Application to the Wake
Personal Information
Name: Allison
Age: 20
Personal LJ: yomkippurzombie
Email / AIM / MSN: AIM is also yomkippurzombie
Character Information
Character Name: Robin Hood
Fandom: Robin Hood (2006 BBC version)
Source:
Character History:
(Apologies for the length: this is the summarized version. I'm leaving out most of the episodes where the plot is "catch and release/escape", which seems to make up like 70% of the series)
The tale of Robin Hood begins when Sir Robin of Locksley returns home to England from King Richard III's crusades (More specifically, the 3rd Crusade) in the Holy Land after serving his purpose as Captain of the King's Guard. Robin is accompanied by his best friend, servant, and now equal, Much. As the two reminisce about the joys of being home in Locksley at last, they soon come to realize that home has changed for the worse in their years of absence. Laws are enforced to the extreme, the citizens are being taxed well beyond their means and are slowly starving, Guy of Gisborne has taken over the lands surrounding Locksley in Robin's absence, and the new Sheriff of Nottingham, Vaisey, is orchestrating a rule of tyranny. There is one good bit of news, however: Marian, Robin's childhood sweetheart, is still unmarried.
At first taking the advice of the old Sheriff - Marian's father Sir Edward, now disgraced, without a position, and under careful watch of the new regime - Robin attempts to play along with Nottingham's cruel games, in the hope that he can change England by maintaining a position of authority and using that position to speak on behalf of the people as the lord of Locksley village. This tact fails, however, when the Sheriff decides to test Robin's loyalty by having him read out the execution edict for two young men of Robin's village (Will and Luke Scarlett), caught poaching in Sherwood and sentenced to hang for their crimes along with a third man, Allan A Dale. Instead, Robin sets them all free, declares his intent to uphold the right of the people against the will of the Sheriff, and escapes with his new band of Merry Men.
Robin, Much, Allan, and Will take refuge from the Sheriff's men in Sherwood Forest, where they come across another band of outlaws led by Little John. After an initial disagreement which led to each band taking one another hostage, Little John kidnaps Robin and drags him to Locksley, intent on handing him over for the reward and so that the Sheriff stops the mutilation of the citizens of Robin's village, brought on by their refusal to reveal Robin's whereabouts. However, Little John changes his plans when the Sheriff turns to cut out the tongue of John's wife, Alice, and instead pleas with Robin to help him. Robin obliges and turns himself in to save his people. His time as a prisoner in Nottingham is short, however, as Much manages to convince Little John and the rest to perform a daring rescue. By the next day, Robin is freed with the help of Marian and his friends, and they escape into the forest once more, now with the added assistance of Little John and his small crew.
Throughout the rest of the series, Robin and his men live continuously in Sherwood, robbing the merchants and rich travelers passing through the woods to pay tribute to the Sheriff of Nottingham. They then dispense the wealth back to the people in the nearby villages, helping to ease the financial struggles their own government places on them. Robin soon discovers he is not alone in his quest to relieve the burdens of Nottinghamshire's people: a mysterious figure known as the Night Watchman is also going from village to village, dispensing food and medicine to the hungry, poor, and sick. He tracks down the Night Watchman only to discover it is Marian in disguise, who harbors resentment against Robin for abandoning his people in their time of need to go off to fight a war in a foreign land, and has been helping the people of Nottinghamshire in his absence. The two agree to help each other when necessary and keep the Sheriff and Gisborne guessing, though Robin is worried for Marian's safety, and suspicious and reluctant of Marian's faked romantic interest with Gisborne, who is infatuated with her and tries constantly to win her to his side.
The final member of Robin's band is the Saracen, Djaq, who Robin meets when an unsavory traveler along the Sherwood roads is found to be transporting slaves captured from the holy wars abroad, brought over to help the Sheriff in his quest for mining the lands dry of all natural resources. Robin sets them free, but discovers to his shock that Djaq is a woman in disguise, who has cut her hair and taken her dead twin brother's identity so that she can fight in battle. After she helps to save Little John from one of the collapsed mines, Robin invites her to join his band and she readily accepts, becoming to them a warrior, a teacher of culture, a medic, and later an expert in pyrotechnics and explosives.
