Yea, I like that idea of being childhood friends/distant cousins. That's something that we could work in pretty easily I think. I have another question: Would it be possible to have nobles hire mages to train their son who has shown magic abilities? Like house mages and stuff? Basically, my character was not killed because he was off somewhere else being secretly trained to control his magical abilities, and the mages found out about the treachery and kept him hidden as he was trained over the years.