Aoife FitzStephen's page

Born in 1149 to a Welsh slave belonging to King Coffey McGovern and his family, Aoife grew up among the children of the King and Queen. Though the reason given was because it was Hywela, Aoife’s mother, was the nanny to King Coffey’s two sons. Thus most of her days where spent playing with the two boys till they came closer to adulthood. While this wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary, the look of Aoife sent rumors through the King’s court about Aoife’s missing father. That mixed with the young girl’s looks gave rise to the rumors that Aoife was King Coffey’s bastard daughter with Hywela, his Welsh slave. Though Fintan and Braedan had been given classes of course, Aoife learned how to scrub floors and fold linens. Yet even as they aged Aoife found herself draw closer to the brothers, and when she could she would watch the two brothers learn the art of weapons. The lessoned often caught her attention more than her chores, getting her in trouble with the Queen. Though it would seem that the young half-breed woman could do very little without getting some anger from the Queen, as nothing Aoife did was ever done properly to her.
Frustrated with her position and always being told by the Queen that she was worthless, Aoife began to practice at night when all others have gone to their beds. She used the practice swords that the princes had used during the day and did her best to mock the sessions she would watch. One night, while Aoife was distracted, Finton the King’s eldest son, found his childhood friend practicing. He laughed a bit at her form but after that the young man offered to help her learn how to properly use the weapons she was attempting to use. The two met as often as they could to ensure Aoife’s training took, and it also ensured a friendship.
Though there was some session with no teaching. When Aoife had turned thirteen Hywela fell ill. After the third day of the illness she was bedridden and Aoife left helpless. Since Hywela had been so faithful, Aoife turned to God for help. Any spare moment Aoife had was spent in the church begging God to help her mother, the only family she knew, to survive. Yet the young woman’s voice and prayers fell upon deaf ears. Two weeks into her illness Hywela passed on, and it crushed the daughter she left behind. The night that Finton and she would normally use to practice was not filled with the sounds of sparring, but the sounds of sobbing from a now fourteen-year-old girl, simply being held by the eighteen-year-old prince as she cried her eyes out. After a month of morning her mother’s passing, and remembering the words her mother whispered before she passed on, Aoife turned her back upon the church and faith. Though many say it is simply out of spite, and some would be correct, Aoife just didn’t believe any longer. What God would turn his back upon a child begging to keep the only thing she truly had in the world? Not a God Aoife was willing to turn to ever again.
She threw herself into the session with Finton even more and quickly picked up skills she never even thought of before. She learned to wield two blades, not just one as the common man would, and it became clear that Aoife was willing to finish a fight with a strike from her left hand, as if to simply prove a point. Now, four years later, the young woman still serves in King Coffey’s family though she secretly has been gathering coin from side jobs she took up, such as stitching up torn clothes, in order to buy her freedom from the King and his family.