Growing steadily more impatient with Marian's continued flirting with Gisborne, Robin is further driven to frustration when she finally agrees to marry Gisborne when King Richard returns home, in order to protect her father and help Robin by passing on information she obtains from being close to Gisborne and, by proxy, the Sheriff. Robin endeavors to convince Marian to come live with him in Sherwood, or at least move from Nottingham: Marian refuses, citing her father's poor health and the perilous position she could put him in by leaving. Newfound tensions between Robin and Marian arise, as Robin's jealousy and Marian's refusal to abandon her father cause a rift between the lovers.
Eventually, Robin discovers that the reason the Sheriff is taxing the people so much is in order to pay for an army of mercenaries, poised to eliminate King Richard upon his return to England. The Sheriff is part of an order called the Black Knights, who plan to carry out Operation Sha-Mat, or Check-Mate, in order to eliminate King Richard in favor of the rule of his younger brother, Prince John. Not only that, but Robin also learns of the true circumstances of being released from King Richard's services: One night, Robin was on patrol around the King's tent when he foiled an assassination attempt, but in protecting the King, Robin was brutally stabbed and left to die. When Robin healed from his wounds, he'd discovered that King Richard had released him from his service due to his injury and moved on. The assassin those months ago is later revealed to be none other than Gisborne in disguise - whom Robin recognizes from Gisborne's tattoo that Robin scarred in the Holy Land - sent to stop Richard from making peace with the Turks. A furious Robin captures Gisborne and nearly tortures and kills him, but is stayed by the promise of giving him a fair trial. When Gisborne is traded off to save a captured Djaq, Robin swears it will be easy to prove Gisborne is the assassin by his tattoo, to which the Sheriff promptly burns off Gisborne's tattoo with vitriolic acid, scarring the flesh beyond recognition and destroying the evidence.
When news of King Richard's imminent return reaches Nottinghamshire, tensions increase: Robin is determined to stop the Sheriff from using his paid soldiers to murder the king and hopes to reveal that the Sheriff and Gisborne were behind the assassination plot in the Holy Land, Gisborne intends to force Marian to make good on her promise to marry him upon the King's arrival, and Marian prepares to hang up the Night Watchman costume for good. As Marian in her Night Watchman garb goes to rob her soon-to-be husband, an unknowing Gisborne manages to stab Marian in the stomach as she escapes. A heartbroken Robin takes Marian to his hideout in Sherwood as she struggles to survive, and they finally confess their love for one another. Robin leaves and returns with a physician from Nottingham, who turns traitor against him by leaving a trail for Gisborne's men to follow. Robin realizes the trick and comes back to the cave to hear the news that Marian is dead and the Sheriff is right outside their hideout with his guards.
Driven to the brink of insanity by Marian's supposed death, Robin shoots to kill for the first time in the series, mowing down the Sheriff's men and forcing them into a retreat. The danger gone, he returns to Marian's side to prepare to bury her, only to discover that the traitorous physician had tried to poison her with hemlock, but did not succeed. Marian is revived and Robin rejoices. However, she is still set on marrying Gisborne when Richard comes to Nottingham. Robin becomes inconsolable and depressed, and refuses to help Marian's father defend the coming King from an almost certain assassination attempt by the Sheriff.
On the day of the wedding and the king's arrival, Much and Robin discover it is all a ruse: the "King" is little more than a hired impostor, meant to help the Sheriff uncover his political enemies (Of which Marian's father is one). They warn Marian, who punches out Gisborne at their altar and rides with Robin on horseback to Nottingham to save her father. Luckily they arrive in time to stop Marian's father Edward from openly declaring resentment towards the Sheriff, and Robin and his men escape the castle after revealing the true identity of the fake king. Marian is not so lucky: Gisborne torches her home, imprisons her father, and keeps her under house arrest in the Sheriff's castle.
Robin is later captured by the Sheriff with the help of the Sheriff's sister, Davina, a woman with an affinity for poisonous snakes. While he is being lowered into a pit of the deadly creatures, Robin manages to both get himself out of the pit and land Davina in. He and the Sheriff pull her out a moment after, but not before she suffers a fatal bite. Just before dying, she warns Robin that Prince John has a policy in order: Should anything fatal befall her brother by Robin's hand, an army of men will be sent to burn Nottinghamshire to the ground and kill everyone. Meanwhile, Gisborne corners one of Robin's band, Allan A Dale, and convinces him through a combination of greed, lies, and threat of torture and death to act as a spy against Robin, reporting back to him on the movements and plans of Robin's band.
