[b]Name:[/b] Prince Manalen 

[b]Gender:[/b] Male 

[b]Age:[/b] 27 

[b]Royal Status:[/b] Prince of Matal, Son of High King Erasmus 

[b]Appearance:[/b] 

Manalen stands reasonably tall among his peers. He is thin and without much muscle to his name. He has a short head of dark black hair and has inherited green eyes from his mother. However, unlike his younger sister, his own eyes have always been described as seemingly lifeless and dull. Though he would never admit it to himself much less anyone else, he could be considered slightly jealous of his sister’s eyes. Rumours of such, along with much more talk of his unscrupulous night-time activities, are abound in the court. Something which only functions to add to the rumours is his unusually pale skin for a mage and former student under the clergy. Much to his dismay his skin seems to only burn before blistering and peeling off when he exposes himself to the light of his holy god. 

The stresses from his magical works and countless hours spent combing the library books for information on various topics has left him somewhat aged for his actual years. His brow has been furrowed for too many hours to now undo and an almost permanent set of crow’s feet are about his eyes. 

It is normal for Manalen to dress in the traditional long robes of the wizards and mages of Matal, though more official occasions he used to be forced into more respectable ware for a prince. Now he is older and in control of his own actions, he prefers the bright blues, whites and gold’s signalling his respect to the clergy and mages of his people, along with the more ‘old fashioned’ garb of more ‘pure’ times. 

[b]Personality:[/b] 

Manalen has always been somewhat stuffy and traditional in his approaches, focusing on what has been recorded as happening in the past rather than focusing on the future. When his plots and plans are unravelled, he often needs a moment to resort the ideas in his head to keep things moving on track, leaving a clear opening for other manipulators actions. He holds several of the old ideas, such as those of the importance of blood in lineage, in high esteem. This leaves him slightly disconnected to the fast-changing ideas on equality within Matal. He is not held back by such ideals in areas of economics or magical discovery however, and has devoted much of his life to supporting and unravelling the secrets of the cosmos. 

Manalen is loathe to lie, and has often made the mistake of being too trusting towards others because of this. This is a habit he has in recent years tried his best to break out of, though the results may vary when he is excited, or wants to hear the answer given. He has also been far too judgemental on the abilities of others. His ideas on blood found in his books clearly do not apply when all the focus of the player’s energies is on the inheritance game. Any peasant with a drop of the right blood could simply kill the other leading candidates before threatening that same to the conclave. If the holy sky lord should will his downfall to his own arrogance in not spotting such a threat early, then it seems to him that there is little he can do but change to better fit the lord’s will of his people and avoid his wrath. 

[b]Skills:[/b] 

As an heir, he has taken largely after his father, focusing himself primarily on his books to amass a useful amount of knowledge. His topic has mostly been on magic, with a splash of economics and religion, though his pale appearance is a slight set-back in the last area’s regard. He has strong contacts in the forefront areas of research and a strong command over the realm of magic. However, due to the inordenent amount of time spent cooped up studying over the past two decades or so of his life, his physical areas leave much to be desired. He is generally weak in combat, though over the past year has devoted some time each week to knife practise, though in private and against an unmoving target. 

He is generally renown as having a wider and deeper range of knowledge than his father, however this has come at the cost of people-skills and his ability to predict other’s movements. From his time mingling with the clergy he has picked up the skills of stealth at night to retrieve forbidden and heretical works from their sealed libraries. Locking picking skills also came into use during this time. 

[b]Background:[/b] 

Manalen was raised a true and proper prince of Matal, however it has only been in recent years that he has considered the facts on his father’s mortality. Until recently he has been seen as ‘out of the loop’ on most general information. Up until now he was focused primarily on the areas of magic with a firm grounding in economics and the local religion of Matal. At a young age he quickly demanded the attention of the clergy and mages with his unusually strong skill with magic. As part of his training and deep desire to further his knowledge he served for a time alongside the clergy of the temples of the sun. However, anyone monitoring his movements during this time would be sure to note how often he seemed to change temple, which oddly matched up with a short spree of break-ins in the dead of the night. Also odd, was the unusually small amount taken from the rooms. Anyone with a brain enough to match Manalen to the crimes would note that it would be likely he was merely feigning attention away from some other area of the temple, or his own actions. 

Currently no-one other than himself knows that under the cover of darkness he broke into the secret libraries of heretical works and high-level magic’s to steal their secrets and the odd book or scroll. The second break-in on the surface level was merely to deflect attention from the lower levels. As penance for his crimes in the night, he would spend the next morning in meditation, thinking over what he had learned, in the sun. Manalen holds, as can clearly be seen with the reign of Queen Yulin, that the holy lord of the sky only seemed to enact thorough the hands of his royal bloodline, not the machinations of money or greed. Therefore, the fact that he didn’t explode into holy fire the second he stepped out into the light was a sure sign that he was working towards his will, albeit in an unorthodox manner. It seemed everything had to surely occur to his will in the end, even if mortal minds couldn’t fathom its path. That hasn’t stopped Manalen from vowing to try however. 

As time has worn on, he has distance himself somewhat from the burning light of the clergy of the temples and focused his attentions back onto the other areas a true king ought to know. Areas such as the economic side of state have come easily to him. Like his father before him, Manalen has a more modern approach to the money workings within the nation rather than the more traditional methods of the past. It seemed to him that a simple economic analysis ought to be enough to change anyone else’s mind; the thought that some people are stuck in a more traditional mindset is quite foreign.