Les Laval's father had died of an illness when he was young. Since he was still a child, he was entrusted to his uncle, a nobleman, to be raised. He couldn't inherit the barony until he came of age. His uncle was a typical nobleman—and a successful one at that: dignified and respectable on the surface, vile and shameless behind closed doors. He relied on the rules of the nobility and used every means at his disposal to secure greater benefits.
One such means was marriage. While Les Laval was still a child, he was engaged to a noblewoman and sent to her castle. It was a dark period in his life. Later, the noblewoman died in some kind of disaster, though no one knew whether it had been an accident.
Under the terms of the engagement, the noblewoman's estate passed into Les's hands—or, more accurately, into his uncle's. As Les grew older, more and more "accidents" happened around him.
At last, Les came of age and inherited the barony. He began distancing himself from his uncle, but there was no denying that he had always lived in his uncle's shadow, and he still had trouble managing his territory.
He suspected there was a plot behind it all. After all, his uncle had managed his territory for years; perhaps one day Les would die in some kind of accident, too. The only reason he had survived this long was that the Kingdom of Roas had launched an attack, drawing his uncle's attention elsewhere.
Les was much like his uncle, exceptionally skilled at exploiting the rules. It was a talent he had honed to survive. As a child, he had no one he could trust, so he could only rely on the laws of noble inheritance to protect himself.
He had