As plan after plan backfires, Robin soon comes to realize he has a traitor in his group. As he goes suspecting all on general principle, the members of Robin's band all soon become wary of one another, until Robin accuses Will and drives him from the group. This is meant as a decoy, however: Robin discovers the identity of the real spy, Allen, once the animosity in the group has died down. Instead of killing Allan, he drives him away for good, instructing him to go back to Gisborne and never return to Sherwood.
The two meet up again when another one of Robin's plans go sour. With the meeting of the Black Knights to sign the Pact of Nottingham (a document showing their loyalty to Prince John and devotion to the assassination of King Richard), Robin attempts to disguise himself as one of the members so that he may kill all of them and stop the plot from happening. However, Robin is sold out in the last minute, captured, and made to duel Allan to the death over a pit of boiling tar for the Sheriff's amusement. The swift arrival of the rest of Robin's gang soon put an end to the duel, however, and Robin escapes unscathed. Unfortunately, so do all the Black Knights.
The threat of the Sheriff's sister Davina also comes back to haunt them, as one night the Sheriff takes up sleepwalking and accidently ends up in the middle of the woods in his nightclothes. A messenger arrives in Nottingham, as he does every two weeks, to confirm the Sheriff's status among the living. At finding him missing, the messenger gives Gisborne an ultimatum: if the Sheriff is not found by sunset, Prince John's private army will come and slaughter everyone in town. A terrified Gisborne finds Robin and requests his help in locating the Sheriff and bringing him safely back: all the lives of the people of Nottingham depend on it. Robin agrees and sets out into the forest to find him. While Gisborne, Marian, Allan and Will prepare to defend the town with their lives, Robin successfully recovers the Sheriff and drags him back to town just in time to prevent the wholesale slaughter. Satisfied, the messenger and the army leave.
In prison at Nottingham castle, Marian's father Edward eventually sickens and dies, prompting a grieving Marian to finally accept Robin's offer and move with him into the forest. While wandering in the forest, Robin and Marian come across a fatally wounded soldier returned from the front, with a cryptic message about something called "Lardner's Ring." He dies, and while burying him, Marian asks whether Robin would like to say a few words over the body. He instead asks her to marry him, which she accepts on the conditions of finding the Ring, warning the king, and bringing the Sheriff and Gisborne to justice. Eventually they discover that Lardner is actually a carrier pigeon, whom they manage to give a message to King Richard about the goings-on in England. However, the Sheriff arrives and surrounds the group, so desperate times call for desperate measures: Marian pretends to have been "captured" by Robin, who is forced to give her back to Gisborne in return for he and his men escaping with their lives. Though now engaged, Marian returns to Nottingham and Robin returns to the forest.
Robin's birthday arrives, and Much decides to plan a surprise celebration for him, bringing him to a barn by Locksley where Robin's men have a birthday feast prepared. Unfortunately, not moments into their celebration they find themselves trapped, as a large band of mercenaries hired by the Sheriff surround the barn and position their weapons on all the exits. Content to let Robin's band starve themselves, the mercenaries sit back to wait, satisfied at being paid by the day. This gives Robin and his men time to come up with plan after failing plan, and finally, when all hope seems lost, talk mournfully about their deepest truths. Djaq and Will finally admit they love one another, Little John speaks of his wife and son, Much professes he misses the days when it was only him and Robin, and Robin confesses that he never speaks of the days between him and Much because the nightmares in the Holy Land are too much for him to bear thinking about. Allan arrives the next day, and helps the band fight their way past the mercenaries. Robin reluctantly accepts the sincerely apologetic Allan back into the band, and learns with horror from him that the Sheriff and Gisborne have left for the Holy Land during the time Robin and his men were being kept in the barn. What's more, they've taken Marian with them.
In the Holy Land, the Sheriff details the plan to kill Richard: he will send out one of his own men to pose as a messenger of the opposing army, giving him false information about Saladin's wanting peace between the warring sides. The messenger will lead the king to a far-off site under the guise of signing a peace treaty, only to be ambushed by Gisborne. The Sheriff sends a spy ahead, instructing him to tell King Richard of the plot to assassinate him, but with more false information to make the king believe it is Robin who is coming to kill, not warn, him.
