Profile / Application
Character name: Howl Jenkins Pendragon
Fandom: Howl’s Moving Castle - namely the Studio Ghibli movie 8)
Timeline: Shortly after Sophie moves into his castle as a self-appointed cleaning lady; fairly early on in the movie.
Age: Not ever canonly stated, but I’m thinking an estimate of roughly late twenties, 28 if asked.
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths:
Howl is one of the most powerful wizards of his generation, even if he’ll never outright admit it. He does not have a set outside ‘limit’ to his abilities - his skill extends as far as his will, imagination, and physical capabilities can, which covers quite a bit of ground both in combat and out. Like any respectable member of his profession, he can cast spells written, orally, or with a silent flick of his hand; he can curse people, although he doesn’t like doing that so much; and he can slightly alter the fabric of reality to an extent, like modifying a doorway so that it can lead to several faraway places at once, or walking on air. His strongest suite lies in the building or manipulation of other objects as opposed to pulling stuff out of thin air, though. He can change the appearance of something to suit his needs, (i.e. invisibility, turning a person into a cat, altering his appearance and voice so that he’s an exact clone of the king of Ingary), or create impossible places and machines, his castle being the mother of all examples.
Additionally, due to his lack of a heart, he has the ability to turn himself into a black-feathered, winged pseudo-monster while retaining the option to change back into a human. However, the more he does this, the harder and more painful it is to return to normal, so he will not perform this often, if at all.
Appearance:
Howl is tall, with a slim build, bright blue eyes, a light complexion, and…well, in short, he’s pretty damn handsome, if not a bit foppish sometimes. There’s always a faint, flowery scent hanging around him. His hair color tends to vary dramatically, as he often dyes it different colors - blond being his personal favorite - but it’s naturally black. You’ll usually find him clad in plain black pants, a white shirt, and a thin, open coat with a varying brightly colored pattern that he wears over his shoulders like a cloak, never with his arms in the sleeves. How it manages to stay on without slipping off in such a position is anyone’s guess. He’s got a small amount of jewelry here and there - a couple of rings on his fingers, green earrings, a blue teardrop-shaped pendant that hangs from a gold chain necklace around his neck - but they’re all there for some reason or another, and may or may not have some kind of magical property to them.
He always seems to be smiling constantly, be it a faint curve to the lips or a full-out grin; however, this looks very natural, despite the fact that it’s actually more of a force of habit, and the smile never seems to quite reach his eyes properly.
Background:
(I’m basing the character himself off the movie, and his background is never explicitly described in that medium…so a good deal of headcanon and a mish-mash blend of his book-continuity background might take up a large chunk of this entry. ^^’ Funfacts and so on from the book will also be tossed into said blend as time goes on, such as his fondness for spiders and so on, to sort of round out his character more. |D)
Born Howell Jenkins, Howl was the son of a Welsh shepherd. His mother, from whom he inherited the genes of a wizard, died shortly after he was a year old, and for the most part he was raised by his father in a tiny little village nestled in the rolling countryside of Wales, sometime back in the late 1700’s. For a good portion of this time he had no idea about his powers as a wizard - he knew only that he could make strange things happen sometimes, if he concentrated hard, like making flowers bloom or having shadows shift their shapes. But at the same time, all the other children in the village knew that he was different, and avoided him for it out of fear. Though this rejection hurt at first, and he found himself filled with a need to belong and be normal like everyone else, he came to realize that he never would be, and eventually ceased caring about what others thought of him. Instead he would spend most of his time alone in the fields, flying kites or following the sheep. The only other individual he really ever opened up to was his father.
When Howell was eight years old, the bugles of war came calling, and a large unrest settled over all of Wales as men set out to follow the summoning of the king. Even the little village lost in the fields was not exempt from this movement, and Howell’s father resolved to join as well.
As could be expected, Howell was not happy about this at all, and liked it even less when he found out that his father was actually terrified that he might die, but was still leaving anyhow. He attempted to confront him over the matter once, confused and angry. But he was never given a proper answer over the matter, and his father left anyhow, leaving a reproachful and baffled boy behind.
He never came back.
By the age of nine Howell was an orphan, alone in a village that could not support him. He was never actually told why his father had never returned - that, in fact, he had been slain in the war - and because of this he felt betrayed and angry at him, for going away and never coming back. It’s childish, but he still refuses to forgive him for it to this day; and similarly, because of this incident, he came to harbor a powerful dislike for war and royalty - war for keeping his father away, and royalty for luring his father and so many others there in the first place.
A few more months passed, and then one day Howell’s last and only living relative - his uncle from his mother’s side of the family - came to visit, as he sometimes had back in the better days of Howell’s early childhood. This uncle, as a direct descendant of one of the few wizard bloodlines to be found in Wales at the time, had immediately noticed Howell’s magical potential from his first encounter with him as a toddler, but had never brought up the subject before. However, upon arriving at the village this time and learning of what had happened, he took pity on the boy, and offered to take him to his home in an alternate world, where wizards were commonplace and magic a necessity of living. Deciding there was nothing left for him in Wales anyhow, Howell accepted the offer, and traveled with his uncle through a doorway that led to the country of Ingary - at the same time leaving Wales and resolving to never return.
Under his uncle’s guidance, he began refining his skills as a wizard, and was eventually enrolled into the Royal Academy of Sorcery, when he came to be of age. After a year or so he was apprenticed under Madame Suliman, the court sorceress of Ingary, and was perceived to have a limitless amount of potential and power as a student of the magic arts. His uncle gave him a private cottage in a large expanse of fields to study in peace, and he seemed well-set for a bright future in Ingary.
