NAME: Cirdacil, Lord of Burlach
AGE/GENDER/RACE/WHERE FROM: 88, Male, Man, Minas Anor (but originally Pelargir)
APPEARANCE: Lord Cirdacil is one of the most venerable of King Elessar's counsellors, but certainly not the most dignified. Though he is proud and stern and would certainly contest the point with fierce anger if anyone dared to tell him so, he is no Numenorean hero; his face is coarse and ignoble, his bearing relatively short and stooping. Only his acute mind and active personality at a great age confirms that the blood of Numenor runs in him strongly. Several inches short of six feet, his wears a long white beard and dresses in expensively made, but plain looking robes of black cloth touched with a little gold thread.
BITS OF CHARACTER/HISTORY YOU FEEL MIGHT BE HELPFUL IN DEFINING THE CHARACTER: No one has exactly heard of Lord Cirdacil's family before, which is perhaps one of the reasons he stands upon his honour with great pride. He is, in fact, of solidly mercantile stock. Decades ago in his middle years, he was noticed as a particularly shrewd, as well as sober-minded and trustworthy, merchant by Denethor, the last Ruling Steward. Denethor, whose genius was for war, diplomacy, and strategy, valued the help of a reliable domestic financier; Cirdacil was given the unimportant suburban fief of Burlach in one of the lower circles of Minas Tirith, and admitted to great responsibility in the Steward's treasury, where he worked long and diligently.
By the War of the Ring he was a long established presence among Denethor's highest ministers, long practiced in swelling the Steward's revenue; but becoming overshadowed, like all men of peace who served Denethor, by the overpowering threat of a greater Shadow still.
Since the return of the King he has been honoured and his employment retained, but in fact his power has greatly diminished, as King Elessar has a far more generous attitude to taxation than the old man and often restrains his more ingenious financial initiatives. He is an awkward figure at the optimistic young royal court, though the King is outwardly very kind to him and jokes that he is one of the few royal counsellors he has within two decades of his own age.
The Lord of Burlach acutely disapproves of too much spending on dancing, poetry, song, and especially the stage, but the King always overrules him on this matter too. Famously, he once exclaimed against a royal grant of a pension to a bard who wrote an epic poem in praise of the legendary Queen of the Golden Wood: "What? all this for a song?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Burghley
and his son, Sador:
NAME: Goes by the nickname of Sador in reference to his lameness, apparently by his own choice. This might seem an odd thing to do, but then, you don't know his birth name. His legal title while his father lives is Lord Sador of Burlach, but as a second son, he has few prospects afterwards.
AGE/GENDER/RACE/WHERE FROM: Twenty four year old Man of Gondor, born and bred in the Citadel itself (indeed, born into privilege within the Houses of Healing).
APPEARANCE: Handsome, but in miniature for the men of Gondor; shorter even than his none too impressive looking father, at about five feet seven inches. His bright, intelligent green eyes and long, very pale blond hair, however, are extremely attractive looking - if not at all reminiscent of the blood of Numenor.
BITS OF CHARACTER/HISTORY YOU FEEL MIGHT BE HELPFUL IN DEFINING THE CHARACTER: Sador is the youngest of his four siblings; Ecsichil is in his forties, Aerwen mid thirties (these two are half-siblings from Cirdacil's prior marriage), Circilie twenty-eight. His birth killed his mother, Aerin. His leg failed to grow properly. He is his father's favoured son, easily outstripping his dull elder brother Ecsichil. He is jolly clever and perhaps rather inclined to show this compensation off, but otherwise very courteous. He seems to work very hard, and nobody - his doting father included - is ever quite sure what at.
and his daughter, Aerwen:
NAME: Aerwen, daughter of Aerin, Lady of Burlach
AGE/GENDER/RACE/WHERE FROM: Thirty six year old Woman of Gondor, born in Minas Tirith at her maternal grandfather's house.
APPEARANCE: Tall and stately - both for her family and for a woman - but otherwise not very attractive; a big, beaky nose, lank dark hair never cared for, skin not so much luminous as unhealthily phosphorescent. Always dresses in plain blue frocks.
BITS OF CHARACTER/HISTORY YOU FEEL MIGHT BE HELPFUL IN DEFINING THE CHARACTER: Aerwen is the second and final child of Lord Cirdacil's first wife, Aerin of Minas Tirith. Neither of her parents paid her very much attention until she forced them to do so, by being quite the most studious blue-stocking of her rank in the entire city. With reluctant admiration, Cirdacil made arrangements for the advanced education which has, to the present date, filled her life (or has it?)
But when Aerwen was seven, her mother, never particularly strong, was carried off by plague. To everyone's surprise, Cirdacil married again at once. Though his first wife, married just after his ennoblement, had been born of the city gentry, his second, Eadgyth, was quite different - the daughter of a Rohirric trader. Cirdacil enforced a veneer of respectability to what was obviously an improper situation by changing Eadgyth's name to Aerin, too.
Aerwen loathed her stepmother and the usurper of her mother's name, and wished her nothing but ill. When the second Aerin died in truth, bearing a living but sickly and crippled son, Aerwen could not but feel responsible. Partly because they are 'the clever ones', partly because of her guilt, she is close to Sador as she is not to Ecsichil or Circilie (ever so lovely as Circilie is).
Finally, Aerwen has a secret for which she herself feels bitter contempt. She has not given up hope of marriage, and is frequently subject to the inward pangs of attraction, never yet requited...