meet enna greymark
First dilemma: do I change her name to Whitemark so I don't have to faff around with grey/gray issues? Decisions, decisions...
I have to confess, I use a lot of the planning for these newsletter posts and TikTok videos to do more intensive worldbuilding. It forces me to develop a rounded picture in my head rather than skating along on pure vibes as I usually would, and has the added benefit of peeling back the curtain to let you guys have a good old look while I stick my arms up to the elbow in the story’s innards and sort of swirl them around wildly in the hopes something good comes into focus.
So, with that in mind, in this newsletter I’d really like to introduce you to my story’s lead character.
Name: Enna Greymark (…or maybe Whitemark. I can’t decide how concerned I am about the US/UK spelling of grey. I think it might be more trouble than it’s worth and therefore I ought to change it?)
Age: 25
Nationality: Fire Court
House: Greymark
Location: Greymark Keep in the far north of the Fire Court, tucked into the base of the Kyltane Mountains
Enna is a kind, brave and infuriatingly indecisive. She’s inherited her mother’s slow temper and fair colouring, with white-blonde hair and the blue-green eyes often seen in Greymarks. However, she’s also inherited her father’s heavy brow and narrow face, giving her a cold and serious look that, combined with her tendency to shyness, makes her come off as much less merry and friendly than she really is.
Her family are very old, with lineage stretching back to the earliest founders of the Fire Court. They can trace a very, very distant relationship to the royal family in Kaldast, House Iskarr (as can most of the noble families in the north). They are tough, martial, and have little patience for weakness.
Like most of the Fire Court, they practice absolute primogeniture, so the oldest child inherits. The house ruler’s spouse always takes their name, with questions of marriage-naming and precendence always settled by whoever holds the higher social ranking. (For example, were Enna to marry within the Fire Court as expected of her, she would take her husband’s name if his family ranked higher than hers, but he would take hers if he were lowerborn.)
All this to explain that her mother is the current ruler of House Greymark; Karrina, Countess of Northold and Lady of the Keep. Her father is a more minor lord from House Erskin, whose lands lie near the eastern border with the Earth Court.
Enna is precisely in the middle of her siblings, with both an older and younger brother and older and younger sister. Her oldest brother Farne is in line to inherit once their mother passes away, and he’s going to be an excellent Count of Northold and Lord Greymark. He’s strong, fair and deeply proud to be of his land and people. Her mother is colder and more detached, with years of having to defend the Fire Court’s northern border making her far more stern and less trusting than she was as a young woman.
In many ways, Enna is a classic Greymark. She’s got a martial eye with a good head for tactics, she has little tolerance for fools, and she loves her home and people dearly. However, she also feels like an outsider a great deal of the time. There are five years between her and her sisters on both sides, so she feels excluded as the older two and younger two are both close in age and form natural teams.
She’s also too trusting of people, something her family have tried to coach her out of. She’s more superstitious than they’re comfortable with and inclined to be impulsive, where her family are wary and like to assess a situation fully before they plunge in. She’s very self-aware, but it doesn’t stop her from making all kinds of stupid decisions.
Most difficult of all, Enna hates violence. Her family all see violence as a useful tool in whatever plan they’re carrying out, but Enna will go to any lengths to avoid it. This means that, despite her excellent training in martial arts like swordplay and archery – as expected of any Greymark child – she’s actually not that useful in a fight. She hesitates where she should commit, overthinks where she should operate by instinct, and puts her team in danger by refusing to do what’s necessary.
She’s never been given the chance to figure out what her route through life would be without her family’s expectations and her role to live up to. She doesn’t ever bother giving it any thought, because she knows she won’t get the chance to chase down anything other than what’s laid out for her: making a good marriage, serving her lord and brother, and defending her home and her people.
If she ever did stop to think about it, she’d realise that she wants is to travel. She wants to soak up everything she possibly can about the world; see the plateau-citadels of the Air Court and the great masquerade balls of the Water Court. Meet all different kinds of people and learn from all of them and settle down somewhere warm and dry and near the ocean, so she can go on travelling as long as she lives.
At the start of the story, she’s been assigned to a patrol unit to try to toughen her up and get her more used to fighting when she has to. She’s been on it about four months, and she’s eagerly seeking an excuse to be done with it. Absolutely nothing interesting has happened yet, it’s utterly boring, and she really hates being out in the snowy wilderness with no company for hours on end.
So when the opportunity arises to leave the only home she’s ever known, you can bet she’s going to leap at it with both hands…
I hope you like the sound of her! She’s coming into sharper and sharper focus as I write the early chapters of the story, and I’m so looking forward to introducing her properly. Now I just need to make a decision on her surname – any thoughts?
Ellie x
I say f what other ppl *might* think, Greymark is too cool not to keep
I like the name Greymark a lot and honestly don’t see too much of an issue with the US/UK version of the word. I feel like it’s super, super common to spell it either way that it wouldn’t cause too much of a stink (on top of it just generally sounding better as well)