Janine Alastarn

Janine Alastarn
ja-NEEN AH-la-starn
Created by	Quibby
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Novice
Affiliation	The Grey Tower
Nationality	Amadician

Janine Alastarn is an Amadician Novice of the Grey Tower.

Description

With her short hair, Janine comes off as almost tomboyish despite her dresses. However, she always wears broad-brimmed hats low over her face, an effort to hide the fact that her eyes are two different colors: the left an icy blue, the right a brilliant emerald green. Where others might see something interesting, even beautiful, Janine loathes it and blames it for her childhood misery. Though she is still young, there are signs that Janine will grow to be a sharp-featured, striking woman, though not beautiful in the commonly accepted manner. Janine is sullen and defensive after a long childhood of harassment because of her eyes, and she walks hunched over as if she is expecting to be hit or insulted again. When she was a child, a wrong word could spark rage or even violence. This slowly changed to bitterness far beyond what any child should feel. Leaving her little village in Amadicia for Ghealdan did little to relieve it. She knows how much trouble she caused her family, and that knowledge hurts her nearly as much as the teasing. All that is left in her mind is to run away from all of it.

Janine suffers from violent mood swings from ecstatic and energetic highs to crushing depressions, something that cannot always be hidden by the calm Aes Sedai mask, much less by an untrained novice or Accepted. When things are at their worst, she simply withdraws to her rooms to hide.

Biography

Being different as a child is difficult, be the child rich or poor. Janine Alastarn was born into a merchant family in northern Amadicia. Her father had made his fortune on the road before he was twenty-four, and he had settled down to establish a trading hub that handled goods passing between the north and the south. The woman he eventually married was the daughter of the local healer. It was a romance for the ages, and the discovery that his bride had a better knack for numbers than he did merely convinced him that it was meant to be.

By eight months of age, Janine's parents knew that their daughter was going to have a difficult childhood. Her eyes... One eye was an icy blue, the other a rich emerald green. Each alone was dazzling. Children, however, do not see things that way. They saw something different, and different was wrong. Janine was teased without ceasing. Her patience was amazing; she tolerated the mockery for years, but when she had finally had enough...

First came the complaints about bloody noses. Then came the broken fingers. Then a broken arm. Finally, after one boy ended up asleep for a long time, her father chose to move the entire family- wife, older daughter, and younger son- to another center of his in southern Ghealdan. However, it was not long until the teasing began anew, and the violence began soon thereafter. In desperation, Janine's parents reached a conclusion: another hand was needed in their daughter's life. The day after the decision, Janine and her mother set off for Hama Valon and the Grey Tower. Tar Valon was generally the first choice for such matters, but Janine's father had more connections to the Grey Tower than he did the White, and Hama Valon meant that he would not lose track of his daughter. She was a nightmare, true, but she was his, and he would kill before he lost her.

Career History

• Novice (16 August 2016)