Name: Lady Cyrenna Caron, Lady of Nightsong, Lady of the Marches, called Lady Carrion in recent years
Age: 51
Appearance:
The above plus ~25 years of fairly kind aging, because finding good art of women who actually look like they're in their late 40s to early 50s is hard.
Image borrowed from
anneballaran on deviantart.
Personality: Lady Cyrenna is a hard woman, possessing little mercy and even less patience for fools. She is rather arrogant and vain, and her cynicism has been remarked upon by many. Cyrenna harbors a deep hate for the Dornish (especially in recent years) that could easily be called racism, and she has no qualms about expressing these feelings. As if all this wasn't enough, when pushed she has a very volatile temper that could be expressed in thrown objects or physical assults as easily as by words. Despite her off-putting exterior, the Lady Caron is a deft political operator who has used her wits and skills to keep the Marcher lords in line under her leadership; proof of her skills can be found in the facts that she has earned the fealty of these battle-hardened lords and that she has maintained leadership of House Caron even though by law the titles should have been passed down to her son once he came of age. Lady Cyrenna is also a prolific bookworm, preferring tomes of politics, history, and war tactics to those one might think more suitable for a woman. Though she has never been foolish enough to lead her soldiers into battle, what with the lack of training for combat and all, Cyrenna is the type of woman whom nobody would be surprised to find leading a charge nonetheless.
Biography: Cyrenna was born to Lord Rennifer Caron and his wife Gwin, formerly of House Swann. Though the Lord and Lady Caron tried and tried again to have many children, they were only ever able to conceive a single son, Petyr, and their one daughter. Being somewhat forward thinking and practical, Lord Rennifer had both of his children trained in the ways of ruling and leadership rather than relegating his daughter to sewing and other ladylike uselessness, and he would come to be very glad of that decision. Lady Gwin passed away shortly before Petyr came of age, and Petyr died a couple years later in a bandit raid (presumably of Dornish origin) as he was out riding with some friends. Though he tried to find her a suitable husband to carry on his House's lineage, Lord Rennifer was unable to do so before being caught up in the civil war, leaving Cyrenna as the Lady of Nightsong in his absence; his subsequent death in 130 AL, in the Second Battle of Tumbleton, gave her that title in permanence alongside a new one: Lady of the Marches.
Cyrenna was 24 years old when she became the head of House Caron. She used the continuing turmoil of the war to her advantage, finding herself a husband before one of the lords of the Stormlands could pressure her into marrying one of their heirs in order to acquire the lands and power of House Caron for their descendants; it would be for her own good, of course, because a woman needed a strong man to do all the ruling and such. Rather than letting herself become the last true Caron, Cyrenna struck an unorthodox marriage agreement with one Criston Wylde, who was seventh in the line of succession for his own House and had previously thought he'd be lucky to marry anyone of higher standing than a tavern wench. Criston was a rather pliable and easygoing man, the type who would (and did) gladly allow his wife to do all the lording and ruling, and who was quite happy to marry into the name Caron; he quite fancied the alliteration of his new name, truth be told.
Cyrenna and Criston were reasonably happy with one another, which was all that could really be expected of a political marriage. The Marcher lords weren't impressed with Criston, who was passable at best with a sword, but they were assuaged by their mistaken assumptions that the man would take over and be a tolerable Lord of the Marches whom they could manipulate to their own benefit. The years rolled by and House Caron found itself with three additions: Rennifer (named after his grandfather, of course), Lyonel, and Bryce. Two years after the birth of his third son, Criston died rather suddenly of an illness that also took young Rennifer and two dozen others in Nightsong and many more around the Marches. By this time the Marcher lords were coming to accept Cyrenna as the Lady of the Marches, though not enough to prevent them from aspiring to wrest power from her by marrying her to one of their sons. Unfortunately for them, their observance of the respectable period of mourning gave Cyrenna time to arrange her own second marriage much like her first.
This second husband, Damon Lannister of the Lannisport branch, was another fellow with little to no chance of inheriting his father's title, so it took very little convincing to get him to marry into Caron rather than keeping his own name; it also helped that he had met Cyrenna a few times at tourneys and other events she attended in King's Landing and that he was rather smitten with her; it further helped that he didn't care for his family and was happy to cut ties with them however possible. Though Damon was no Stormlander, he was a tried and trained knight who the Marcher lords would have at least grudgingly called Lord of the Marches, but alas it was not to be, for he was wrapped around the Lady Caron's little finger. Cyrenna had two children with Damon: a son they named Tybolt and a daughter they named Allyria, both with the blonde hair and fair features of their father. Damon gladly adopted Cyrenna's other sons, all with the dark hair of their Stormlands stock, as his own both in name and in his heart, and so they made a happy little family for many years.
Tensions in the Marches rose in 150 AL, which saw Dornish raids increase dramatically. By then Cyrenna had solidified her position (by way of poltical maneuvering and arranging beneficial marriages for her sons) as Lady of the Marches to the point that it had been years since she'd last heard of mutterings from Marcher lords about how a woman shouldn't be ruling over them. Damon and Lyonel led the Caron banner forth to fight off the encroaching Dornishmen, with Bryce tagging along as a squire looking to become a knight sooner rather than later. By 155 AL, Damon and Lyonel had both fallen in battle, Tybolt had died in a Dornish raid that set upon a riding party made up of many sons of noble houses, and Bryce was a seasoned knight and was now the leader of the Caron men at arms at the fairly young age of 21; his betrothed had also died in the raid that took Tybolt, and neither he nor his mother had found any interest in finding him a new wife. Allyria was a beautiful young woman who had the eyes and hearts of many young lordlings, but she too found herself disinclined to marry, much to the regret of said lordlings.
Cyrenna had been a stony woman before the rise in Dornish hostilities, but her losses turned that stone into hardened steel tempered by a burning desire for revenge. Though she let Bryce retain command of the men, both for the political reason of wanting him to become a strong leader and for the personal reason of not wishing to emasculate and embarrass her son, Cyrenna frequently rode out with them and acted as an advisor, which she was quite good at due to being rather well read on the subjects of war and strategy. She even had a suit of light armor crafted to fit her, and she wore a sword whenever they were out in the field, but they were mainly for show since she had no combat training and was wise enough to know that it would be utterly moronic of her to attempt to learn and put such skills to use. This happy medium between warrior and lady seemed to please the Marcher lords as well, who looked to her for leadership in these trying times.
Fighting and destroying the Dornish has become Cyrenna's sole cause, to the point that she has been neglecting her role as Lady Caron (leaving her daughter to look after things, just as her father did when he marched off to war) in favor of being the Lady of the Marches and bringing the fight to the Dornish encroachers. Her merciless ferocity in this pursuit in recent years has earned her a new appellation, spoken with proud respect by Stormlanders and spoken with fearful respect by the Dornish; they call her Lady Carrion, so named as a play on her House name and as a namesake of the heaps of corpses, both Dornish and Stormlander, left in the wake of her bloody campaign. Cyrenna herself likes to think of it as a prophetic name, foretelling the Dorne's future state after her lust for vengeance is finally sated: a bloody desert littered with piles of corpses, inhabited only by a newly thriving population of carrion eaters gorging on the remains of every last piece of Dornish scum.
