Calope

Calope was a bastard born in the arms of a courtier and thrust into the bittersweet world of city high society. His half-elven blood and mysterious lineage more than made up for his lack of standing with the almost paralytically bored capital city youth. Free of responsibility and armed with a perfectly limited understanding of the value of money, they flirted with artists and intelligensia and prepared to inherit and squander their parents fortunes in farmland and connections with the imperial upper crust. After his mother's passing, Calope squandered his modest inheretance within a year, and then floated along on his wit and charm as a scholar perfectly happy to lie if he needed to fill in the gaps. It was not long before he could no longer bear the musty interior of an ill-used personal library or the monotony of tutoring and enscribing, and he set out on the modestly exciting life of a trader of rare books and antiquities.

His first caravan was interrupted in the dead of night by a procession of wood nymphs hollaring his name. He was cheerfully informed that his father had died in lavish comfort among the faerie courts, and upon his death each of his sons would be given to a faery queen. He had the incredible fortune of being chosen by the lavish and beautiful Queen of Summer to be made a Knight in her Summer Court. He was now her agent in the material world, and he was now tasked with defending her realm. He must be like the sun, making the world bright and beautiful and - most importantly - finding and defeating the winter queen's scion who would undoubtably be searching for him. He would be wise to stop consorting with filthy traders and merchants and begin working to defend beauty and light no matter what the cost. Before he could protest, he was touched, and collapsed.

He woke, his entire fortune gone except for the clothes on his back, with the threat of an immaterial queen over his head lest he fail to find and defeat his own brother.