Charlotte Arlen, of the Tellerwick Arlens, built her life on the quiet dignity of order. From the age of 20, she rose through the regional offices of the House of Coin with steady hands and sharper instincts — first as an apprentice, then soon appointed to lead boundary adjudications and property charter inspections across the outer holdings.
She was known not for ambition, but for an exacting elegance — her assessments were trusted, her decisions rarely questioned. By 35, she had earned the informal title The Binder among local lords for the way she could unpick disputes with calm, binding logic.
Her home bore roses even in frost, and her correspondence was scented with the same — rose, ink, and the faintest hint of wax. She kept her social ties loose but polite, and always wore her ring with the Arlen seal, even when out among wild country paths.
Between work and family, Charlotte’s life was composed like a well-tended ledger — private, ordered, and lined with soft red blooms.
Charlotte Arlen was not a soft mother, but she was a present one — and, in her way, devoted. With Blake, she offered structure before warmth, guidance before closeness. She read aloud from charter law when they were small, taught them how to hold a quill properly, and left notes on the breakfast table that doubled as memory tests or riddles. Her love was a steady current beneath the surface, rarely spoken outright, but felt in the way she trusted Blake to hold themselves to high standards — and in the way she let them fail, quietly waiting for them to correct their own course.
Though she and Tauren didn’t exactly share a home, she respected the bond he built with their child — tolerated, even, his muddy boots and leaf-filled hair when he arrived unannounced. In her presence, he rarely made a mess of anything.
Later, after Blake had grown and stepped into House of Coin roles of their own, Charlotte’s world became quieter. She kept her rose garden, walked the perimeter of her land at dawn, and took up translating old tax ledgers from disputed holdings for the central archive — a task she claimed was “bracing, in the way swimming upstream is bracing.”
She never remarried. She had no need for anyone to share her home — her sense of completion came from knowing the order of her world held.