starting with the easy ones

Since my C&I depth challenge has been going so well, I've decided to officially do the persona challenge, using the 20+ page worksheet in the main A&S50 yahoogroups files section. I've always had a relatively concrete idea of what my persona is, so when I looked the worksheet over briefly a few months ago, I was a bit startled how many questions I couldn't answer. Some of them are fairly complicated ones, like what coinage was used during my lifetime, but some of them were fairly straightforward -- I realized I'd never chosen my mother's name, or decided whether or not I had siblings.

So I'm going to start with the easy questions, and work from there.

What is your name? Aryanhwy merch Catmael
What does it mean? "Aryanhwy daughter of Catmael"
What year is it? 1040
When were you born? 1013
Are you considered a child, an adult, or elderly? I'm an adult.
What station or class are you of? Upper gentry.
Is this the same as the station or class you were born to? Yes.
Is it likely to change in the future? I don't think so. It might once I become significantly older and infirm.
Are you wealthy, poor? Adequately wealthy, but not terribly well-off.
Is this likely to change? No, (but see previous).
Who is your father? What is his name? Catmael, a minor Welsh lord.
Where was he born? Caermyrdin (modern Carmarthen).
Is he still living? If not, when did he die? If he died, how did that affect you? He is dead. He died shortly after I was married off.
What was/is his social position? Occupation? He was a minor lord.
Did your father help raise you? Not really.
What did you learn from him as a child? That I was expected to do my duty and marry well.
Is your mother still living? If not, when did she die? If she died, how did that affect you? She died when I was very young; I was primarily raised by nurses.
Did she raise you? Until she died, yes.
What did you learn from her as a child? I was too young to remember much other than the impression that well-bred young ladies did embroidery.
Are your parents married? They were when I was born.
Is their marriage happy? I was too young to know.
What did you learn from their marriage? Nothing.
Did you know your grandparents, and what were they like? I did not know any of my grandparents.
Are you still in contact with any of your family? Only my children.
Are/were you married? To whom? I was married to Briafael.
Are/were you happy in your marriage? I wasn't in love, but I was satisfied with the match that I was in.
What is his occupation? He was a minor lord (a younger son).
How does this affect you? It allowed me to maintain a reasonable social standing after his death.
Is this your first spouse? Yes.
Do you have children? Are they related to your current spouse? I have three children, a son Bran, and a twin son and daughter, Ysfael and Yslani. They were all children of Briafael.
Do they still reside with you? Yes.
How many generations of your family are you really aware of? I have a few stories of my father's parents.
Do you have a lover who is not your spouse? Have you ever had one? No.

That seems like a good start...

I'm going to have to pick another challenge!

When I first signed up for the A&S50 challenge, I was just getting started in calligraphy and illumination. I did the math and if I was to accomplish 50 scrolls by the deadline, I would have to do 8 per year for the next couple of years. That seemed awfully daunting, and I was sure it would be more than enough challenge for me!



That was before I found out just how much fun this was, and started pestering Lady Trinite for backlog assignments, and volunteering for more new assignments, and suddenly it's not even been a year and I've already got way more than 8. This weekend I had two given out in court and also handed over two backlogs. Rather than posting the whole images of them, I'll just post snippets; you can click on the image to get the full picture + discussion/documentation.



And since this makes #8, #9, #10, and #11, I think I'm going to have to find another challenge to do in addition to this one, 'cause I'm going to hit 50 way before the deadline.




-Aryanhwy