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NAME: Alymere
NICKNAMES: Epithets such as THE GREAT and THE MAGNIFICENT are acceptable. As for Al, Aly, or ye gods ALICE!?… well if he wasn’t so knightly and dignified he’d wallop you round the head with a lady’s saddlebag. (If you happen to be knight then to hell with dignity, get ready for that saddlebag!) Notable force will be added for the latter.
AGE: 24
RACE: Gwentonian
STATUS: Nobility. Third son of Lord Cador of Caerwent

FIGURE: Alymere has been in combat training since the age he could wield a sword and it shows. He is strong. He is sturdy. He is athletic. Being slightly shorter than some of the other knights and less able to throw his body weight around with quite so much effect he has made his specialism agility. He has a dancer’s grace and deliberation in his manners and movements which, while sounding incredibly unlikely, is not actually that uncommon in knights who learn choreographed fight steps and get a scolding for scruffy footwork. Dance lessons were a breeze after the gruelling conditioning some of his earliest trainers put him through. And while we’re on the topic of gruelling slave drivers… MOVING ON!
SWISHY HAIR: Alymere used to be the knight with the swishiest hair until Gwaine came along. Now he’s the knight with the second swishiest hair which understandably has left him bitterly jealous, slighted by MANY a fine lady and a pining drunkard to be found passed out under tables in the Rising Sun. KIDDING!! If Alymere is a little more forceful in sword training drills against Gwaine it has nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING whatsoever to do with his hair…
MANLY BEARD: REAL KNIGHTS HAVE BEARDS. Alymere is a real knight. He has a beard. He is now going to absent himself from the line of sight of any beardless knights and/or princes who may take umbrage with this claim.
HEIGHT: A very respectable 6’0, though admittedly not quite as stratospheric as some of the other knights.
PB: I don’t know. Does anyone recognize him? A French SA or maybe a stuntman.

THE KNIGHTS’ CODE… have you read it? You should. It’s the easiest and quickest way to find the weak point in a knight’s colossally well conditioned armour. It’s just a little polite sounding word but wars are started over it. HONOUR. Alymere is honourable. Alymere is all wrapped up in honour. It is a great strength of his character and no doubt when allied with a dose of inflated pride will lead to his downfall. The morality of a knight is something that has been instilled in Alymere implicitly, the rules and duties, the obligation and expectations. It’s irrevocably jammed into his very core (along with all that precision footwork and those choreographed fight sequences). It’s instinctual.

He is a fool for a quest and a challenge. Rash, brash, arrogant of ability, dive right in and hang the consequences. The very worst of Gryffindor times ten billion (Erm… fandom fail!).

He will follow and defend the one to whom he has sworn allegiance, blindly, faithfully and to whatever end regardless of his own beliefs on the matter (though he may grumble about it on the way). He has had the benefit of being raised by a number of foster lords and so has seen various interpretations of such honourable (there goes that word again) intentions pan out, some with decidedly less savoury outcomes than others. He knew what he was doing when he swore allegiance to Camelot and her king and future king. Loyalty to Camelot now supplants loyalty to Gwent, his loyalty to the King and Arthur is greater than his loyalty to his own father, loyalty to his fellow knights supersedes that to his brothers. It says something significant that this was, while not unmoving, an easy decision.

And now that we’ve covered the knight stuff, some of Alymere’s quirks and peculiarities of character. He’s a massive lightweight, it’s not even a challenge to get him drunk and singing. Oh yes, he’s a singing, dancing, flirting with everything that moves and even things that don’t, kind of drunk. He’s had deep and meaningful conversations with horses and even tried to woo a door (admittedly it did have a very ornately sculpted knocker). These things shall NEVER be mentioned again. He denies it all! He never gets drunk. Don’t believe a word anyone says. He’s much too… (you guessed it!) HONOURABLE for that. Also dignified, dutiful, graceful, obedient, gentlemanly, erm…

Alymere can sometimes come across as being rather austere and serious and reserved and snooty, a bit privileged and very inflated with his own ego. This is because he IS rather austere and serious and snooty and egotistical and privileged. Or at least he likes to think he is. He’s been under Camelot Knighthood fostership since he was 17, he likes to think he knows the lands as well as anyone. But sometimes he forgets that he is a serious and snooty and deservingly arrogant superior in every kind of way knight and turns into a bit of a goof, who laughs at his own blunders (what are you talking about he NEVER blunders!) and is not adverse to the odd prank (lies, filthy LIES). So yes, be baffled by his apparent duplicity and then tease him mercilessly about it. It’s a sure fire way to get straight to his heart (though he’d ardently deny possessing such an organ). Alternatively one and a half quarts of mead ought to do it.

VIEWS ON MAGIC: Alymere is a Camelot loyalist. He has fought enough magical creatures, warlocks and witches to know of their threat. He has also seen enough triviality in the sentencing of some to doubt it. With or without doubt Camelot’s views on magic are his views on magic and he will uphold her laws, as is his duty, with mercy, as is also his duty. His allegiance is technically to Camelot first then her King then her heir. In practice Arthur is of such a character that he effortlessly commands loyalty superior to that of his father. It would be a traumatic day indeed if the interests of the three were ever at odds but as one of Arthur’s knights it is almost certain that for Alymere Arthur’s word on the matter would supersede that of his father and the laws of the kingdom. In Gwent magic wasn’t banned and he fostered with several lords who had court sorcerers.

