#ch: arden val'doren

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character intro: arden val’doren

“It’s kind of beautiful,” Arden said as she gazed through the window. “You know, if you ignore the ruins and abandoned villages and block out the dark, swirling tendrils of the Night Veil in the background.”

Arden. The one thing Asher did not think to factor into his scheming, and the one that probably should have come first before anything else. How long she’d been spying on their midnight meetings, he hadn’t asked. He’d been surprised and also not surprised in the slightest when she’d stumbled out from behind a pile of supplies in the back of the caravan after they’d made it safely through the Deadlands.

“You can stop glaring at me, Ash. It’s not going to change my being here,” she said sharply. 

He hadn’t realized he was doing it. “But it makes me feel better.”

“I want to save mother just as much as you do,” she said, crossing her arms. Then she glared at him. “You were just going to leave me there. To sit and do nothing and watch her die.”

Asher had felt the same, which was indeed why he had taken matters into his own hands.

“How would you feel if Andrik had snuck off on a secret mission to save mother and all of Anveria without you?”

Asher cut her a pointed glance. “Andrik? Our brother Andrik? That would require him to take precious time away from deciding which asscheek he prefers to put weight on while practicing how to sit on the throne.”

more about my girl Arden under the cut :)

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some fun facts about Arden Val’Doren!

She’s Asher’s half-sister (same mom, different dads) and she’s mixed race. At nineteen years old, she’s the youngest of the three royal siblings. (Andrik is the oldest and the crown prince.)

(Asher’s father died shortly after he was born. His mother spearheaded relief efforts for fury attacks along the Anveria/Elismare border and the king wanted to work with her. A couple years later they got married.)

Arden and Asher share a passion for adventure and knowledge. Where Asher is able to apply this directly to his everyday life, Arden takes to books. As a princess, she has a different set of responsibilities than Asher, although she has always longed to go with him.

She’s bisexual, but she’s never told anyone. Asher and Arden are closer to each other than they are with their older brother, so Asher figures it out. But he hasn’t told her and she doesn’t know he knows. She really wants to tell him, and he just wants her to be comfortable enough to say it if/when she’s ready or never at all.

Magic has been banned for almost a century at the beginning of TNV, but because of Arden’s fierce love of books and learning absolutely everything and especially things she’s not supposed to know, she ends up knowing more about magic and its history than most of the people left in Elismare.

She’s a huge animal lover! When she’s not researching the cure or how to break the curse, she spends time in the stables and attempting to win over Vega’s teacup dragon, Zazz. (This is how she + Vega initially bond. Vega is immediately smitten.)

She isn’t supposed to be on Asher’s secret mission to Elismare. She overhears his plan and sneaks into his caravan. He has no idea she’s there until they’re all screaming and trying to get across the Deadlands before the Night Veil reappears at dawn.

As two women who snuck off to fight in a war, Everly and Vega are super impressed by this later on.

She desperately wants to learn how to fight, at least to defend herself. Anveria isn’t as progressive as Elismare, and as a princess, her father refuses to allow it and gives her lots of guards when she needs them instead. Asher’s taught her a couple tricks and even gifts her a dagger under the guise of it being an “ornamental artifact”  he received from some exotic foreign kingdom she’s pretty sure he made up. She begs Everly and Vega to teach her, so Everly conveniently delegates to Vega.

Cue Vega teaching Arden swords and archery:  Arden: is this how you hold it? Vega: *has to put her arms around Arden to reposition* Vega: *sweats* Everly: *smirks in the distance*

I think that’s it for now! 

(zendaya images are from her new lancôme commercial, hopefully this passes for image credit 😅)

#this is the 1 faceclaim i have for TNV #writeblr #character intro #wip: tnv #tnv characters #ch: arden val'doren #my feisty nerd #violetvineyard #thebluesthour #tnv character intros