Agnes

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Skills and Abilities

While it is true that Agnes has trained herself to hold a sword and flail about with it wildly, that is the extent of her combat prowess; her true skills have nothing to do with fighting or incomprehensible forces. That does not make them any less impressive, however, since she is a true polymath - an artist and an engineer, a musician and a linguist, a sculptor and an alchemist, a poet and an anatomist, and that is not the end of it. Should all the things Agnes Wenforth has tried her hand at be written down, it would be a very long list, but the truth is that she hasn’t yet perfected them all. Of all those arts and sciences Agnes has mastered two, painting and alchemy; she is truly competent in three, engineering, music – the flute and the harp in particular – and medicine; mediocre in a couple more, such as linguistics – although the noblewoman has written some very insightful diachronic pieces on the development of Common over the years, her knowledge of Dwarven and Thalassian, the two other languages Agnes speaks to an extent, is far from perfect – and she merely dabbles in the rest.

Appearance

Physical Appearance: Slightly taller than usual, Agnes still retains a graceful shape and bearing, and although her appearance is a solid one and she could hardly be called a skeleton, unlike most of the impossibly thin noblewomen nowadays, there are no superfluous curves on her body either. The woman’s face has a permanent thoughtful look to it that no grin or grimace can completely rub out, and her gentle features give it a sense of delicate roundness. Combined with her regally rigid posture, all this forms an image of a stern, perhaps even slightly distant, but undoubtedly benevolent queen.

Usual Garments/Armour: Agnes favours dresses of modest cut and colour, but elaborate enough in terms of embroidery and other decorations to appropriately reflect the place she occupies in society as a noblewoman. Many of her garments have intricate flourishes of lace at the cuffs and at the neck – in the case of the latter, those flourishes are often impressive enough to make her head seem a pearl sitting in a white cloth shell. When dealing with official business, Agnes will often don her house’s colours – white, gold, and umber – and, in situations of still greater importance, occasionally put on a long stole displaying her family’s heraldry – the Sword and Six Pearls of House Wenforth.

Personality

Agnes Emilia Wenforth has always had a sense of duty too strong for her own good. There has been much change in her life, but this is one of the few things that were never touched by it. Its nature may be different now – what started as a childish desire to please has become a deeply ingrained habit – but at thirty-six no less than at thirteen, Agnes puts what must be done above what she wishes to do; now no less than before she chains herself to obligations both real and perceived. While this rigid sense of responsibility is not exactly the centrepiece of her being, it is most definitely an overarching presence in her life, and its influence is vast. And it is not a bad kind of influence, not entirely; it is precisely because she is dutiful that the woman never was without a purpose or had trouble with a lack of order in her life, and the satisfaction that doing what she must brings is really something exceptional – very few things can rival that sense of usefulness, of goodness, of accomplishment. That was enough for her once, but not now. Now those feelings of warmth are overshadowed by the coldly stifling feelings that accompany them. It was her duties that first acquainted Agnes with the concept of sacrifice. She does what has to be done, but it comes with a price; many times she has had to push away the strongest urges and deepest desires of her heart for the sake of what her mind perceives as right, for the sake of what must be, and there will likely be more still. Friendship, love, her true calling, even her last chance at happiness – Agnes would and quite possibly has given up it all, and yet her soul still thirsts. And so, with spirited passions burning inside but unable to melt those walls of responsibility, it is this sense of duty that makes her life twofold.

On the surface, Agnes Wenforth is the kind of woman every High Lady should be. She keeps a vaguely regal and appropriately distant, if not exactly cold, air about her – the slightly proud way she acts and speaks leaves no doubts as to whether the woman knows her stature. She is fully aware of the kind of respect she deserves, and, most of the time, she demands that it be shown, though perhaps not through sharp and haughty words, as might be common for people like her, but rather a veneer of command and self-certainty. Agnes is every bit the noblewoman in her priorities as well – she puts matters of the house and matters of the kingdom first, and she values nothing more than she does impartiality in these things. She may not be the best spinner of political webs, but she goes through what she believes to be the motions of being a Lady. Her heart might not be in it – and it does shine through sometimes – but there is no need to worry over the colour of the ink when the papers are all signed and stacked, as some of her closer familiars might say.

