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Healer to the Crownlands elite, Rafael's reputation for quality care often precedes him. Unfortunately, so does knowledge of his great lacking when it comes to matters paternal. A noblewoman and warrior of rank, Rafael's wife bravely fell during the Battle of Pridehall and left him to see to the upbringing of their young children. This mostly translated into governesses, various tutors of repute, and the affection of family members better equipped than he, creating the type of cavernous distance that Rafael still works to mend now that they begin to reach adulthood. While serving in his capacity as a Mercy, Rafael was accompanying an incapacitated nobleman along the newly minted Great Road to Arx when their traveling party was attacked. Made overly confident by the vocal dissents of House Grayreeve at the time, assailants surrounded them and their protectors. There was a scuffle before the assailants fled, leaving Rafael with injuries of his own that saw any return to Pridehall delayed. By Rafael's own account, he made the terrible mistake of appearing at all useful during his stay and was consequently asked to remain in Arx by House Bisland's leadership.

Dark hair kept at its shortest and closest to his scalp, in certain light Rafael's head appears completely shorn. His aristocratic bone structure is intensely curved and accented with deliberate patches of tidy black facial hair and his physique, although trim and towering, is far from athletically formidable. His most noticeable features, his eyes, stand out as glimmers of crystalline blue against a complexion the color of clean rich soil.

Many expect Rafael, a Mercy, to be a gentler alternative to his more prominent militant and academic brothers but that isn't necessarily a guarantee. Rafael is self-righteous and unapologetically vain. What he brings in bedside manner, he makes up for in a kind of icy ruthlessness. He willfully ignores those of life's trivialities, such as certain human variables, that do not serve his goals, inevitably making those rare displays of sincere warmth all the more impactful. Rafael is often spoken of as having heroically attended the sickbeds (and prior to the Compact's re-introduction to the Queen of Endings, the birthing beds) of high born and highly privileged alike. Much rarer are stories in which Rafael bloodies his robes mending and tending to the common folk. Whispers of this perhaps being unbecoming of him have not as of yet carried far through the insulation that his family's notoriety affords him.