Railja Shang

|BASICS|
Name: Railja Shang
Age: just turned 18
Birthplace: Ember Island
Current Residence: Fire Nation Capitol
Rank: Bender, Fire Nation Nobility
Family:
Parents:
Zorzan Shang, General, firebending master, Fire Nation nobleman and member of the Fire Lord's personal guards (now deceased)
Eleynja Shang, born in the Southern Water Tribe as daughter of a nobleman, waterbending master (today 51 years old)
Siblings:
Terzan, firebender and Fire Nation nobleman (today 35 years old)
Katena, married to a Fire Nation nobleman (today 33 years old)
Goralia, firebender, married to an Earth Kingdom nobleman (today 31 years old)
Nuran, waterbender (today 30 years old)
Verrail, firebender (today 28 years old)
Rozan, firebender and royal guard (today 24 years old)
Element: Water
Pets: none, loves horsebackriding, but is not allowed to have a horse because she once fell down and her family is worried about it happening again and worse this time
Weapons: none

|OPTIONAL|
Birthday: 22nd December (day after the Winter solstice)
Blood type: A-
Hobbies: waterbending, reading, playing the lute, stitching
Quirks: As the single one of her siblings, she looks not only small, but almost fragile, and has hazelbrown hair instead of their dark brown to black hair. She also has somewhat pointed ears, which is not running in the family either.
Theme Song: Not Again (Sunrise Avenue), in her relationship/quarrel with her favourite brother Rozan
A rainy day in Vancouver (secretly waterbending in a night of full moon)

|APPEARANCE|
Hair: Strongly curled, lightly flowing hazel hair that reaches down to her hips in voluminous curls and is her greatest ornament. She is lucky to have it, as none of her family posess curls or, for that matter, as lightly coloured hair as hers (they all have dark brown or even black, straight hair)
Eyes: Railja has astonishingly big, grey eyes, accentuating her whole fragility even more.
Height: At 5.15 ft. (I hope I got the right unit, I was aiming for 1,57m), Railja is a very small young woman, making her look rather like a child than like a grown woman. She has to look up at everyone, making it so easy for people to look down to her - literally.
Clothes: Railja knows a lot about how to dress, how to behave, shortly, she knows a lot about how to please the beholder's eyes same as their minds.
She had to learn all that from the cradle, since her mother is very strict in questions of etiquette. Railja herself, though, prefers light cloth to heavy one, she loves silk, and she also enjoys clothes that are more comfortable than beautiful. But as she is the prettiest of her mother's daughters and now finally in a marriageable age, she got used to dress up almost every day. She possesses too many gowns to actually know them all, her favourite dress though is a wide, green one out of silk, with silver stitching that she did herself. Her mother won't let her wear it in public though, because it neither emphasizes her small curves nor makes her look taller than she is - something she could really need. In fact, as comfortable as it is, it sometimes looks as if she was about to drown in it when she wears it.
Skin: Railja has to look to her appearance a lot, and lucky for her, she never had any problem with acne. She has the smoothest, almost white skin, that looks a little bit rosy when she gets excited of any sort or stood in the coolness for too long. When standing in the heat, she gets red spots in her perfectly milky teint. Also she tends to freckles, which is the main reason why she has to carry a parasol in summer - to not spoil her teint.
Body Type: Railja is almost freakishly thin, she seems to be fragile, precious, delicate. Her small stature and the big, grey eyes that can be soft like those of a deer as well as humourously enlightened, give her the appearance of someone you would think gets hurt as soon as she is touched.
Image:


|CHARACTERISTICS|
Personality: Despite her appearance and her uppbringing, Railja has secretly developed a very strong personality. Being the nestling did not quite pay off for her. She has strong bonds to her elder siblings, mainly to Rozan, who comes nearest to her age and is a constant troublemaker. All of her siblings, apart from Terzan, have already left the house, and she lost her father at a very young age - just old enough that he could be her hero and that she could perfectly well understand what loss she had just experienced.
This constant leaving and the feeling of being left behind shows in her personality. Railja tends to be overly sensitive when it comes to promises people don't keep, and she sometimes seems to be hungry for more attention, not from her mother - whom she actually tries to get away from - but from her siblings, especially from Rozan.
With her sister Katena, who has married a firelord nobleman and lives nearby, coming to dinner more often than the other siblings and bringing her husband with her, Railja has a rather tense relationship. Also her brother Terzan, head of the household since her father passed away, has had to deal with her puberty outbreaks as he tried to be more of a father than a brother to her. She often opposes his authority, but in secret she also admires him and has a deep sensed respect for his way to fullfill his duties. Since he started trying to marry her off, though, she got more rebellious, and it is only a matter of time before she loses her temper and gets over to open revolt.
Apart from that, she is a sunny, happy, but rather calm character. She tends to blabber when she is happy or excited, but she can also sit perfectly calm, and soothe her elder brother Rozan's ill temper, turn a smile onto her sister Katena's face, or make even the severe, over-worked Terzan laugh aloud and finally get off to bed.
Personal Strengths: inner calmth, great listener, people-person (can influence the mood of people because she senses even the hidden worries or pains and just instinctively knows how to soothe them - maybe a part of her being a healer), almost always lightly-hearted, friendly and open-minded, strong endurance (even if she does not know of it), far stronger than she looks in her mind and also body, naturally beautiful, musical and needlework-talent
Personal Weaknesses: gets often not taken seriously; although she talks much when she is happy she tends to keep her worries and problems to herself, until it eats her up inside; is too used to obey her mother and elder brothers; prefers comfort before appearance (weakness in the eyes of her mother); has an inner rebel that sometimes is just not in the mood to play perfectly after the rules of etiquette (this is when her mother admonishes her to remind her posture, smile more or less or talk only when she is asked); is very much afraid of heights, though she does not know that
Personal Hero: Quite obviously three men:
1. Her father, deceased, out of obligation to whom she does most things she does even if she does not want to and behaves like the perfect little lady she was trained to be
2. Her elder brother Rozan - much to the disappointment of her family, since Rozan is somewhat the black sheep, always getting in trouble and behaving improperly even if he tries hard to fit in. But she can't help it, she adores him and would do anything for him.
3. Her elder brother Terzan. She is not aware of this, but his strength impresses her immensly and she would never wish to do anything to harm him, even - or especially - when they have one of their disagreements.
Dreams and Ambitions: Railjas first ambition is to please her family, and therefore, do what they expect her to do - marry a rich and influential man whom they approve of. She is extremely unhappy about this ambition because she can't imagine marrying someone as old as her brothers in law, especially since she feels that her sister Katena is anything, but happy in her marriage, and that also between her father and her mother there was something amiss.
Dorment in her is though another dream, the dream to find her own path and do what SHE wishes to do, not what she is supposed to do - go somewhere she has never been, escape protection, get freckles and dirty and, for heavens sake, get to go outside the house without someone accompagnying her to "protect" her!
Likes: Railja loves the moon, she likes to take long night swims when nobody sees her - the first way of rebelling. Also she likes her bending far more than she should, teaching herself at night rather than relying on the lame tricks her bending master has been told to teach her. She also has an affection to candle light, good books and music, she likes to work with her hands, maybe also more than she should, riscing to spoil the fine, soft skin there that shows she was never allowed to lift a finger more than necessary.
Dislikes: Boredom, her greatest enemy. She also hates standing pose for a tailor or painter for several hours, and she does not like people touching her hair and getting it up to the most complicated, beautiful hairstyles, that normally take them hours to finish. She also hates being restricted, something she has accepted because it happens to her every day, all the time, though.

Brief History:

Railja was born during a winter holiday in the family Shang's house on Ember Island in the night after the winter solstice - the longest night of the year.
Her father was a nobleman from the firenation, who had married her mother, a southern water tribe nobleman's daughter, because of an arranged marriage. Railja is the youngest of her siblings by far, her next elder brother Rozan being six years older than her.

Since her mother was not the youngest any more and had already given birth to six children, the eldest one being 17 when she got Railja and Razon having been born by caeserian cut six years before, it was a pretty risky birth. Railja lay transversely, something that had not been noticed before because she was so extremely small. When she was finally turned and got out, she was completely blue, and would not start breathing for several long, painfull (for her mother) seconds. Then she finally made a sound, but she did not scream like most babies, just cried silently and whined a little.
Although the midwife prophecied she would always be sick, she was a very healthy child - just extremely small, with low appetite, refusing to grow to the normal height of children her age.

Because of that, she was always overly well protected by her parents, held inside when other children played outisde, and carefully attended on. Their worries never stopped, no matter how healthy she was and how old she grew. When she was discovered to be a bender, her mother got even more worried, allowing her the same teacher her brother Nuran had had to instruct him, but only allowing him to teach her the basics also.

And so she grew up, unspectaculary learning her way in society under the protective wings of her parents, and, after her father's death, with her elder brother Terzan as her guardian. It was soon decided that she, like her elder sisters, was to be married in order to bring more wealth and honour to her family, while her brothers tried to get as politically important positions in the Fire Nation State as possible.

((If you need more information on her, I'd advise you to read Rozan's background as well, and also take a look at Rozan's posts in *The new recruit*, that might give you some more insights on who that girl is.))

approve please!

Approved