Comte, and the current Knight Commander of the Order of the Swan — head of the order that protects Averoigne, holder of its seat on the Divine Council, and father of Visenne de Tarrand, who has been a hostage in Hazad for five years.
What We Know (all S6, from Visenne)
- Comte — a landed title of his own, on top of the order’s command. (GM-corrected notes)
- Knight Commander of the Order of the Swan as of now (1739). This answers the wiki’s standing question of who took the office after Guillaume de Fausseflammes was slain in Fall 1732.
- The Tarrand family supported Fausseflammes during the war — the claimant who accused Michel d’Envers of regicide, fought him for a year, and lost.
- The house gift of Tarrand is Skill at Arms.
- His daughter Visenne served in the Order of the Owl and has been held at the Citadel of Gazra since Fall 1734.
Why He Matters
He commands an Order Militant, sits on the body that elects the Most Holy, and his house backed the losing side of Averoigne’s civil war — yet he holds the office under Rincon d’Envers, the winner’s son. Either the settlement after Touraine fell was more generous than it looked, or the Swan was always bigger than its commander’s politics.
He is also, potentially, a door. The party is holding the Order of the Phoenix’s file on the destruction of the Order of the Owl, and there is a Knight Commander in the West whose daughter is an Owl knight sitting in a Hazadi fortress that the Phoenix never reached.
Speculation
Does he know where she is? Five years is a long time for the head of an Order Militant not to ransom his own daughter — noble hostages are ransomed; that is the point of the institution. He is also a Comte, so the money was never the obstacle. Either the West has written her off with the rest of the Owl, or nobody has told him, or he has decided a daughter who wore the Owl’s tabard is safer forgotten. Which of those it is says a great deal about how the West is treating the dissolution.
Speculation
Both the Swan and the Owl seats on the Divine Council changed hands in the 1730s under violent circumstances. The Swan’s holder was killed by the crown; the Owl’s was replaced by the crown and then his order was abolished. See Western Church and The Fall of the Order of the Owl.
Relationships
- Visenne de Tarrand — his daughter, captive at the Citadel of Gazra
- Guillaume de Fausseflammes — his predecessor, whom his family backed
- Order of the Swan — his order
- Rincon d’Envers — the king he serves, whose father his house fought