Yet beneath Agnes the High Lady, a creature wrought of ideals and obligations, lies Agnes the woman. This Agnes is a tender heart, and while she is usually hidden deep beneath layers upon layers of duties and sacrifices, some manifestations of her being do slip through the cracks now and then – such as the dreaminess that envelops her as she plays her music or the unusually warm word and gentle smile she tends to favour her subjects with. She is much more than these occasional lapses, however; this Agnes is a soul filled with an insatiable thirst for beauty and for art, a deep want for knowledge and for science, and, above all, an infinite longing for what cannot described but as the heart of the Light itself – all of those things together, perhaps, and something between them, and something entirely different and otherworldly as well; an indeterminate ideal thing that she never really had but still lost, something that can neither be reached nor named but still has the power to captivate the heart that dreams of it and produce in it a familiar echo. Deep inside, Agnes yearns for all these things and still many others – for happiness, for a kindred soul, for a life of peace – but these golden dreams her heart weaves are what bears the brunt of the sacrifices she makes. And so, with these feelings suppressed but far from dead, the noblewoman is forced to live between what her soul desires and what her worldly mind demands.

That is where the pain comes in. It is hardly surprising that such inner strife has left its mark on her. Small wounds upon small wounds make gashes that never heal, and Agnes, even when technically happy, appears to exist in what might as well be a perpetual state of melancholy. One might say that a life of sacrifices will do that to a person.

While it is true that it is mostly her rather extreme sense of duty that is behind this, there is another reason as well, perhaps one that goes still deeper. As a child, Agnes lived in the endlessly looming shadow of her siblings, and that forced into her a sense of... something – not meekness precisely; something like a lack of self-worth. And its echoes can be seen even now – the few who know the depths of the woman’s heart might say that some of the sacrifices she makes are not always necessary; others, those who knew Agnes as a young woman, might recall the needless self-doubt that filled her then. It is not unreasonable to assume that this doubt is still there, though likely better hidden than before – indeed, it is perhaps a great flaw of hers. This is what lies beneath the darker side of her sense of obligation – what she does and what she is is not sufficient in Agnes’ mind; she has to do better, she has to be better, and Light burn the cost of these things – and this is likely the ultimate cause of her living such an unfulfilled life.

History

In a world not yet ravaged by war – as far as mankind knew, it wasn’t – the Kingdom of Stormwind thrived – gleaming white roads like tight belts wrapped themselves around the vast expanses of Azeroth, and no ear heard the land groan; blue-topped towers and fortresses and castles loomed above the treetops of the woods they called Elwynn, gleaming sharply as they met sunlight, and no eye saw the shadows on the foliage; the name of Landen Wrynn, may the Light shine on him always, never left the nation’s grateful prayers, and no back felt the whip of tyranny. All men were content and all men were safe – all men but one, that is. Or at least this was the image of the world that Abelor Wenforth had formed in his head. Abelor had never been a patriot, and he never would be, but surely any kingdom where a grown man could not do as he wished was a rotten one, and Light burn him if that was not the case here. Family was the last thing on his mind then, and yet family was the one thing he felt he could never escape. Abelor had barely turned nineteen when he spoke the oaths of marriage – it was an arranged marriage, of course, a marriage he was pushed into; his father, the High Seat of House Wenforth, did the pushing – and felt the trap spring shut. As if the torture his parents put him through was not enough, he had a repulsive wife to deal with now. And it was indeed torture, but, of course, the value of money and strong ties Abelor was closely familiar with, and so he suffered silently – a great sacrifice, but also a necessary one. And so he suffered, each day both a little scream of frustration and the longest, most powerful wail of ennui – Abelor suffered until he felt he would break – and then the Light took his wife, suddenly and unexpectedly. An illness of some sort, the medic said, had crept up upon her unnoticed, though, as Abelor would later note to himself, the fool man did not seem too sure of it himself.

Strange are the things that freedom so suddenly gained can do to a man – strange, even dangerous perhaps. Later that same year, Abelor’s dear and honourable father met with an accident, passing on the High Seat of House Wenforth to his son. Looking back, the family’s posterity will one day say that this particular succession marked the beginning of a golden age for the Wenforths – the poor dead man had already gathered a considerable capital in the house’s coffers and significant clout in the house’s hands, and still they were a mere foundation for the work Abelor would eventually do – but it surely did not seem so then. Intoxicated with wealth, Abelor, whose previously diminutive presence had up until then been trapped in the confines of his family, broke all the chains that bound him and burst out of all the frames he had been thrust into; after such impossibly long suffering, he wanted to live.

