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[color=orange]Name:[/color] Euric Ralei

[color=orange]Age:[/color] Forty-Two

[color=orange]Titles:[/color] Duke of Andalia, Protector of the South, Lord of Caerleon

[color=orange]Origin:[/color] Caerleon

[color=orange]Allegiance:[/color] House Ralei

[color=orange]Family:[/color]
­[hider]
[i]-Alaric Relai (Father)[/i]
[i]-Maximilian Relai (Brother)[/i]
-[LADY OF RELAI]
-Viktor Summers (First male with Olivia Margolis)
-Arthur Ralei (First male with [LADY OF RELAI])
-Cassiopeia Ralei
-Jaelyn Ralei
[/hider]


[color=orange]Personality:[/color] 
The duke can sometimes seem harsh, but the truth is that what he values the most is empathy, the ability to place yourself in other people's shoes before making a decision, especially when its relating to the law, making him a forgiving person with those who's crime is a mere mistake or was brought out of necessity, but less so for others who simply sought to gain without any thought or consideration to others. Likewise however, he believes that one must always solve the root cause of the problem before moving on to something else, as a hungry man who steals to feed himself will still be hungry tomorrow and a man who made a mistake but was not told how to do things properly can only repeat it.

[color=orange]Background:[/color]
Euric was born second son to Duke Alaric the Strong, a man who believed that the south, as the richest territory of the kingdom, bore the responsibility to raise the most swords under its banner, a man as well who had little patience for trivialties and incompetence. As a second son, Euric was considered trivial and to make the matter worst, he showed very little competence in anything but spending money and flirting with women, especially those of a status beneath his.

If he was destined to be the second son with no use whatsoever to the family, then Euric would take fun in the position that allowed him to do as he pleased with an essentially unlimited amount of funds. His favorite crowd to hand out with were of course the merchants who enjoyed his company and that of his money. From one woman to the other however, Euric landed on the loveliest Olivia. He truly believed he was in love, but then again he did so with a different woman once every month or so, though he did stand with her for almost a year.

At the end of that year however, what a lot of second sons secretly hope for happened, and his brother Maximilian was slain in a jousting tournament. It fell on him, as the second son... the only son left, to take the Lordship. He didn't want to and told so to his dearest Olivia, wanting to sever ties to a family that would not allow him to love a simple merchant's daughter and live his own life.

He told so to his father, in private as not to humiliate him in front of his vassals and subjects. Alaric took exception to that. In the hour his father took to beat him senseless, he told his son more words than he ever did before in his entire life about duty and how his one and only duty in life, the reason he was kept around and allowed to do as he pleased with no consequence, was so he could stand up to the task should a worst case scenario happen, and it just did. Euric meekly protested, but was received with a torrent of kicks and insults along with menaces that the only way to walk out of his duty was in a coffin, so he'd have to leave his peasant mistress behind if he didn't want his father to have her executed and work the hardest he ever did to become an acceptable ruler.

And so, Euric did as he was asked, begrudgingly. The separation was not an easy one and it left an even sour taste in his mouth when he learned a few months later that Olivia had a child that could only be his, one he hid the existence well until a few years later Alaric passed away. Now Duke, Alaric's first order of business was to send a generous pension to Olivia and his bastard. Even today, this remains a sensible topic as everyone knows of Euric's bastard, including his wife and while he didn't acknowledge him as his, he never denied that he was either. 

Ultimately, the things he learned and the connections he made while he hung out with merchants served him well, as today the friends of yesterday are now the heads of the merchant families of today. This makes him radically different from his father, a very martial man, Euric indeed sees prosperity as the best hope for peace in the realm and concentrates on making the south... everything that the north isn't. Clean roads, beautiful architecture, work for everyone and a focus on freedom along with less taxes on the peasantry, even if it makes him rather unpopular with his vassals and the king himself, as Euric tries his damnest to dodge the taxes he's asked to pay and oftens puts the blame on anything unpopular he might do on the king.

Ultimately however, he keeps his role minimal, serving much more as a judge than a governor, believing in a sense that what his father said about how 'One should just leave the merchants do their things' to hold mostly true, even if the good old 'Invisible hand' sometimes guides things the right way and prevents the worst from happening.