Andrew de Lacy

Quick Background

Andrew, eldest son of Robert de Lacy, was born in Cambridge on October 23rd, 1723. He arrived on the scene two months early, after his mother, Elizabeth, had a bad fall when seven months pregnant. She never recovered, and it was touch and go whether the child would follow her to the grave, given how small and weak when he was born. However, the child's Amber blood - from his father and, as he learned later, his mother - meant that after several months he began to thrive.

He was brought up in Cambridge, as Robert was then still studying for his Masters. The latter did the best he could for his son, and spent as much time with him as he could spare, although  his studies inevitably meant that Andrew spent a lot of time with his nurses. When Andrew was seven, and by then a robust, boisterous child, Robert sent him to prep school, and spent some time travelling in Europe. However, he always made a point of coming home to spend the school holidays with his son, either at Millbank or in Cambridge.

Andrew's grandfather, Duke William (aka Delwin of Amber), 'died' in 1740, which brought Robert home on a more permanent basis, and that autumn Andrew - now Marquis of Tewkesbury as Robert was officially the Duke of Worcester - went up to Cambridge himself, to study magic. He graduated top of his class in two subjects, and top five in the others, and then set off on his own travels. He wandered Terra Magica for quite a while, getting to know the people and places. His preferences were for Scotland,  the Americas and North Africa, rather than France which was his father's favourite port of call. 

He finally returned to England in 1750s, and joined the army as a mage-lieutenant. After basic and officer training, he got his first posting, and started to specialise in battle magics. He fought in a number of theatres in the years that followed.

He inherited the Duchy of Worcester for the first time in 1775, when Robert realised it was time for it to pass before people noticed that he wasn't aging, and held it through and beyond the French Revolution, and into the nineteenth century. The arrangement of turn and turn about between himself and Robert, as Duke and Marquis, continued until well into the twenty-first century, Terra Magica time.

When not the Duke, Andrew spent most of his time either as a general mage, or in the army as a battle mage - for example, both father and son fought in the Peninsula, the Crimea and the First and Second Wars. However, to broaden his horizons, Andrew also undertook the study of law, and qualified as a barrister. Of course, every so often he had to go back to both Law and Mage School, to keep up to date with changes in both. He also began to benefit from the arcane tuition which Brand began to offer both himself and Robert, whom he treated as friends as much as pupils.

Andrew walked the Pattern in Tir-na Nog'th in 1990, Terra Magica time, around his birthday - rather to Robert's surprise and Brand's delight - and then took the opportunity to wander in Shadow, exploring and finding some places worth returning to. One of these was Gwynedd, a late-medieval world, where he settled down to make himself a place of his own, rather than being constantly in his father's shadow. Later, he spent a while as Prime Minister of England, on Earth Prime, but did not enjoy the position as he didn't have the right temperament to be a politician of that importance.

Eventually, in 2013 TM time (1995 Earth Prime time), he met Morgaine of Rebma. A relationship quickly developed between them, although it was interrupted for a while when Andrew was captured by agents of Black-Star Thule. His imprisonment was an experience he has never forgotten or truly come to terms with, in part because his eldest son, Dominic, was born as a result of Black Star's machinations. It took him over twenty years - well into his marriage - to come to terms with the fact that Dominic was innocent in what his mother had done, and to finally treat him properly.

After his rescue, he and Morgaine married, and moved to Sable (which had been created about twenty years before by its own calendar) to bring up their family. They stayed together for nearly fifty years. However, the ever-worsening relationship between himself and Chesceni, the boy he thought was their eldest child, and unexpected revelations that his mother, Elizabeth, had actually been Brand's daughter, caused strains in his marriage that put his difficult relationship with Dominic into the shade. After Chesceni left Sable, matters between Andrew and Morgaine took a slight turn for the better, but eventually it ended very badly, and Andrew had a major breakdown.

At that time, he passed all his lands and titles to Dominic, departed Sable, and was not heard of again for many years. Rumours abounded as to his fate - had he been murdered, taken by the Reich, or merely disappeared - but eventually, through the auspices of another son, Alexander, Andrew once again made contact with his father in Sable Year 119. He had spent much of the intervening time honing his military skills, and fighting in Sable Shadows against the Reich - the dark opposite of Sable ruled by Kaiser Wilhelm and Rupert Delatz, and with the latter of which he had his own issues. However, between battles, he had travelled deep into Sable Shadow, and had discovered an area where the Shadows were unstable. He brought this to Robert's attention, and between them they came up with a solution which involved the creation of a Neutral Power, the Nexus.

Andrew spent the next thirty years within the Technocracy, as he called the lands around the Nexus, before once again joining the war against the Reich and occasionally acting as regent for Robert in Sable if required.. What he didn't realise, however, is that in his absence his own dark counterpart had set about trying to subvert what he had built. A young mortal named Niamh McCormick brought the problem to his attention, and he immediately returned to the Technocracy Shadows to deal with it - his counterpart coming off by far the worse in the encounter. Since then Andrew has married Niamh, and they now have three children.

He returned to the Rest of Creation for the first time since his breakdown in the aftermath of Paolo's shooting of Robert in the ICJ, and has been involved in preparing de Lacy forces for the Shadow War and any other battles which might come from actions in the RoC.

 

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