King Richard, unfortunately, falls for the Sheriff's plan and, when Robin and his men arrive, he has them immediately arrested, but because of Robin's past loyalty, he spares Robin's men the dignity of being directly killed by Richard. They are instead taken out into the desert, tied to beams of wood and abandoned, left to the elements to die of exposure in the unbearable heat. Robin expresses his profound sorrow and apologies for leading his men to their death. Their hopes are simultaneously raised and dashed as horsemen appear, only to be revealed as the Sheriff and his men, come to gloat and leave Marian to die along with Robin. The two villains depart, and now, tied back to back, Robin and Marian at last express their feelings for one another.
Robin, Marian, and the rest are saved by the appearance of one of the King's men, Carter (who Robin had met previously in Sherwood), come back to rescue them despite direct orders. Robin thanks him, and they set off to the planned assassination site before Richard can be killed by Gisborne and the Sheriff. A fight breaks out: Carter is killed, Robin kills the spy, and the Sheriff fires an arrow into Richard's back and wounds him. As Gisborne walks forward to finish the job, Marian steps in between him and Richard, defending the king from death and mocking Gisborne, telling him she's loved Robin all along. Hurt and enraged beyond rational thought, Gisborne stabs Marian through, leaving his sword impaled in her, and flees with the Sheriff on horseback, intent on getting back to England as quickly as possible.
As she lays dying, Robin holds Marian in his arms and they are married. Marian pulls Gisborne's sword from her stomach, kisses Robin, and dies. Robin carries his wife to her grave, buries her, and swears he will return to Sherwood to see to the ruination and denouncement of the Sheriff and Gisborne. Will and Djaq, now lovers, opt to stay behind in Djaq's native land to start a family. Robin and the rest of his men set out on a boat home to England, Robin's heart full of vengeance and loathing for the men responsible for the death of his wife.
Character Personality: Robin is brave, heroic, occasionally a bit full of himself, and prideful. However, one thing that drives him among all else is a deep and abiding love of his king, his people, and his country, and he would gladly lay his life down in protection of all three. As a young man, Robin is prone to bouts of arrogance and jealousy, especially when concerned with the goings-on between Marian and Gisbourne, but this is tempered by a levelheadedness and the responsibility he willingly takes on as leader of the Robin Hood band.
Due to his part in the Holy Land crusade, Robin is frequently visited by nightmares while sleeping, and because of the bloodshed he witnessed and took part in, Robin today will only ever take a life when absolutely necessary: he never, ever shoots to kill. He also takes pains to make himself into less than a man and more of a symbol of hope and freedom for the people of England, to inspire and rally behind in their darkest hours.
While he can be cheerful and possesses a boyish sense of humor, Robin also has a dark, furious side that frequently appears when he is short of temper or witness to inhumane treatment. He despises torture and killing, but can be driven to those extremes when the people or things he loves are in mortal danger. Occasionally the pressures of balancing his life as the symbolic Robin Hood and his own wants and desires becomes too much to handle, and he lashes out at those closest to him. Fortunately he is most often always able to learn from his mistakes, and nearly always expresses a heartfelt apology each time after losing his temper.
Robin possesses high ideals of England's one day finding hope and peace, and is extraordinarily tolerant (for his time) of other religions and creeds, due to his tenure in the Holy Land; "I went to fight for our Holy Land, and when I got there, I met the Muslims, and the Jews, and saw it was their holy land as well." He endeavors to find peaceful outcomes, but realizes that violence is sometimes the only option available when facing down violent people.
Appearance: When not going about Nottingham in disguise, Robin wears clothes suitable to the wild, grassy terrain of the forest in which he lives. Dressed in dark greens and brown leather, Robin prefers picking clothing best for camoflage. He has blue eyes, light brown hair, and a mustache and beard framing his mouth. Robin wears a wooden pendant of his own making around his neck, identifying himself as a member of the Merry Men. He is rarely, if ever, seen without his twice-curved bow.
Aside from the various scars and wounds from both his service in the Holy Land and his adventures in Nottinghamshire, Robin also has a tattoo of a cross running down the length of his upper left arm.
Powers: Trained as a protector of England in the Crusades and Captain of the King's Guard, Robin is particularly handy with a sword and can hold his own against a broad range and number of opponents. His true skill, however, lies with his legendary, almost supernatural skill with a bow, where no man is his equal.
Samples
First person:
Little John! Little John, answer me! Allan! Much!
Where is everyone?
Answer me, now! Come on, you lot, I'll not be having with this kind of game. Come out where I can see you, lads, you've had your fun!
...It's to be like that, then. All right, have it your way! But don't come crying back when I've eaten all the food while you're away!
