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Jael has a serious case of sibling ribalry and it's the kind of thing that is life defining. Her sister was best at everything and everything that her sister wasn't the best at, her brother was the best at. It led to a childhood of being unusually tempestuous, and parents -- and nannies, nurses et al -- who kept trying to find different ways to channel Jael's impatience and rage into something more constructive. Arts and crafts did not cut it. Jael was a wild child. She broke discipline and ran out into the woods and fields all the time when she was young. Unfortunately, even in the civilized center of House Laurent's territory at Artshall, running out into the woods is a really bad idea. The first time she ran away from home to live in the woods and become a baby bear -- this didn't work -- it was worth a knighthood to the beekeeper and woodsman who brought her home. The second time, she was a teenager in the high dudgeon of a tantrum, and it took her brother and a squad of armed men to bring her home. She was 17, and too young to fight as a soldier in any man's army, but not too young to be forced into an unofficial squiredom to the knight who had rescued her years before. Jael learned to control her temper. She learned to control her impulses. She learned not to run away from her problems, most of all, but to face them head on. So it was that she strode into the office of her brother, the Voice, and demanded -- at the age of 21 -- that she be given something -- anything -- constructive to do. So Jael began to train with the scouts. She began to study with the Seraph of Artshall. She began to grow and learn and blossom into a woman of stubborn will and derring-do. And when her brother became the Duke instead of the Voice, she had earned enough trust with him that he gave her wings to fly with, and made her his Voice as well as his heir. Let's see what she does with it.

Jael's features are a little too fine, a little too sharp. The strength of her jaw suggests determination and will. The black eyebrows are sharply defined over her eyes, blue and clear and often glittering with wit and focus. Slim but wiry, her grace is that of a frequent rider and archer. Her lips are thin, her mouth often set hard. Her rare smiles light her face with a candle's warmth, flickering and warm. Her hair is long; loose, it cascades to the blades of her shoulders in a shimmering cloud of midnight black, but most often it is kept braided elaborately into crowns or twists of hair, swept back and up away from the planes and angles of her face.

Fierce and impatient with a riotous temper beneath the sturdy veneer of her duty and pride, Jael learned in early adulthood to control herself and to manage herself with discipline ... but there are times that wild warning can flash behind her eyes and there are moments when it is easy to look at that fine-featured face and imagine literal smoke huffing from her nose as she controls the urge to breathe fire. When her ambitions are blocked, she has the will and intensity of an oncoming storm, and woe betide whatever stands in her way. She is passionate, fiery and energetic; she takes herself very seriously and she will be damned if everyone else doesn't as well. That said, Jael has a low taste for shocking people and has it in her to swear like a soldier in a barrack more than like a young lady of breeding and diplomacy. Oh, also, her sense of humor is terrible. She effing loves puns.