A tall, broad-shouldered man with the unmistakable bearing of hereditary soldiery. His hair is iron-black and precisely cropped, streaked early with grey at the temples. A trimmed beard frames a perpetual half-smile that never reaches his eyes. He wears the crimson-and-gold surcoat of the Grand Duchess’s court over lacquered scale cuirass, the metal worked with sunburst etchings that gleam like new coin. The hilt of his sword is wrapped in white leather—kept immaculate even in the mud of the frontier.