Third Person: (300 word minimum)
Name: Allison
Age: 20
Personal LJ: yomkippurzombie
Email / AIM / MSN: AIM is also yomkippurzombie
Character Information
Character Name: Robin Hood
Fandom: Robin Hood (2006 BBC version)
Source:
Character History:
(Apologies for the length: this is the summarized version. I'm leaving out most of the episodes where the plot is "catch and release/escape", which seems to make up like 70% of the series)
The tale of Robin Hood begins when Sir Robin of Locksley returns home to England from King Richard III's crusades (More specifically, the 3rd Crusade) in the Holy Land after serving his purpose as Captain of the King's Guard. Robin is accompanied by his best friend, servant, and now equal, Much. As the two reminisce about the joys of being home in Locksley at last, they soon come to realize that home has changed for the worse in their years of absence. Laws are enforced to the extreme, the citizens are being taxed well beyond their means and are slowly starving, Guy of Gisborne has taken over the lands surrounding Locksley in Robin's absence, and the new Sheriff of Nottingham, Vaisey, is orchestrating a rule of tyranny. There is one good bit of news, however: Marian, Robin's childhood sweetheart, is still unmarried.
At first taking the advice of the old Sheriff - Marian's father Sir Edward, now disgraced, without a position, and under careful watch of the new regime - Robin attempts to play along with Nottingham's cruel games, in the hope that he can change England by maintaining a position of authority and using that position to speak on behalf of the people as the lord of Locksley village. This tact fails, however, when the Sheriff decides to test Robin's loyalty by having him read out the execution edict for two young men of Robin's village (Will and Luke Scarlett), caught poaching in Sherwood and sentenced to hang for their crimes along with a third man, Allan A Dale. Instead, Robin sets them all free, declares his intent to uphold the right of the people against the will of the Sheriff, and escapes with his new band of Merry Men.
Robin, Much, Allan, and Will take refuge from the Sheriff's men in Sherwood Forest, where they come across another band of outlaws led by Little John. After an initial disagreement which led to each band taking one another hostage, Little John kidnaps Robin and drags him to Locksley, intent on handing him over for the reward and so that the Sheriff stops the mutilation of the citizens of Robin's village, brought on by their refusal to reveal Robin's whereabouts. However, Little John changes his plans when the Sheriff turns to cut out the tongue of John's wife, Alice, and instead pleas with Robin to help him. Robin obliges and turns himself in to save his people. His time as a prisoner in Nottingham is short, however, as Much manages to convince Little John and the rest to perform a daring rescue. By the next day, Robin is freed with the help of Marian and his friends, and they escape into the forest once more, now with the added assistance of Little John and his small crew.
Throughout the rest of the series, Robin and his men live continuously in Sherwood, robbing the merchants and rich travelers passing through the woods to pay tribute to the Sheriff of Nottingham. They then dispense the wealth back to the people in the nearby villages, helping to ease the financial struggles their own government places on them. Robin soon discovers he is not alone in his quest to relieve the burdens of Nottinghamshire's people: a mysterious figure known as the Night Watchman is also going from village to village, dispensing food and medicine to the hungry, poor, and sick. He tracks down the Night Watchman only to discover it is Marian in disguise, who harbors resentment against Robin for abandoning his people in their time of need to go off to fight a war in a foreign land, and has been helping the people of Nottinghamshire in his absence. The two agree to help each other when necessary and keep the Sheriff and Gisborne guessing, though Robin is worried for Marian's safety, and suspicious and reluctant of Marian's faked romantic interest with Gisborne, who is infatuated with her and tries constantly to win her to his side.
The final member of Robin's band is the Saracen, Djaq, who Robin meets when an unsavory traveler along the Sherwood roads is found to be transporting slaves captured from the holy wars abroad, brought over to help the Sheriff in his quest for mining the lands dry of all natural resources. Robin sets them free, but discovers to his shock that Djaq is a woman in disguise, who has cut her hair and taken her dead twin brother's identity so that she can fight in battle. After she helps to save Little John from one of the collapsed mines, Robin invites her to join his band and she readily accepts, becoming to them a warrior, a teacher of culture, a medic, and later an expert in pyrotechnics and explosives.
