♛ → DORNE presents HALIMA YRONWOOD, the REGENT of KINGSGRAVE when the dragons danced in the sky they thought neither would still fly, but in the blink of an eye, they would all die. the TWENTY-EIGHT year old FEMALE who was AMBITIOUS & DEVOTED before they saw the first of the flames, is now CALLOUS & HAUGHTY after seeing the last. they’re often associated with still-smoking ashes, sharp blades tipped with poison, a strangler fig choking another tree ( amita suman. )
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tws: lots of death and violence this entire character is a walking trigger warning tbh
history.
one
halima shanti yronwood is the daughter of lord ormond yronwood, the youngest of his three children and the only girl of her siblings. as a child, her father served as regent of yronwood whilst armaan was still a child himself.
her mother was not a woman of much importance, not from a noble house. the marriage between she and the second son of house yronwood was a minor scandal many years ago, but has since been forgotten about.
she was very young when her mother died, and has only patchy, vague memories of her. perhaps the strongest association she has with her is the smell of incense, as she can no longer remember her face. as an adult, the scent still makes her feel comforted and safe in the worst of times.
she had two elder brothers, sofiane being the elder, and samir the middle child. growing up, she was close with samir, where sofiane was more of a distant figure to her.
halima is the queen of repression and compartmentalisation. she’s very much locked away most of her childhood into a part of her brain she never wants to visits, and doesn’t remember much of it as a result. every now and then, a snippet will come back to her, but she doesn’t really know if it actually happened to her or if it’s her imagination.
two
the night her cousin reached her majority was the night that halima’s childhood too ended. she was 13 years old at the time, but the events of that night are burned into her memory so deeply that no amount of oppression can fade it.
she was not present to see her father die. what she did witness was her brother samir hit the stone ground of the courtyard, whilst she stood only metres away, the blood and the gore and the violence of his demise the first indication of the chaos inside yronwood’s walls.
she found sofiane before she found armaan. her brother begged her to distract her cousin, so that he might try to go for help, but she was a precocious child, and understood what he was truly asking her to do, to sacrifice herself so that he could escape, and she felt it as a betrayal. she very quickly rationalised that either sofiane alone needed to die, or both of them would, and she liked the first option better.
she did go to armaan - but not as a distraction. instead, she told him exactly where to find her brother, turning the tables on sofiane and indirectly sealing his fate.
she did not grieve sofiane, nor her father, once she fully understood what had led to their death. samir, however, was another story, an unspoken, festering wound that she tries her best to ignore.
she does her best to repress the memories of that night, but has never quite managed to do so. instead, she settles for never talking about it, as though that would one day erase it from her mind.
three
halima decided where her loyalties lay, and that ensured her survival. in the years that followed, she would do her utmost to make certain that her betrayal of her brother was not for nothing. she is loyal to him to the end, devotedly and blindly.
she shed her girlhood and sharpened her edges. nothing about halima is soft or gentle. she grew to be a woman with a will of iron and penchant for violence.
she very much sees herself as her cousin’s right hand man. with her being so young when the rest of her family perished, he was all that she was left with, and that was the influence she had to shape her personality around in her teenage years.
whilst armaan was away from yronwood fighting in the marches, she was the one keeping things running, holding down the keep and awaiting his return. this would prove to be good practice for the present day. in the wake of joy manwoody’s death, halima has been dispatched by her cousin as his son’s guardian and regent of kingsgrave.
halima is an ambitious woman, but fiercely loyal to armaan and incredibly hardworking. she also hated joy manwoody with a passion, and is determined to ensure her sisters have minimal influence on their nephew, and that he grows up to be more yronwood than manwoody. on a personal level, she does want to make life difficult for joy’s family, both to let them know their place in kingsgrave now and just to fuck with them a little bit for her own sadistic amusement.
