Enjoltaire (Dragon Rider AU) - E/R character summaries
I'll make a masterlist after this :]
Enjolras Delatour is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed thing of beauty, with the mind and wit akin to that of a knife’s edge. Being born into a lavish life filled with the finest tutors and opportunities, he was bound for greatness– to be another weapon in the broad arsenal of The Grand, to be honed to perfection, maybe even one day to be used to shape the country. To anyone who'd met him, it was clear he was the epitome of quintessence, of the loftier talents of his class. But for every ounce of promise he possessed, for all his smarts and potential, defiance outweighed it tenfold. He didn’t want to be a prince locked in a tower, he didn’t want to bend to the wishes of others, nevermind his parents’. That is his one flaw in the eyes of The Grand: rebellion.
After fifteen years he finally hit a breaking point… though not for any grievous reason. He’d stopped to give spare change to a grubby little orphan boy. His mother, Jacquard Delatour, an aristocrat with a monopoly over the silk trade, hadn’t wanted him to tarnish their name, so she forced him along. Young Enjolras, in an outburst of impassioned outrage, defended the urchin, claiming that it was nothing, that it didn’t hinder him, why shouldn’t he be allowed to give him money? A few coins didn’t take any less food from the mouth of an aristocratic child. His mother publicly shamed him, berating him for associating with the lower class.
That day, Enjolras was truly confronted by the unfairness of the world, of the backward system that is The Grand, of denying kindness to those in need when it did him no trouble. It changed him fundamentally.
From then on, Enjolras Delatour refused to obey. Though he was not reckless, though he did not harm a soul (to this day, he abhors the very thought of it), he would not listen to views he deemed strayed too far from his own. Even despite an easy life laid out for him, despite being set to waltz through life lavishly until his final days, Enjolras chose to advocate for the lower classes, to walk away from his seat at the table of luxury. For years after that moment, at every turn, after every defiant act, the press defined him as a falling star, throwing his life away, burning himself out for attention and glamour. A child throwing a tantrum just to see how far he could push. They defined him as a “once promising young man, destined for a place in the Council Grand.”
Enjolras hated it. He absolutely despised how reflective it was of the corruption of The Grand, how they created a false narrative, disregarding his input and painting a false image. How they labelled him roguish and crass all for refusing to listen, to obey. So he turned to the one thing his parents had always warned him to stay away from, lest he lose his status as an aristocrat and Delatour: the Musain. One of the sole things The Grand do not– no, could never control, not that they'd ever shown an ounce of interest in trying.
“L’Académie de Musain is one of the few organisations centered around training young adults to ride dragons, a practice passed down through generations before them.” Aka: no place for the sole brat of a wealthy silk trader.
The day he joined the Musain was the day he spat at their feet.
Grantaire Verlaine is a brown-haired mop of messy curls, with striking green eyes eyes that always seem washed out by his complexion. “Perhaps if he wasn’t always passed out drunk, you’d see them more,” his mama liked to joke. Even from a young age, Grantaire had a sharpness about him that contrasted with his later acquired cynicism, with his tendency to see the worst of things. Combined with the alcohol he drank like water, he became the finest of skeptics, unbelieving, unmoved by anyone’s words no matter how passionate, and always able to point out a fault in the silver lining.
Well into his teenage years, Grantaire had never been serious– but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a soul, that he did not have a heart. He was cynical, yes, but in rare moments, he was passionate, he was wild, he was free, unchained by ideals and rash opinions. He expressed this unwillingness to conform to a society so shaped by ideals and opinions by doing as he wished, no matter what trouble it cost him. At just fifteen years old, he had tattooed at least half of his left arm, to his friends’ amazement and his teacher’s dismay. All the detention supervisors knew him by first and last name, and probably recognised his footsteps. It seemed that way; before he’d even knock, the supervisor would sigh and tell him to come in, poor Grantaire, always getting into so much trouble. Perhaps somewhere along the line, before he developed that spark of skepticism, he could have been a fine arts teacher.
But one day, a few weeks after his seventeenth birthday, it all fell apart: his mother fell ill. She couldn’t work as often, and the bills weren’t being paid on time. Obviously, Grantaire helped out where he could, and it kept them afloat for a while, but a part-time job couldn't cover everything for long. Over time, she got worse, the link between her symptoms and any known disease remaining unidentifiable. Eventually, against his mother's wishes, he dropped out of school to care for her, working full-time at the nearby tattoo parlour. It strained their relationship heavily, and to compensate, Grantaire turned to alcoholism to drink away the sorrow of his mother's decaying state. He loved her, yes, but it was painful to see her dying with no way to aid her.
A month before his nineteenth birthday, a doctor finally identified the illness that had befallen his mother. It was curable, but the treatments were long term and costly: two things Grantaire did not have in excess. He'd doubled and even tripled down on work, scraping together what money he could from selling his artwork and putting in extra hours in the tattoo parlor. In the end, it hadn't even amounted to a fraction of the vast fee. He was struggling, and he knew his mother didn't have much time left. She needed the treatment, or she'd waste away– maybe even die in the next year. His only family in the world.
Grantaire is a man of many words, but he swore he wouldn't use any of them in a funeral speech. So with no other choice, he turned to the Musain, offering to ride for their cause in exchange for paying off the treatment. The only catch they provided was that he attended— and survived —the first year of training. Grantaire, the skeptic, the cynic, and believer of nothing, even life itself, had to survive to keep the family he loved alive.
The day he joined the Musain was the day he fell at their feet.
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