And he lived – fully, powerfully, disastrously. When the initial stupor went away, the house was left reeling – Abelor’s mother had managed to keep most of his father’s fortune away from him, but the effects of his outburst of fiery youth were still sorely felt. Startled, the man took his first real look into the family business and, slowly but not unwillingly, transitioned into the role of a true High Seat. After all, his father was gone now, and this family was not the one he had loathed; no, this family was his. By the time his tongue wrapped around the vow of marriage once again – there was no force used this time; on the contrary, his dear and graceful mother, highly disapproving of such disrespect for this Light-blessed oath, surely only meant to be spoken once, and more still of the chit Emilia Nelles, the girl Abelor meant to marry, was laying schemes meant to thwart this fool’s affair when she met with an accident; perhaps a good thing, that, as it surely saved her much pain – by the time he spoke that vow again, the so-called takeover was complete, and Abelor’s plans to expand the family’s business had all been set in motion.

And they were good plans; he had inherited his father’s keen eye for trade and for politics, it turned out. Soon he came into the possession of several mines rich with gemstones – a fortuitous but joyous triumph gruesomely juxtaposed with the death of a friend of his father’s, a man who Stormwind respected and the Wenforths had countless times done business with; the poor thing had met with an accident mere months before – and their trade branched out into fields yet unexplored. Riches piled upon riches, and, in an admittedly childish display of extravagance, Abelor ordered the ceremonial chair of the High Seat replaced; a new one was made, a throne-like thing of wood and gold encrusted with many jewels – if some of the flapping tongues were to be believed, at least a tenth of those in the House’s possession, but, of course, rumour is a wild, wild thing. The Jewelled Seat, he called it, and the name stuck – to the chair, and to Abelor as well.

This was the family that Agnes Emilia was born into twenty years later – a beautiful, tight-knit family that also happened to be cloaked in riches from head to toe. And still it seemed there was only bad luck for her under the Light. Agnes’ father, who knew how the men of his family were – how he himself had once been – and who, fearing his sons would run the House into the ground, had so wanted an heiress, had by then become disillusioned; Elenisse, his first daughter, had, it seemed, inherited his passion for living – fully, powerfully, disastrously – and he did not think of looking for what he wanted in the young Agnes – not for a long time, at least. And so she grew tucked away behind her siblings – they stood around her in a circle, their backs to her; she was protected, but also hidden – far from her father’s favour but never far from his mind. No, he never missed a chance to talk to his dear daughter, never missed a chance to remind her what was most important in life – for Abelor, it was family, of course, and soon all his children came to share his views – and that sometimes, for the sake of that important thing, sacrifices had to be made.

Abelor knew all about sacrifice, of course, and soon enough, Agnes did too. Looking back, she would eventually realise that in this regard they were really almost the same back then – the only difference was that all his life her father had been the knife, and she, at some point, had become the lamb. These grave contemplations were still far in the future then, though; then, Agnes did what was asked of her and adopted the concept of sacrifice readily – strangely enough, through no fault of her father’s. No, Abelor never missed a chance to talk to his dear daughter, but talk was all he did; never, not once did he look back to see if his words had had any kind of effect on the girl, and, perhaps in her own vague, unconscious way noticing this – for she would never consciously exploit the oversight of her father, no, not Agnes, whose life began and ended with her parents’ words – she never paid them much heed. All the true lessons came from her mother. Emilia had once been the lamb was well; the necessity of sometimes being the lamb was something she fervently believed in with all her heart – and something she taught her daughter to believe.

Either way, Agnes adopted the concept of sacrifice readily – even with a kind of passion, perhaps, for it soon ended up closer to her heart than most things. And there it remained for most of her life, comfortably seated in the centrepiece of her being, as its shadow loomed over the stretching years, following Agnes from one day to the next – from the day when she, a girl of seven, traded in her beautiful dolls for a dustcloth, for everyone was so busy those days, and there were not nearly enough servants to take care of a property of such size and sacrifices had to be made, to the day when she swore away training with the sword lest she insult or embarrass her brothers, for the Wenforths took pride in following the little traditions of the past while looking the other way from the great ones of the present and sacrifices had to be made; to the day when she stepped aside from the man she loved, a young nobleman and a perfect suitor, so that her sister may claim her birthright, for it was custom that Elenisse, as the eldest daughter of the house, would marry first and sacrifices had to be made; to the day when she agreed to postpone her studies with the priests of the Church for half a decade to take care of her mother, for Emilia was very, very ill, and, after all, sacrifices had to be made.

