"For the weyr and the weyrleader."
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire character, adopt dragon
NAME: Rhaenys, just Rhaenys. Nicknames are unprofessional and female honorifics confuse wingmates' expectations
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Traditional. What- you didn't mean political orientation?
BIRTHDATE: Late Winter 2753
AGE: 17 as of 2771
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Wingrider
WING: Daylight Wing
APPEARANCE
EYES: Light brown
HAIR: Black, never worn down
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'3, average
PLAY-BY: Azula (Avatar)
FULL APPEARANCE: For a teenaged girl of decidedly below average height, Rhaenys cuts a surprisingly imposing figure. She never leaves the weyr without her hair pinned in a severe bun. Her riding leathers are always neatly pressed and spotlessly clean. Her gaze is direct and sharp and she holds herself as straight and tall as any hold guard, making the most of the inches she does has. Rhaenys' expressions are disciplined and she rarely appears to be particularly intimidated or happy or...much of anything really, beyond professionally serious or occasionally wryly amused.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: Rhaenys is a rider in the tradition of old. She is a dutiful, professional, ideologically rigid young woman who takes herself, her job and the ways of the weyr seriously. She deeply feels the legacy of all the riders who came before and will come after her and does her best to live up to her place in the dragonrider tradition. She doesn't have a lot of patience for fun or games or jokes. Rhaenys is not particular good at relating to others. This doesn't trouble her. She enjoys her own company and Cosmiath provides sufficient social interaction. Rhaenys is uptight and considers that a virtue, not a vice. What sense of humor she does have is wry and subtle and easily mistaken for her typical self-seriousness.
Rhaenys is not a woman given to self-doubt. While she isn't the sort to boast, she is confident to the point of arrogance and trusts in her own abilities and dedication to see her through pretty much anything. Rhaenys does not make back-up plans, because to make a back-up plan requires acknowledging the possibility of failure, if only to herself. Doubt leads to hesitation and hesitation leads to mistakes after all. Rhaenys is not at all aware of her own weakness or shortcomings and considers even her personal failings the superior way to be and live.
Rhaenys believes the old ways are the best ways, the product of generations of riders and weyrfolk striving to build something greater than themselves. The rights of an individual to freedom must come second to the needs of the weyr and Pern. Rhaenys acknowledges the impossibility of stopping garnets from hatching or bronzes from Impressing women and doesn't oppose the existence of unconventional pairs. Dragons will do what they will and that is part of the old ways too. But that doesn't mean all traditions need to fall by the wayside. A weyr should be led by a man and a woman, preferably on bronze and gold respectively, to ensure a balance of perspectives while keeping power concentrated in few enough hands to allow it to be wielded effectively. Wings should be led by bronzes and browns, whose high position in the draconic hierarchy naturally promotes obedience and respect from other dragons. That doesn't mean Rhaenys believes that bronzeriders are inherently superior, just that struggling against facts of nature will always be inferior to using dragons' natural instincts to strengthen wing and weyr, even at the cost of individual ambitions. The draconic hierarchy is neither right nor wrong in her eyes. It simply is.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Greenrider mother
Rider father
Various half-siblings on both sides
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: Igen Weyr
HISTORY: Rhaenys was born to rider parents at Igen Weyr. Like many weyrbred children, she was raised in the creche, with only sporadic contact with either parent and no particularly close ties to any of her half-siblings. From as soon as she was old enough to understand, Rhaenys considered herself first and foremost a child of the weyr. Her lack of close family connections didn't bother her, when she had creche workers to care for her, fellow weyrbrats to play with her and countless weyrfolk, riders and handlers to consider her people.
When Rhaenys came of apprenticing age, she declined to study a craft. Rhaenys intended to become a rider and to apprentice would be to implicitly admit she might not succeed. While she was aware Impression wasn't something she could control, she never doubted she would be chosen. She would devote her life to preparing to be a rider and ensure no candidate was better qualified.
Rhaenys entered candidacy the day she turned 15. She Impressed promptly at her first hatching to a white named Cosmiath. While some part of Rhaenys might have hoped for gold, she knew that dragons never chose wrong and it was an honor to Impress any dragon. She walked off the stands with her head held high and her pride unbent.
Cosmiath wasn't the sort of dragon most would have guessed would choose the self-serious Rhaenys. He delighted in teasing his new rider, constantly waltzed in and out of trouble and rarely treated their leaders with the respect they deserved. But he was also capable and reliable when he needed to be and Rhaenys wasn't the sort to question things that simply were. They had Impressed. He was her dragon. That meant he was the right dragon and she could have no partner she was better suited for.
Rhaenys and Cosmiath had a mostly successful weyrlinghood, marred only by a few of Cosmiath's pranks getting out of hand. But something was troubling Rhaenys. Igen was not the liberal bastion of High Reaches, Semaca or Telgar, but even it was changed from the weyr she heard about in old Harpers tales, with greenriders leading wings and female brown and bronzeriders serving as Weyrleaders. It was the wrong way and as a newly graduated white rider, Rhaenys had neither the power nor the right to try to stop it.
And then she heard of Z'osh, who had seen his own weyr spiraling into chaos and rather than stand helplessly by, had reacted. He had removed an unfit weyrwoman, was seeking a new, more proper goldrider and opening his weyr to sympathetic riders. Rhaenys requested transfer immediately. At Fort, she would be able to truly live in the old ways. If Z'osh succeeded, he would be a hero and the example Pern needed that the new ways were not the inevitable march of a progress but a choice they could choose not to make.
She tries not to dwell on the grounding of female bronzeriders and garnetriders. It mildly troubles her, but it isn't her place to question the weyrleader's choices. The weyr must be led by one weyrleader and one weyrwoman.