But four years after he was first taken to Ingary, there came a night when stars started falling - an annual event that happened every hundred years or so, when it was time for a large number of them to perish. Fascinated, Howell had wandered out into the fields that night to watch them, noticing how, when the blazing points of light struck the ground or lakes, they seemed to struggle to stay alive, and flickered away into nothing all too soon.
Curious, he calculated the trajectory of the falling stars and eventually caught one before it hit the ground, shielding himself with a few select spells so that he wouldn’t be seared by the heat. And he spoke to it, and it spoke back.
Conversing with the star, he learned several things in a very short span of time - that its name was Calcifer, that it had lived for a hundred years, and that it was going to die…and was terrified of doing so. The last tidbit was eerily similar to the sentiment that his own father had carried, when he had resolved to go out to war. And it was because of this that Howell made the resolution he did.
It was a very hasty and last-minute decision - he could tell that the star only had a few minutes of life left to it, and he had no time to actively consider the consequences of what he was going to do. …So it was, with all of these factors combined, that he gave Calcifer his heart in all its entirety, via swallowing the fallen star whole.
Both figuratively and literally.
Doing so immediately insured Calcifer’s survival, but it also forged a nigh unbreakable magical contract between himself and the newly-made fire demon: Calcifer would live, and in exchange he would lend his powers to Howell and abide by his commands. But should one be killed, the other would instantly die as well.
From that point onwards Howell’s life changed, for the better or worse. In committing his deed, he lost the trust of the Royal Academy of Sorcery and that of Madame Suliman as well, due to his new and dangerous status as a heartless individual with great magical power. Under the light of these things he abandoned his studies and never completed his apprenticeship, instead striking out into Ingary on his own and essentially becoming a rogue wizard by the standards of the royal court. He eventually changed his name, replacing it with three separate aliases, most well-known in select major cities: Wizard Howl in Market Chipping, Wizard Pendragon in Kingsbury, and Sorcerer Jenkins in Porthaven, so as to prevent the pursuers from the royal court from finding him too easily and ‘amending’ his mistake, by killing Calcifer. To further hinder those now chasing after him, he also made himself a moving castle, powered by Calcifer and carrying a front door capable of opening to four different areas within Ingary.
Many years passed. Howl was constantly on the move - he sold his services in magic to those willing to pay for them, frequently wandered out into the great expanse of Ingary to explore, and got himself into relationships with countless women snagged by his looks and charming manners. These relationships were always short-lived and often ended badly, which resulted in him leaving a trail of countless broken hearts behind him - to the point where he ended up building an infamous reputation as an eater of young women’s hearts. During one of these escapades he came to be involved with the Witch of the Waste, which ended up being an extremely bad idea - after learning who she truly was and what she was like, he fled point blank…like he had with almost every other woman…but the Witch, unlike those other women, relentlessly pursued him, determined to have possession of his physical and psychological heart. It was especially bad in that she refused to give up, no matter how hard Howl tried to deter her.
And then the Prince of the neighboring kingdom went missing, and Ingary was blamed, and the bugles of war came calling again, and he was soon receiving several invitations from the King to join all other wizards in the looming prospect of battle…
And there was no way in hell that he’d go willingly, obviously.
Personality:
On the outside, Howl keeps up a calm and sometimes devilish countenance, and seems easily amused by most things. At the same time, he’s still somehow able to maintain an odd sense of detachment from the rest of the world, and the very perceptive might be able to notice the distance with which he uses his emotions. It’s for good reason - because he has no heart to help him determine just how much of an emotion he should feel, he must keep them tightly suppressed; and if his control slips for even a moment, he expresses them very powerfully and often violently, and his surroundings emulate him. If sad or in a state of complete depression, he’ll promptly throw a startlingly out-of-character tantrum, fall into an unresponsive state in which his skin starts creating green slime and his surroundings begin to warp and darken, with spirits of darkness rising up out of the shadows. If happy, he has a boundless amount of energy to the point of being almost ridiculous, and everywhere he goes will brighten and glow. But if he’s angry…well, you could be more or less screwed, especially if it’s directed towards you.
Even though he’s capable of expressing emotions, however, he doesn’t actually feel them anymore - another consequence of living without a heart. He knows in an absent way that he should feel angry, or happy, or sad, and he’ll unconsciously react accordingly, but he can’t actively feel the mood of the emotion like everyone else. He’s terrible with relationships for this reason - he’s afraid to ever actually become serious, because if he ever finds a person that actually loves him back, he knows he just won’t be able to give her the full and unconditional love in return that she deserves.
Despite all this, or maybe because of it, he prefers being in the company of others, for all outward gestures that suggest otherwise - unless something is bothering him immensely, in which case he’ll do his very best to isolate himself for days on end, essentially dropping off the face of the world and nowhere to be found. He’s selfish and selfless at the exact same time, forever fussing over his own appearance and protection, but worrying horribly over those few that are close to him, and willing to help strangers that cannot help themselves. He’s also a coward by nature, and will shamelessly run away from most any kind of conflict or discomfort that’s thrown his way - but when the things he truly holds dear are placed in jeopardy, he becomes courageous to the point of idiocy, completely losing all sense of self-preservation in the process.
Those who meet Howl and get to know him will likely have high praise for his sharp mind and magical prowess, but such praise is more often than not followed directly afterwards by comments on how he falls rather uncomfortably short as a person in general. Never one to directly commit himself to anything and finding himself ruled by his emotions - or lack thereof - more and more, Howl is in reality forever trying to pick up the pieces of his mistakes from long ago, and simply has yet to succeed. Until that time arrives, he remains closed against the thought of getting too close to others at best, and guards his status as a heartless man as best he can. For all his selfishness and cowardliness, he still truly does care about the wellbeing of those around him, in a wistfully detached sort of way, and his greatest fear is that he will end up as the Witch of the Waste, consumed by his own demon and carelessly casting away all that he has tried so hard to gain.