Sacrifices had to be made, again and again and again. She did indeed see it as a shadow, a great and heavy one, but at the same time it felt right somehow. Every honest person under the Light had burdens to bear, and if her burdens were heavier than it was usual for a young lady of her wealth, well, then it really made no difference; the principle was the principle, and her duty was her duty, and she would bear her burdens proudly. It was natural to Agnes, and she never blamed anyone for it, and most definitely not her mother. When, after five years of fighting her illness, Emilia passed away – quietly and gently, just as she had lived, almost as if she meant to soothe her daughter with this final selfless act – Agnes wept more than Abelor did.

It was almost ironic that this tragedy would break the chains of duty and finally allow Agnes to work towards her own happiness. With her mother gone, her sister happily married with a family of her own, her brothers out in the world living their own lives – fully, powerfully, disastrously – and her old father comfortably seated in the Jewelled Seat in Stormwind, there were no more sacrifices to make. She was almost startled to find no rigidly defined path in front of her; this kind of uncertainty was almost frightening. Thought it was true that there had never been too much stability in Agnes’ life. She was only four when the First War broke out, and Abelor, who had been many things in his life but never a patriot, fled to Lordaeron immediately after the failed attack on the city, taking his family – and the Jewelled Seat, as ridiculous as it seemed to the other lords and ladies – with him. There, in that quaint northern kingdom, Agnes for the first time felt like she had some real connection to her father, though it was not just her. In Lordaeron, Abelor kept all his children close to him, often letting them have some sort of hand in shaping the house’s future. And there was much shaping to be done indeed – only a fool could not use a war to his advantage, and Abelor Wenforth was no fool, and he would definitely not hide and wait for the storm to pass as opportunities, carried by the high winds of troubled times, flew past him. No, he seized them one by one – agreements were made and deals were struck; four Lordaeronan noblemen, great business partners of Abelor’s, died in an accident, but he would not let himself dwell on that for too long, no, there were more networks to make; soon after the tragedy, House Wenforth signed a trade agreement with a minor Thane from Khaz Modan; some time after that, another one, with a high elven lady this time, and there were still many others. As Abelor’s business slowly started to look more and more like an empire of a sort, the Wenforths’ temporary home began to house more and more visitors from distant lands, people unlike any Agnes had ever seen before. Intrigued by the dwarves and frightened by the elves, she still sat with her father and siblings at the meetings, watching the guests intently, and, eventually, plucked up the courage to talk to them herself. This was when Agnes first took an interest in their languages. She was still young then, and a quick learner too, and so at the end of their stay in Lordaeron she had a decent understanding of Dwarven and a passable one of Thalassian. The Wenforths once again abandoned their home to return to Stormwind eleven years later. The city had not been completed yet, and Abelor really was no patriot, but the rebuilding project was an opportunity like any other.

Either way, after Emilia Wenforth’s death, there was no longer anything to keep Agnes in the manor, and she could finally receive the education that she had been dreaming of. For several years she studied under the priests of the Church – not as a novice priestess, but as a young scholar – and she studied many things – the history of art and the history of kings and their wars, the structure of the human body and the structure of the great machines that the dwarves and gnomes built, languages of the mind, from old dialects of Common to the parts of Thalassian that she had never understood, and languages of the heart, from the flute to the lyre. They were almost an ecstatic blur, those years – the young lady had always felt that she was somehow too big for her own person, that she wanted to reach out and touch many things, and her studies proved to be an excellent way to satisfy this urge. Yet on some deeper level a part of it always remained – an inexplicable, wistful longing for something more, something beautiful yet indefinable, a perfect amalgamation of joy, beauty, and spirit, something she could only describe as the heart of the Light itself. It had nothing to do with religion, surely, but what else was she to call it? Yes, that longing always remained, but there was nothing to be done.

Once her studies were finished, Agnes returned to her family’s manor – there may have been no more sacrifices required of her, but her sense of duty was still there, and it was as strong as ever – where she now began to lead a more well-rounded life than before. With her studies – Agnes could not abandon them, of course; she continued to hone her various skills until she came to be known in Stormwind as a true polymath, like the old nobles of bygone ages – placed opposite her duties, the scales were somewhat more even now. But still her duties remained; she could not let her father bear the weight of the house alone, not anymore, not when she could help – she saw that clearly.