Growing steadily more impatient with Marian's continued flirting with Gisborne, Robin is further driven to frustration when she finally agrees to marry Gisborne when King Richard returns home, in order to protect her father and help Robin by passing on information she obtains from being close to Gisborne and, by proxy, the Sheriff. Robin endeavors to convince Marian to come live with him in Sherwood, or at least move from Nottingham: Marian refuses, citing her father's poor health and the perilous position she could put him in by leaving. Newfound tensions between Robin and Marian arise, as Robin's jealousy and Marian's refusal to abandon her father cause a rift between the lovers.
Eventually, Robin discovers that the reason the Sheriff is taxing the people so much is in order to pay for an army of mercenaries, poised to eliminate King Richard upon his return to England. The Sheriff is part of an order called the Black Knights, who plan to carry out Operation Sha-Mat, or Check-Mate, in order to eliminate King Richard in favor of the rule of his younger brother, Prince John. Not only that, but Robin also learns of the true circumstances of being released from King Richard's services: One night, Robin was on patrol around the King's tent when he foiled an assassination attempt, but in protecting the King, Robin was brutally stabbed and left to die. When Robin healed from his wounds, he'd discovered that King Richard had released him from his service due to his injury and moved on. The assassin those months ago is later revealed to be none other than Gisborne in disguise - whom Robin recognizes from Gisborne's tattoo that Robin scarred in the Holy Land - sent to stop Richard from making peace with the Turks. A furious Robin captures Gisborne and nearly tortures and kills him, but is stayed by the promise of giving him a fair trial. When Gisborne is traded off to save a captured Djaq, Robin swears it will be easy to prove Gisborne is the assassin by his tattoo, to which the Sheriff promptly burns off Gisborne's tattoo with vitriolic acid, scarring the flesh beyond recognition and destroying the evidence.
When news of King Richard's imminent return reaches Nottinghamshire, tensions increase: Robin is determined to stop the Sheriff from using his paid soldiers to murder the king and hopes to reveal that the Sheriff and Gisborne were behind the assassination plot in the Holy Land, Gisborne intends to force Marian to make good on her promise to marry him upon the King's arrival, and Marian prepares to hang up the Night Watchman costume for good. As Marian in her Night Watchman garb goes to rob her soon-to-be husband, an unknowing Gisborne manages to stab Marian in the stomach as she escapes. A heartbroken Robin takes Marian to his hideout in Sherwood as she struggles to survive, and they finally confess their love for one another. Robin leaves and returns with a physician from Nottingham, who turns traitor against him by leaving a trail for Gisborne's men to follow. Robin realizes the trick and comes back to the cave to hear the news that Marian is dead and the Sheriff is right outside their hideout with his guards.
Driven to the brink of insanity by Marian's supposed death, Robin shoots to kill for the first time in the series, mowing down the Sheriff's men and forcing them into a retreat. The danger gone, he returns to Marian's side to prepare to bury her, only to discover that the traitorous physician had tried to poison her with hemlock, but did not succeed. Marian is revived and Robin rejoices. However, she is still set on marrying Gisborne when Richard comes to Nottingham. Robin becomes inconsolable and depressed, and refuses to help Marian's father defend the coming King from an almost certain assassination attempt by the Sheriff.
On the day of the wedding and the king's arrival, Much and Robin discover it is all a ruse: the "King" is little more than a hired impostor, meant to help the Sheriff uncover his political enemies (Of which Marian's father is one). They warn Marian, who punches out Gisborne at their altar and rides with Robin on horseback to Nottingham to save her father. Luckily they arrive in time to stop Marian's father Edward from openly declaring resentment towards the Sheriff, and Robin and his men escape the castle after revealing the true identity of the fake king. Marian is not so lucky: Gisborne torches her home, imprisons her father, and keeps her under house arrest in the Sheriff's castle.
Robin is later captured by the Sheriff with the help of the Sheriff's sister, Davina, a woman with an affinity for poisonous snakes. While he is being lowered into a pit of the deadly creatures, Robin manages to both get himself out of the pit and land Davina in. He and the Sheriff pull her out a moment after, but not before she suffers a fatal bite. Just before dying, she warns Robin that Prince John has a policy in order: Should anything fatal befall her brother by Robin's hand, an army of men will be sent to burn Nottinghamshire to the ground and kill everyone. Meanwhile, Gisborne corners one of Robin's band, Allan A Dale, and convinces him through a combination of greed, lies, and threat of torture and death to act as a spy against Robin, reporting back to him on the movements and plans of Robin's band.