upon receiving the news a brother of house manwoody was planning to leave the citadel and return to kingsgrave, halima struck a bargain with king cedric tyrell, acting as his assassin to kill a septon of the old way in order to implicate the high septon. to this day, her involvement is known only by cedric.
personality.
basics
it’s important to note that people who remember halima from her childhood will remember a very different girl to the woman she became, but that halima does not remember how she used to be. as a child, she was quite shy, very quiet around those older than she was, very much “seen but not heard”, but soft and gentle with none of the hard edges she has now.
her ego is huge and her arrogance knows no bounds. her feeling of superiority is tinged with a general disdain for those she believes to be below her.
on the flip side, she’s incredibly loyal and dedicated, almost to the point of obsession. halima’s devotion is extreme.
she’s not quiet, but she’s certainly reserved, the sort of person who will observe and watch and wait to play her hand. for those who don’t know her well, i imagine her presence is vaguely off-putting and her company slightly uncomfortable.
there’s a lack of empathy to halima. she does not relate to other people at all. if you go to her for advice, expect the most unhinged, callous, emotionless suggestion you have ever heard in your life.
she believes in the end justifying the means. in her mind, she can rationalise incredibly extreme methods if the end result works for her.
she’s not prone to fits of anger or outbursts, but she’s a very angry person. however, her anger is very icy. if she’s coming for you, she’s thought about it for a while and premeditated everything she’s about to do.
she’s quite logical in her method of thinking, even if she is prone to crossing the line. however, she is quite a paranoid person, very envious, which is where her sense of logic fails her.
despite her many, many flaws, her dedication can never be doubted. she’s ambitious, but also an incredibly hard worker. she’s the type to work herself to the bone to achieve what she wants.
her mind works fast, but she’s stubbornly resolute. she has never once doubted a decision she’s made, and once her mind is made up, that’s that.
rumours
tbc, but she’s a very private person. i don’t think she invites rumour about herself.
goals
as the guardian of armaan’s son, ishaan, she’s willing to devote all her time and energy into ensuring kingsgrave remains under yronwood control until he is of an age to rule himself.
however, not all her motives are altruistic, or for her cousin and nephew’s benefit. she wants to limit any manwoody influence on the boy, and if that comes with the added bonus of making things difficult for them, that’s an added bonus. for her, it’s very much about power and control here.
however, she is fiercely devoted to armaan's sons, loving them more than anything else and viewing them as her own.
fears
one of her biggest fears is the prospect of becoming expendable. this is part of why she is so relentless about everything - she does not want to lose her place within her house. she genuinely fears being ousted and replaced.
secondary to this, it does not escape her notice that armaan was the ward of her father, and now she is the guardian of his son. there’s a slight worry that history may repeat itself, though i think this is more irrational than a likely outcome since she wishes no ill will on ishaan and there is not a thought in her head about ever going against armaan’s wishes. it does, however, mean she views any potential rival as the regent of kingsgrave with the utmost distrust.
other.
she isn’t a vain person in the slightest, despite her massive ego, but she is particularly proud of her hair, and dedicates an hour at the end of her day to taking care of it. more often than not, she wears it in a braid that hangs down to her thigh.
she very much has a soldier’s mindset, but she’s not really a battle-ready warrior or anything like that. however, in her time holding down yronwood while armaan was away, she took that duty very seriously and ensured there were contingencies in place for if the keep was ever threatened, and could possibly make a decent commander should she ever feel like leaning into that. she feels most comfortable when she is armed and usually keeps a dagger hidden somewhere on her person.
she is deeply attached to armaan in a way that is not healthy in the slightest. however, while her loyalty can’t really be questioned, she definitely feels like he owes her for all that she’s done to him.
she’s an early riser, often awake to watch the dawn.
one thing that halima is particularly gifted with is sleight of hand. she can and will use this to her advantage.
halima believes in the cycle of violence, that an act of aggression can only be answered with escalation at the risk of looking weak. she’s very much an eye-for-an-eye person.
























