when he was nineteen. He made a brilliant first impression by nearly removing all his fingers on her shukusen. This was a source of endless amusement to Dom, who constantly brought it up during parties, celebrations and family gatherings.
15. Neal often wondered why he didn't die in Scanra. Eventually, he put it down to his own amazing skill. His sister told him it was probably pure dumb luck.
16. Neal always thought he'd be married in summer. The ceremony would be outdoors. Flower petals would float down gently on the summer breeze, and his pretty blonde bride would smile adoringly at him through the whole ceremony.
17. In actuality, he was married in autumn. The ceremony was indoors. Early snow blew in from chapel doors. He was hung-over from last night's bachelor party and his pretty Yamani bride glowered at him through the entire ceremony.
It was still the best day of his life.
18. Neal still enjoyed participating in University debates. They generally involved a great deal of shouting, paper-waving, and best of all, wine.
19. When his daughter was born, Wyldon presented her with a huge, fluffy toy that could only be described as hideous. His daughter, to his great disgust, loved it.
20. Neal had not set out to be a knight or a father, but between Kel, Yuki and the thousand other things that made his life worthwhile, he was rather glad he had.