she knew me by heart

・・・✶ BASICS ! name: Meilin Corbray nicknames: Mei (common), Lin (family only, rarely) alias: tbd title: lady of heart’s home (secondborn) age: 30 gender: cis woman (she/her) place of birth: Heart’s Home, the Vale marital status: unwed religion: faith of the seven languages: common tongue 

・・・✶ APPEARANCE ! face claim: Huang Qiao eyes: warm brown, soft and expressive hair: dark, long and shiny, frequently styled in elegant updos or down with some adornment build: slender, carries herself with effortless grace scent: wildflowers, apple blossom, sweet and comforting clothing: understated elegance, flowing silks and fine wool, delicate embroidery and myrish lace. usually in warm reds, soft creams, sage greens, and dusty rose, with floral and vine motifs

・・・✶ PERSONALITY ! positive traits: devoted, alluring, compassionate, dutiful, perceptive, magnetic negative traits: detached, evasive, skeptical, proud,  alignment: neutral good allegiance: House Corbray stance: the most capable house should rule, regardless of blood or ambition character inspo: gabriela (gabriela, clove and cinnamon), nausicaa (nausicaa and the valley of the wind), ashara dayne (asoiaf), hestia (greek mythology) ・・・✶ BIOGRAPHY !

🐝: still figuring her out, still need to plot, i have some pinterest quotes and a dream, anyway, here goes nothing

but the heart has its own memory, and you remember everything. you remember muddy boots abandoned at the castle doors. calloused hands stained with earth and apple juice. children weaving crowns from wildflowers they insisted were treasures fit for ladies. you remember every shepherd who greeted you by name, every widow who tucked honey cakes into your hands despite having little herself, every orchard planted with the quiet hope that someone else's children might one day rest beneath its shade. heart's home was never a place of abundance, but neither was it ever a place of want where it mattered most. its people taught you that wealth was measured not in gold, but in shared harvests, open doors, and neighbors who carried one another through the hardest days. love, you learned, was seldom loud. more often, it smelled of hearth smoke, fresh bread and rain-soaked earth. 

what is love but devotion? and you have always loved deeply. perhaps it was simply the way of heart's home, where every pair of hands was expected to serve another. you watched your family give themselves to the land, to the harvest, to the people who, in turn, gave themselves back. there, you learned that devotion was never spoken but practiced daily. in remembered names, in open doors, in quiet kindnesses and promises kept. so you gave yourself just as freely to the villages nestled beneath the mountains, to orchards that asked only patience, to every soul who called heart's home their own. and somewhere along the way, devotion became affection, and affection became folklore. young men blamed your smile for every foolish thing they had ever done. they say spring arrives sooner wherever you linger. they say the mountain winds favor your footsteps, that wildflowers bloom a little brighter after you've passed. some call you blessed, some call you enchanting, a few, beneath lowered voices, call you a witch. you have never cared much for the stories, you only know that you have loved your people, and in return, they have loved you enough to make you one of them. 

what is love but sacrifice? the world has never been as simple as songs would have it. you understood your brother's marriage long before others found forgiveness for it, for you had watched the harvests fail and counted the losses all the same. affection is precious, but it does not fill granaries. kindness cannot mend a roof without timber, nor keep hungry mouths fed through snow. there are debts that love alone cannot pay. you have never mistaken practicality for cruelty, nor sacrifice for defeat. to lead has never meant choosing the gentlest path, only the one that ensures there will still be a home to return to. 

what is love but responsibility? kings rise, kings fall, the seasons care little for crowns. while great houses dream of the iron throne, the orchards will still ask to be tended, the harvest will still come, and winter will not wait for councils to end. you cannot pretend the kingsmoot is meaningless, too many lives may yet depend upon its outcome, but neither can you believe that a crown alone has ever made a kingdom flourish. a ruler's first duty is not to dream, but to endure, and to see that their people endure beside them. heart's home has always been burden enough to carry. you were taught never to reach farther than your hands could faithfully hold. if you cannot tend your own garden, what business have you ruling another's? to adapt is to endure. you only pray that, in learning to survive, you do not forget who you are.