And eventually, Abelor saw it too. The hopes he had once put in Elenisse and then been forced to throw away were brought back, suddenly and violently, to new life. Here was a strong young woman who had never done much living and likely never would, not as long as any kind of weight rested on her shoulders; here was a strong young woman who could make sacrifices easily and without thought and never once regret them, not as long as they were the right sacrifices to make – here was a strong young woman whom he could leave the Jewelled Seat to. Yet Abelor had never been a fool, and if the loss of his beloved wife had not been able to dull his mind one whit, age most certainly would not – he saw the situation clearly, and he saw it was fragile. It would not do to openly accept Agnes as his heiress. That would anger his sons, without a doubt, and likely lead him to meet a premature end; Abelor Wenforth had seen enough accidents in his life to know how it happened. No, he could not teach his daughter to run the house; it was impossible to do discreetly, and either way he believed she could learn to do that herself. But what he could and had to do was make her close to him; show her kindness, secure her loyalty – that was the only way to make sure that, once the time came, she would sit on the Jewelled Seat and not give it away to one of her brothers. That, and prepare for death.

High Lord Abelor Wenforth died at the venerable age of eighty-one – without finishing what he had started, but happy nonetheless.

When Abelor announced to his children and to the nobility of Stormwind that he was relinquishing the Jewelled Seat to his youngest daughter, his sons were furious. Agnes understood that – it was not a surprising reaction – but she did not expect them to try to take the Seat back by force. When word reached her of the plans they had been laying, when she was informed that they were plotting against her – surely they just meant to take over the manor; they couldn’t be thinking of killing her, not her brothers – she knew she had to act quickly, and she did. Abelor had arranged the passing down of the Seat perfectly, and, as the lawful head of the house, Agnes managed to secure help from Stormwind. Her brothers fled the city.

She was alone.

Not one and not seven days had to pass before the realisation truly set in, but it did set in eventually. Her father had left her the Jewelled Seat. And that was when the troubles began. One after another the messengers poured in – one demanding that this or that property be given back to this or that lord or lady; another that this or that sum of gold be paid; yet another announcing that this or that agreement between the Wenforths and this or that house was now void. It was as if the whole house were fog, and a great wind was coming, threatening to blow it away. Abelor’s trade empire, built on personal agreements rather than house-wide ones, as she would eventually find out, was crumbling, and all Agnes could do was watch. And she watched – she watched as one source of income after another fell away, until only a few were left. In the end, some of the wealth that her father had accumulated still remained, which still left Agnes a rich woman and would be enough to keep the house from falling apart for some time, provided she made the right moves. But that was just a temporary solution, she knew, and the true problem remained – with the expiry of Abelor’s agreements, the house had fallen very low politically, and only a small trickle of income was left; with Abelor’s odd decisions, her family had been torn apart; with Abelor’s unexpected display of trust, she had been left to deal with it all.

What the family’s posterity would one day call the golden age of House Wenforth was over.

Nevertheless, her father’s wishes were her father’s wishes and her duty was her duty; the principle was the principle. Her burdens had just become threefold as heavy, but she would bear them, and she would bear them proudly. She knew all but nothing of running a house – she was not a great economist or a trader; she was not made for this role – but she would try. Agnes Wenforth, now a High Lady, would do her duty to her house, and right now that duty was making sure the house would survive. Before she could rebuild her father’s empire, she had to lay the foundation all over again. And as she, with all the house’s archives at her disposal, explored the dealings of her father’s so-called empire, now reduced to rubble, and saw how underhanded they truly were, Agnes understood that this time even the foundation would have to be built differently. Abelor had always believed that the end justified the means and it did not matter how many sacrifices had to be made – or who was making them – but, Agnes would eventually note to herself with a kind of bitter amusement, she had always taken more after her mother. Sacrifices would be made if they were needed, and she would be the lamb if she had to, but never the knife – never her father.

Her father had been the Jewelled Seat, and although that title now belonged to her, too, there was something beneath all those glittering gems that was more important. Before the Jewelled Seat, there had been the High Seat – long ago, when House Wenforth still only served Stormwind and the King, may the Light shine upon him always; when there were no shadows in the treetops of Elwynn; when the land did not groan under the weight of the treacherous schemes that played out upon it. It was like the golden dreams that her heart sometimes wove at night, when the stars had fallen away and the only light was the light you made yourself. Perhaps those times could return. Perhaps they would be her foundation – no longer a foundation of ambition, but instead one of honor. Honor, loyalty – and Stormwind. Yes; before the Jewelled Seat, there had been the High Seat. And that was what Agnes Emilia Wenforth had to be – what she was. She was the High Seat.

Agnes

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