STRENGTHS: He’s actually a really good knight both in combat and in his behaviour out of combat. Most heartening character strengths consist of generosity, protectiveness and attentiveness towards the people of Camelot and a genuine desire to be helpful. Combat strengths include:
[+] Improvisational fighting. Which pretty much means he can and does fight well with anything he can get his hands on, the more inventive the better. But it’s scrappy and messy and while he (not so) secretly LOVES it that way he would favour the more dignified sword if there was one to hand.
[+] Quarterstaff. It puts best use to his agility.
[+] Archery from horseback.

WEAKNESSES: Some of the more significant character flaws include: pride and arrogance and a penchant towards severity and superiority. Combat weaknesses are numerous and I’m sure Arthur and fellow knights would be able to ever so kindly note their way towards an EXTENSIVE list on his behalf, but to stick with just three:
[-] Defensive sword work. On the offensive he’s more than comfortable but when pushed back his blocking gets very messy very quickly.
[-] Mace. Eminently proficient but has trouble strategically seeing more than a few moves ahead either in his opponent or more worryingly in himself.
[-] Standing archery. It’s somewhat nuts that being on a moving animal actually improves his archery. He can hit eight out of ten bullseyes from standing. The amount of training he’s had this should be ten out of ten in wind & hale. It’s possible he has dubious long distance eyesight when it comes to static objects. UNPROVEN. If true this would be a MAJOR weakness but for now we’ll just blame his archery skills.

SPECIAL SKILLS: See strengths though while you’re here how about some bizarre trivia? He can spit cherry stones so hard they can knock unconscious a game bird from ten feet. It’s one of his less dignified party tricks. His more dignified ones include… erm. I’ll get back to you on that one.
ACCENT: He’s a court boy. It’s all precise diction and Received Pronunciation. You’d have to have an acutely sensitive ear to pick up on any of his South Wales upbringing, though you might spot it in some of his turns of phrase.

BIRTHPLACE: Caerwent in the kingdom of Gwent.
FAMILY: He’s the third son of Lord Cador of Gwent. His older brothers are both knights, Cador (the patronymicly named heir) is a knight of Gwent, Tor is a knight of Tirmawr. Their mother is dead but Cador remarried and through her they have a younger sister, Elaine though Alymere only ever knew her as a toddler as he left his father’s court for that of a foster Lord at the age of seven. He has very strong brotherly ties with a number of the knights he was fostered with as well as with the knights he matured with in Camelot.
OCCUPATION: Knight of Camelot
CURRENT RESIDENCE: Camelot. Do knights have housemates? If so the position is WIDE OPEN!
HISTORY: I’ve waffled massively and alluded to a lot of history along the way so I’ll try and be brief here. We’re nearly done… first a bit of information about Caerwent. It’s a fairly significant city in Gwent. Alymere’s father is one of several Lords and they all also have obligations in the Royal court of Caerleon. Cador the younger resides in Caerleon as a knight though equally has obligations in Caerwent. Alymere as a third son was always destined for the political diplomacy of foreign knighthood rather than internal (GWENT) knighthood or the land management of his father’s estates. Though he had little say in his first fostership placement in the dubiously neutral Gwynedd as he aged he had more say. At seventeen he CHOSE Camelot and at 21 he CHOSE to not leave.

Alymere was fostered at Gwynedd for four years between 7 and 11 as a page, receiving general training in all areas of combat but spending far more time than he likes to remember polishing armour and mucking out horses. Some of his fondest memories though are of falconry and the first solo hunt in which he and some of the other pages felled and prepared a deer inviting their mentor knights to share their feast.

His squireship began in the kingdom of Mercia, which was downright terrifying and very much like being thrown in at the deep end because Mercia seemed ALWAYS to be at war with someone or other and it was the duty of a squire to accompany his knight into battle. Alymere learned FAST and in all the hard ways. Too much witnessing of death too quickly and at too young an age. Some of the boys it destroyed. Some it hardened into bloodthirsty monsters. Alymere was lucky because he had a good knight a good man looking out for him but others were not so lucky and it was his first experience of the loss of friends.

At 14 he moved to Tirmawr and squired for his brother, Tor. Tirmawr was at peace for the entire duration of his stay so much so that he was positively itching to fight by the time he left for Camelot at 17. At Tirmawr he had the time and liberty to hone his skills. It was all about strength training. It was about training for the next tournament. There was a lot of laughter and socialising and with his comrades not dying around him left right and centre he made a lot of brother in arms friends. There was always talk of Camelot and Uther’s knights. The magic free kingdom was an oddity and yet it remained as powerful if not MORE powerful than its neighbours. It was equal parts intrigue and adventure that lead Alymere there when he was 17. He wanted to train with the best and Camelot’s knights were the best. And he knew he’d made the right choice when it became immediately obvious that Camelot’s 13 year old Prince was a superior warrior to some of the matured knights he had known in Mercia and Tirmawr.