History

Nyle's first breath almost felt like an accident—something that never should have happened, but did. Born the first child of Lord David Reid and Catherine Bourbon, his mother had failed for years to produce a child, and she lamented Nyle's conception as yet another opportunity for miscarriage... until it became clear that it wouldn't be. When he was born, after hours of complications that nearly claimed them both, the woman cried for days and called Nyle her blessing.

And perhaps he was that. He was always a sweet child—a loving son, a sharp learner, with an obedient mind. He was lauded by her family, old and new, as a blessing from Christ; the warmest and sweetest boy she would ever know. And he wasn't the only child she would have, either. As if God had once turned away from her and now ceased, Nyle was followed by two more siblings, and for the first decade of his life his family was soft and picturesque.

Something changed in him, though. Sometimes it didn't require negligent parents to trigger something callous in a child—it was simply always there. Nyle became increasingly forlorn, and distant, finding ways to bring his mother great difficulty. He would often end up lost in the woods or the hills, seeking danger. She often claimed that the boy was almost on a mission to die—that he was fixated on it, enough so that his wanderings had him locked and monitored in Harewood, constantly accompanied by staff. They didn't have a word for it, but the boy was fundamentally depressed, and used exploration as a way to satisfy his internal grief.

There was something wrong with him, really, and he knew it but couldn't seem to weaken the urge. The urge to be alone from everyone else, trapped in the spiral of his mind.

Eventually, he shaped into a talented adolescent. His years spent reading and exploring had built a man of brawny shape and sharp intellectual character, and gradually again he became the pride of Leeds. His father became Duke at the passing of Nyle's grandfather, and their lives reshaped and adapted to the circumstances present. Nyle stayed in Harewood for a few years, until he finally became a young man, and his father expected him to accompany his uncle to Africa.

After spending nearly two years there, Nyle returned, again different. He was taller than ever, and broader, with a more stately expression; the discipline of military evening his shoulders, carrying his posture upright and training him to speak back no longer. He became more stoic, but also more driven: to perfection, to grace, to rule. His priorities changed. Nyle began to push that he be married, so that he might start his life in court. He pushed that he go to Cambridge to be educated as a gentleman should be, and of course his family obliged him. He was too perfect in their eyes to spare from responsibility; he craved it, after all.

But there was something in him, still lacking. He saw a glimpse of that thing in Cambridge, and it sent him shriveling into despair for a long while. Nyle learned that he was a traitor to his own ideals; a Christian philosopher fixated on his desire for men; a husband and father who jostled with his wife only to clear his thoughts of the beauty of those who accompanied him through the archways of Cambridge Hall. Nyle realized the source of his emptiness of joy: it was his refusal to seek his own source of belonging, in the arms and grasp of a man. He turned his face away from his wife and spent years seeking reprieve in books, never once indulging.

Nyle returned from Cambridge a father of five, and one of the premier Physicians in Leeds. His work surrounding sanitation and exploring the relationship between consumption, "breath" and "bad airs" became the leading view in his city, and for his contributions he was made Viscount by his father-in-law as a sort of master of public health for Leeds and Northumberland. Ironically, this wasn't enough to insulate his wife from the disease, nor his father. Catherine widowed him, and Nyle was left with a shambling estate soon to wear its burden entirely onto him, the recipient of all of its obligations.

In some way, though he would never admit it, Lord Reid became deeply terrified of this thing: this weight on him, the burden of Dukedom that drew so near. He realized, for a brief flicker, that he had given away the whole of his life to duty and had nothing left to spare, and soon that encumbrance would be total and final to him. His father's death would be the final moment before his own life became that of a public servant for good, and this fear led him to London—under the pretense of politics—to seek after the one thing he found himself in need: love, with someone who loved him equally. Even if only for a final moment before the curtain closed; a single glimpse at joy.