As plan after plan backfires, Robin soon comes to realize he has a traitor in his group. As he goes suspecting all on general principle, the members of Robin's band all soon become wary of one another, until Robin accuses Will and drives him from the group. This is meant as a decoy, however: Robin discovers the identity of the real spy, Allen, once the animosity in the group has died down. Instead of killing Allan, he drives him away for good, instructing him to go back to Gisborne and never return to Sherwood.
The two meet up again when another one of Robin's plans go sour. With the meeting of the Black Knights to sign the Pact of Nottingham (a document showing their loyalty to Prince John and devotion to the assassination of King Richard), Robin attempts to disguise himself as one of the members so that he may kill all of them and stop the plot from happening. However, Robin is sold out in the last minute, captured, and made to duel Allan to the death over a pit of boiling tar for the Sheriff's amusement. The swift arrival of the rest of Robin's gang soon put an end to the duel, however, and Robin escapes unscathed. Unfortunately, so do all the Black Knights.
The threat of the Sheriff's sister Davina also comes back to haunt them, as one night the Sheriff takes up sleepwalking and accidently ends up in the middle of the woods in his nightclothes. A messenger arrives in Nottingham, as he does every two weeks, to confirm the Sheriff's status among the living. At finding him missing, the messenger gives Gisborne an ultimatum: if the Sheriff is not found by sunset, Prince John's private army will come and slaughter everyone in town. A terrified Gisborne finds Robin and requests his help in locating the Sheriff and bringing him safely back: all the lives of the people of Nottingham depend on it. Robin agrees and sets out into the forest to find him. While Gisborne, Marian, Allan and Will prepare to defend the town with their lives, Robin successfully recovers the Sheriff and drags him back to town just in time to prevent the wholesale slaughter. Satisfied, the messenger and the army leave.
In prison at Nottingham castle, Marian's father Edward eventually sickens and dies, prompting a grieving Marian to finally accept Robin's offer and move with him into the forest. While wandering in the forest, Robin and Marian come across a fatally wounded soldier returned from the front, with a cryptic message about something called "Lardner's Ring." He dies, and while burying him, Marian asks whether Robin would like to say a few words over the body. He instead asks her to marry him, which she accepts on the conditions of finding the Ring, warning the king, and bringing the Sheriff and Gisborne to justice. Eventually they discover that Lardner is actually a carrier pigeon, whom they manage to give a message to King Richard about the goings-on in England. However, the Sheriff arrives and surrounds the group, so desperate times call for desperate measures: Marian pretends to have been "captured" by Robin, who is forced to give her back to Gisborne in return for he and his men escaping with their lives. Though now engaged, Marian returns to Nottingham and Robin returns to the forest.
Robin's birthday arrives, and Much decides to plan a surprise celebration for him, bringing him to a barn by Locksley where Robin's men have a birthday feast prepared. Unfortunately, not moments into their celebration they find themselves trapped, as a large band of mercenaries hired by the Sheriff surround the barn and position their weapons on all the exits. Content to let Robin's band starve themselves, the mercenaries sit back to wait, satisfied at being paid by the day. This gives Robin and his men time to come up with plan after failing plan, and finally, when all hope seems lost, talk mournfully about their deepest truths. Djaq and Will finally admit they love one another, Little John speaks of his wife and son, Much professes he misses the days when it was only him and Robin, and Robin confesses that he never speaks of the days between him and Much because the nightmares in the Holy Land are too much for him to bear thinking about. Allan arrives the next day, and helps the band fight their way past the mercenaries. Robin reluctantly accepts the sincerely apologetic Allan back into the band, and learns with horror from him that the Sheriff and Gisborne have left for the Holy Land during the time Robin and his men were being kept in the barn. What's more, they've taken Marian with them.
In the Holy Land, the Sheriff details the plan to kill Richard: he will send out one of his own men to pose as a messenger of the opposing army, giving him false information about Saladin's wanting peace between the warring sides. The messenger will lead the king to a far-off site under the guise of signing a peace treaty, only to be ambushed by Gisborne. The Sheriff sends a spy ahead, instructing him to tell King Richard of the plot to assassinate him, but with more false information to make the king believe it is Robin who is coming to kill, not warn, him.
