History

Early Life
Born into a comfortable life as the third son of a diplomat, in a Northern English town. Julian spent most of his childhood travelling.

He was an adorable little terror with a cherub face and spoiled rotten because of it. Even his brothers doted on him, and it was a known secret that his father favoured him dreadfully. His mother, however, was not his biggest fan. She was the only disciplinarian he knew, the only one willing to tell him no, but she did it with no affection. She showed him no warmth when he was good. To him and him alone she was callous and bordered on cruel.

Winning her favour became his obsession at a very young age. When his brothers pleased her with academic excellent, he dove head-first into studies. When they please her with kindness, he went out of his way to be more than kind. It never worked. She loved his brothers without hesitation, but with him she remained cold and distant.

Adolescence
His mother was only the start of his obsessive streak.

His father was never home, as work took him away on frequent trips, and he was still quite young when his brothers became men and left the home. The moment he was alone with his mother, she sent him to a boarding school on the other side of the country. He didn't mind it. He studied hard, he won over other students and teachers easily. Even had a few secret romances, but he was there, far from family, when he got word of his father's capture.

It had happened during a diplomacy trip to a conflict-prone nation. War ignited like wildfire and the visiting politicians were taken as prisoners of war, and executed shortly after.

He descended into his obsessions. Though they twisted from scholarly things to innocent fixations on older men and other students, typically men who took a distinct, active disliking to him. The top of his list was a bully who tormented him mercilessly during most of his boarding school career. He thrived under the humiliation. It made him weak and he went out of his way to react and give his bully every opportunity to strike.

Adulthood
Julian had always intended to go to university, but his current unyielding obsession with his bully dictated his choices. When he discovered his bully would be studying law, Julian threw heart body and soul into getting into the same university, as much of the same classes as he could manage.

But then he got there. He got there top of his class and raring to go, only to find out there had been a change of plans. His bully had left the country, abandoned his parents dream for him to be a lawyer, and instead sailed off across the sea in search of adventure.

Julian was distraught. He was lost without that fixation to anchor him. His grades struggled for the first semester, leaving him at risk of being removed from the university altogether, but then one of his law professors started to single him out in class. Took an interest in him. The man was teasing, but not in a mean-spirited way. He teased like a man encouraging him to do better and calling him out for his failures.

And just like that, Julian found someone new to fixate on. He drove himself back into his studies with a newfound passion.

In the following years, he developed a private affair with his professor, who was a married man. Julian was sharp. He worked hard to impress and please the man with knowledge with and an inordinate amount of eager compliance and attention.

It was right before graduation when the secret came out. The scandal bled throughout campus, though they kept it under wraps enough to protect the professor, the whispers sent quiet shockwaves through his peers.

He graduated with honours, but little fanfare. His mother, with a touch of blackmail, took away the money his father had left to him in exchange for her silence, and forbade him from ever making contact with his brothers again. He at least got to keep his family name and his standing as the third much-loved son of his esteemed father.

But out of everything, what shook him the most was losing the professor. He didn't get a chance to say goodbye. The professor took a sabbatical immediately and word reached Julian that the man's marriage had fallen apart. It broke his heart that he left the life of the man he adored in ruins, and it devastated him double that they'd never see each other again. There was no closure, nothing but pain.

When he left university, he did so without friends, without family, without love. But Julian was adaptable and intelligence. He had enough loose ties to other lawyers to build a network and a reputation as a clerk and a personal assistant.