Headcanon 03 : Maternal Family
A collaboration between @heroismdreams and @tomestobetold
The Torja family’s crest is ‘ ‘per bend azure and vert, a horse argent.’ The symbolism in the crest essentially states that this noble family is ‘loyal and true, believing in peace but ready to act on behalf of Ylisse.’ This is true for the family lineage of Sumia, and by extension Cynthia.
The Torja family is not, by any means, old blue-bloods. They’re a recent nobility, only ennobled four generations before Sumia, but a proud and respected one. The Torja family were horse breeders before they were ever nobles, and even into their nobility they kept this up as a mercantile craft with their warhorses being considered among the finest a mounted unit could ask for by the time of Awakening.
The one to earn the nobility was Faris Tariqa. He was an immigrant from Plegia. This was generations prior to any Ylissean crusades against Plegia, and so while relations were tense they, were not yet hostile. Faris came to Ylisse with a few Plegian horses – light and fast breeds unlike the kind Ylisse produces. He faced many hardships, but having brought along his own knowledge of horses with him he found stable work at a stable. It was in his work that he ended up saving the life of the Exalt. It wasn’t bravery, or love for his country, but luck and circumstance when the Exalt was taking a royal tour of the halidom – a big scene of pageantry to assert authority and remind the common folk of who their sovereigns were. Faris was on horseback, working to train one of the horses, when he saw an archer on a roof, aiming for the Exalt.
He tried to warn the Exalt of the assassin, but instead ended up taking an arrow to his shoulder meant to kill the exalt. It hurt, but Faris Tariqa lived. Grateful, the Exalt ennobled Faris, giving him a small plot of land and arranging a marriage for him to an Ylissean noblewoman named Ephanie, who hailed from an old but poor and out of favor household. What’s more, the Exalt gave Faris a new Ylissean surname, Torja, to cement his title and position.
Faris Torja, a noble in technicality, would never join the military, but kept money in his house through his trade - horse breeding and training. When he and his wife, now affectionately called ‘Ephie’, had their first and only son he would give him a Ylissean first name, but his middle name would be what his surname should’ve been had they been in Plegia.
Phillip Al-Faris Torja had an uphill battle to climb. He had a Ylissean name, a title, but there was no escaping the Plegian features he possessed. He felt he had to make a name for himself, and so he strove to become a knight. It was not easy, he faced a lot of hardship and discrimination, but eventually his horsemanship and skill with a lance would become widely known and recognized - thanks in part to his skill at the joust - and Phillip would see to it that the Torja family name was one to be respected.
Phillip would marry for love, meeting his future wife at a soldier’s ball. Her name was Pernella, a general’s daughter. She was fair and had hair of flaxen gold and bright blue eyes and was everything he was not with his dark hair, dark skin, and amber eyes. Her father did not approve, but Phillip courts her and eventually elopes with her. It’s only thanks to the fact that his father saved the life of the current Exalt, who still lived, that he isn’t arrested for the elopement. When Faris dies, Phillip inherits the family estate, where he and Pernella set up a happy life together.
Their daughter Rosalind Torja inherited her mother’s features, but had the rebellious spirit of them both. Where Phillip earned some respect for his martial skill, Rosalind caused a scandal by becoming the first woman in generations to actively serve as a cavalier. She faced her own hardships, the snickerings over her being ‘unpure’ as she didn’t become a pegasus knight, but she refused to give up. Eventually all the scandal and jokes were forgotten when she saved the life of the current Exalt upon the battlefield, mirroring what her grandfather had once done and paving the way for many other women to become cavaliers and knights after her.
Rosalind loved being a cavalier, but she did not enjoy battle. The Exalt, out of gratitude, saw that Rosalind would have a seat at his war council. She heard the voices there crying out, shouting for war with Plegia, and felt disgust. She knew who her grandfather was. But, she would hear a voice, softer and advocating for peace. Ellised was a diplomat, an unlanded lower noble, who did not want war. Even as Rosalind stopped joining war councils, she and Ellised would meet and talk, and eventually fell in love. He would become her husband, a happy arrangement for them both.
Ellised and Rosalind had one son together - Theodore Torja. Having grown up knowing how the other nobility mocked his mother, he never was charmed by any noble damsel. Rosalind taught him how to fight, and Ellised taught him various philosophies, moralities, and ethics. Theodore followed in his mother and grandfather’s footsteps and served as a knight, horsemanship unrivaled. Before the crusades against Plegia would began, Theodore would find happiness be charmed by a no-nonsense common woman named Cecelia, a milliner’s daughter, and eventually ask her to marry him. As his father said, nobility was a social construct anyway.
Theodore would be called away to fight in the new Exalt’s crusades early in their marriage. It weighed heavily on him. These were his great-grandfather’s kin. He was helping commit a genocide and he despised it. He hated the bloodshed of this ‘holy war’. Faris Tariqa founded their house and Theodore still has one of Faris’s old silk prayer rugs hung on a wall out of respect.
When on leave, Cecelia hands him his newborn baby girl, and she is heavy in his arms. There are a million Ylissean names he could give her. He names her Sumia. He names her a Plegian name, a Grimleal name, and tells his wife why she must be Sumia. Theodore Torja wanted to remind the world, remind himself, of where his bloodline began. He wanted to fight back against this war he was forced into. Her name meant ‘the one who listens’, and while he doesn’t know if he’ll survive this war, he wants their daughter to be the one who listens to the stories of their house even if he someday can’t teach her how.
Theodore doesn’t survive the war. He dies when Sumia Torja is young. The Torja family, led through a still living Rosalind, would be vehement supporters of Emmeryn’s rule, and held no prejudice against the Grimleal.
Theodore would be proud to know that his daughter grew up to be gentle and kind, that she listened and remembered all the stories, and that she had more bravery than many others could ever wish for, bravery enough to stand up for what is right, even to the Exalted family themselves.
Cynthia is very proud to be a member of a such a heroic family.
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