😁😁😁😁 Thanks for the ask! I've been obsessing over my girl for the last couple of days so this is perfect timing!
I'm still developing her character a bit because she's slightly newer relative to most of the other characters in Days of Resistance, so some of her motivations and stuff aren't as well-thought out as the others. But I still have quite a bit I've been working on!
Madreline is Caldren's neighbor and best friend. They were born three months apart and lived on adjoining farms for the first fifteen years of their lives. They were absolutely inseparable. Their parents were also very close, and it was always the assumption between their parents that Caldren and Madreline would probably end up together (Caldren is sort of aware of that assumption but has never actively thought about it). Madreline developed a crush on Caldren at about 12 or so, but Caldren is mostly oblivious to it.
Madreline overall is a hardy farm girl, very hardworking and industrious. She's very practical and down-to-earth, but she has a fun, light-hearted side and likes to walk barefoot in the creek and climb trees and lay in the grass, and she'll leave her bonnet untied when she's not working. She's an embodiment of spring and summer, warm and sunny and calm and outdoorsy. She's also extremely resilient and keeps marching forward through whatever comes her way.
And she's full of love. A strong kind of love, not just wishy-washy feelings. She has the kind of love that endures through heartbreak and that is willing to challenge someone when they make bad choices. She has the kind of love that sits up with Caldren the night after his parents die, that gently forces him to eat when all he wants to do is lay in bed and never move again, that physically steps in between him and the person he's about to fight because she knows he'll regret it later.
Storywise, Madreline first shows up midway through the main series of Days of Resistance, but she also plays a major part in the prequel book (The Flames of Revolution), where we get more of her and Caldren's backstory. In the main series, her first introduction is Caldren finding her again (after he yeeted off to commit felonies for multiple years due to him being an idiot with anger issues and then being afraid to face her again). He and Andreu find her in a workhouse/factory where she was taken by the soldiers after taxes were raised and her family could no longer pay them. Even in that situation, she's been making the most of things and trying to make life better for herself and the other workers it whatever ways she can. When Caldren shows up, she's both so happy to see him and also very mad that he hasn't so much as let her know he was alive in SEVEN FREAKING YEARS, but immediately sets to work with him and Andreu on a plan to escape. Caldren is also dealing with about fifty different emotions at seeing her again (mainly extreme joy and extreme guilt).
In The Flames of Revolution, we have more of a chance to see her in her natural element on the farm with Caldren. One thing that she represents in that book especially is stability and home. She's like a safe haven and rock to anchor on to.
Madreline's not necessarily the most interesting of my characters, in that she doesn't have any huge plans or traumatic backstory or anything. But I love her because she's very real. She's not afraid to get up to her elbows in dirt and hard work. She lives in the moment and does what she can with what she has, and keeps going no matter what. She doesn't have huge plans, but what she does want or care about, she goes for with all she's got and makes it happen.