King Richard, unfortunately, falls for the Sheriff's plan and, when Robin and his men arrive, he has them immediately arrested, but because of Robin's past loyalty, he spares Robin's men the dignity of being directly killed by Richard. They are instead taken out into the desert, tied to beams of wood and abandoned, left to the elements to die of exposure in the unbearable heat. Robin expresses his profound sorrow and apologies for leading his men to their death. Their hopes are simultaneously raised and dashed as horsemen appear, only to be revealed as the Sheriff and his men, come to gloat and leave Marian to die along with Robin. The two villains depart, and now, tied back to back, Robin and Marian at last express their feelings for one another.
Robin, Marian, and the rest are saved by the appearance of one of the King's men, Carter (who Robin had met previously in Sherwood), come back to rescue them despite direct orders. Robin thanks him, and they set off to the planned assassination site before Richard can be killed by Gisborne and the Sheriff. A fight breaks out: Carter is killed, Robin kills the spy, and the Sheriff fires an arrow into Richard's back and wounds him. As Gisborne walks forward to finish the job, Marian steps in between him and Richard, defending the king from death and mocking Gisborne, telling him she's loved Robin all along. Hurt and enraged beyond rational thought, Gisborne stabs Marian through, leaving his sword impaled in her, and flees with the Sheriff on horseback, intent on getting back to England as quickly as possible.
As she lays dying, Robin holds Marian in his arms and they are married. Marian pulls Gisborne's sword from her stomach, kisses Robin, and dies. Robin carries his wife to her grave, buries her, and swears he will return to Sherwood to see to the ruination and denouncement of the Sheriff and Gisborne. Will and Djaq, now lovers, opt to stay behind in Djaq's native land to start a family. Robin and the rest of his men set out on a boat home to England, Robin's heart full of vengeance and loathing for the men responsible for the death of his wife.
Character Personality: Robin is brave, heroic, occasionally a bit full of himself, and prideful. However, one thing that drives him among all else is a deep and abiding love of his king, his people, and his country, and he would gladly lay his life down in protection of all three. As a young man, Robin is prone to bouts of arrogance and jealousy, especially when concerned with the goings-on between Marian and Gisbourne, but this is tempered by a levelheadedness and the responsibility he willingly takes on as leader of the Robin Hood band.
Due to his part in the Holy Land crusade, Robin is frequently visited by nightmares while sleeping, and because of the bloodshed he witnessed and took part in, Robin today will only ever take a life when absolutely necessary: he never, ever shoots to kill. He also takes pains to make himself into less than a man and more of a symbol of hope and freedom for the people of England, to inspire and rally behind in their darkest hours.
While he can be cheerful and possesses a boyish sense of humor, Robin also has a dark, furious side that frequently appears when he is short of temper or witness to inhumane treatment. He despises torture and killing, but can be driven to those extremes when the people or things he loves are in mortal danger. Occasionally the pressures of balancing his life as the symbolic Robin Hood and his own wants and desires becomes too much to handle, and he lashes out at those closest to him. Fortunately he is most often always able to learn from his mistakes, and nearly always expresses a heartfelt apology each time after losing his temper.
Robin possesses high ideals of England's one day finding hope and peace, and is extraordinarily tolerant (for his time) of other religions and creeds, due to his tenure in the Holy Land; "I went to fight for our Holy Land, and when I got there, I met the Muslims, and the Jews, and saw it was their holy land as well." He endeavors to find peaceful outcomes, but realizes that violence is sometimes the only option available when facing down violent people.
Appearance: When not going about Nottingham in disguise, Robin wears clothes suitable to the wild, grassy terrain of the forest in which he lives. Dressed in dark greens and brown leather, Robin prefers picking clothing best for camoflage. He has blue eyes, light brown hair, and a mustache and beard framing his mouth. Robin wears a wooden pendant of his own making around his neck, identifying himself as a member of the Merry Men. He is rarely, if ever, seen without his twice-curved bow.
Aside from the various scars and wounds from both his service in the Holy Land and his adventures in Nottinghamshire, Robin also has a tattoo of a cross running down the length of his upper left arm.
Powers: Trained as a protector of England in the Crusades and Captain of the King's Guard, Robin is particularly handy with a sword and can hold his own against a broad range and number of opponents. His true skill, however, lies with his legendary, almost supernatural skill with a bow, where no man is his equal.
Samples
First person:
Little John! Little John, answer me! Allan! Much!
Where is everyone?
Answer me, now! Come on, you lot, I'll not be having with this kind of game. Come out where I can see you, lads, you've had your fun!
...It's to be like that, then. All right, have it your way! But don't come crying back when I've eaten all the food while you're away!
Third Person: (300 word minimum)