#➼ ❝ A golden dear with a heart of gold ♡ ❞ ⁃ In character

[its-actually-minicika]

can we know anything about Cain? Like face claim, parents etc.? I just love that man

Absolutely, Nonny!!

Cain is a character that is very dear to my heart. I'll take any opportunity to talk about him ♡

As stated in his name, it's pretty common knowledge that he is a "Waters" bastard - born in King's Landing under two parents who never "tied the knot".

His mother is a common woman, who used to sell fish in King's Harbour. She had him at 17 (yikes) and forever refused to mention who fathered her head-strong son.

Her own father was a well respected merchant, who cast away his daughter when gossip that she was with child spread like wildfire. In a moment of pure desperation, Wynne begged her paramour to aid her in raising his child - but he refused, making the crude remark that a whore should have no need for his clean gold; she could easily make her own by offering her body, as she'd done with him before.

For months she starved, until hunger drove her to do exactly what her spurned lover instructed. She started working in a dead-end brothel on the Street of Silk, where she successfully gave birth to Cain, and a monstrous still-born daughter.

She would forever deem the loss of her other child as the Gods' punishment upon her - for living debaucherously, for selling her flesh even well into her pregnancy.

Her screams of anguish were said to scare away all the lordlings that walked inside the pleasure house on that acursed night. Thankfully, it was exactly her cries that drove one of Ser Allyn's knights to breathlessly check inside their nestle. He took pity on the poor woman, and on her golden-haired child.

He struck a deal with the old owner, to take both Wynne and her frail son under his protection.

He made the road back to Stonehelm Keep on foot, opting to give the young mother and her child his white mare to ride atop. Unfortunately, the travel conditions were more than pitiful - and Wynne died of exhaustion and an infected bladder, not three days into their unfortunate trip.

Her fever broke her in the dead of night, and the last words she uttered the knight were 'Lannisport, Jason... my child, my child...'

Cain was quickly given to a milk-maid near Stoney-Sept, and passed around there 'till his 8th nameday.

Once he reached the Swann stronghold, the knight told Ser Allyn of his kind deed - which the hardened Lord immediately called stupid, and "a foolish lapse of judgement, made by an even bigger fool". Yet he deemed it his duty to take care of the boy, since it was one of his men that indirectly felled his mother.

He ensured that there was always someone looking out for him, and that he had enough food to not die of hunger.

Once Cain turned 8, however, news about an ambitious and heroic young lad reached Ser Allyn's ears. He visited the Stoney-Sept, and immediately became impressed with the little boy, who wasted no time to rescue a ginger cat from the jaws of an angered blood-hound.

He took Cain under his protection, and thus ensued the first steps that prepared him for his knighthood.

The bastard was a hard worker, who never complained about having to squire for an upstuck Lord, or having to do all the humiliating jobs that his teacher forced upon him. When he was four and ten, already a sturdy and accomplished young man, he met Lady Tully (a 10 year old girl who readily saw his potential).

She insisted and begged her father to make Cain her sworn protector. Elmo laughed at his daughter's naivité and good heart, telling her that Cain couldn't be her knight, since he wasn't a knight at all.

His Lady's only words were "Well then, that should be easily fixed. He will become one today."

He didn't - but when the seige at Arbor took place, and Cain proved his nerve and loyalty by being the only man who didn't abandon his post, Lord Hunter Redwyne immediately knighted the lass.

He bacame Lady Tully's knight not long after. And the two became attached at the hip - where his Lady would go, Cain was sure to fastly follow.

When she was sent to live in King's Landing on her tenth and third nameday, under the short lived tutelage of Lord Lyman Beesburry, Cain followed her suit.

And when he bumped into Tyland Lannister on one hot summer day, he watched how the man turned as white as a sheet, upon glancing at his patent features.

Eyes of an eery steel-like gray. Hair as yellow as the cusps of dusk.

Cain never felt welcomed in the Red Keep. Thankfully enough, neither did his kind-hearted Lady.

The two returned for the Riverlands in 126 AC - though not before the Bliss of Riverrun met the Prince Jacaerys Velaryon at a lavish nameday ball -, and remained there until close to the outbreak of the Dance.

Anyway, that's a little snippet of his life story - not at all everything that I have in my drafts about him. If you guys would like to know more about THW Universe from before the war (or any info about the OCs that can be found within it), let me know!

Also! Regarding Cain's faceclaim - I always imagined him as a more rugged version of Rob Knighton (@knightonface on Instagram)!

Here are some of his pics that mostly scream "Cain Waters" to me: