Name: Maxen Ashley Colchester Door: door pass.Canon: New Camelot Trilogy Canon Point: Pre Series* *about half of the series exists in flashbacks to Ash's time in the war and pre-presidency, although the Now/After time begins with Ash already in his term. To give a more specific canon point, it would either be American Queen, CH 7, or American King, CH 25. Age: 36 Appearance: Ash is described as having dark hair and green eyes, very tall and very fit, and having a certain presence to him that commands respect. As he is from a book series, I PB him as Chris Evans, specifically in Knives Out. History: cw: incest, underage.
When Ash was a boy, he pulled a sword out of a stone. Of course, a lot of his history predates the penultimate moment at a summer fair in Missouri, and a lot of it was a mystery to him until times recent. Ash was born the child of President Penley Luther and an already married woman who he worked with, who died in childbirth. Knowing that accepting a child whose birth was already covered in a blanket of unseemliness would be politically disadvantageous in every way, Luther instead allowed Ash to be put in the system and taken to foster care. Thus, Ash was raised a Colchester in a happy family in the Midwestern United States, none the wiser to the political blood flowing through his veins.
From an early age it was made clear to Ash that he didn't understand love in the same way as other people his age. He never had crushes, or any kind of interest in what he would later learn is a "vanilla" relationship. He dated girls in high school, and then experimented with boys in college, and ultimately came to the decision that he was asexual, and only really felt any semblance of enticement towards BDSM porn. Occasionally he would have a partner who wanted to experiment with the rougher side of sex, but it never fully scratched the itch he was aiming for.
This is how you wind up a steadfast Catholic man, in your early twenties, enlisted in the Army and a virgin. Ash has always been borderline obsessed with the idea of doing the morally correct thing, and so enlisting felt like his natural pull to do something good with his life, given unrest in Carpathia. Due to his dedication and ultimate unwavering moral code, and despite his very middle class background, Ash rose ranks high enough in the Army to Lieutenant and would eventually rank as Major. Before that, though, he would meet Embry Moore.
Embry is the penultimate embodiment of overindulged rich boy, and from the very first moment Ash saw him, he loved him. He'd been missing something that Embry had, and just like that, twenty-some years of no sexual interest in anyone hit him like a sack of bricks. Of course, their first meeting was an exploration of Embry's incapabilities as a leader — both of them obtaining the same higher standing position, thought from entirely different means — which colored their relationship for the few years. That is to say, Embry hated him. And Ash loved him so badly, he wanted to pin him in the dirt and make him lick his shoes.
Despite several almost moments shared between the two of them that bordered on the intimacy of BDSM sexuality, the two managed to either ignore or, in Embry's case, actively combat the mutual attraction between them. This lead to an ultimate point where the two of them managed to accidentally steal their off time together, with a mutual, unplanned trip to Prague. Embry's half sister made the trip overseas to spend time with her brother, and that was how Ash met Morgan Leffey, the woman he would lose his virginity to, and have his first kink experience with. There was an obvious immediate attraction there, specifically because Morgan looked so much like Embry. Ash figured he'd never actually have Embry, so this might've been the next best thing. As such, he learned the primary basics to domming through Morgan, in a week long trip through Prague.
The fighting got worse once again, which pulled Ash and Embry away from the same physical space. Eventually Morgan came back to visit Ash with a bit of new she wouldn't completely explain to him, but given the war and Ash's general disinterest in her now that he had Embry, he didn't make time to see her. This came to a point where Embry suggested she visit a nearby village, which was then immediately attacked by Carpathian separatists. The situation had a group of children on a burning boat and a bunch of hostages in a church, and the decision on who to save fell on Ash's shoulders. Knowing Morgan was in the church, Ash still favored the children and managed to save them. When they finally made it to the church, they found Morgan as the sole wounded survivor of the attack. After then, nothing between them was the same — Ash was the man who almost let her die, and she never truly forgave him for that slight.
The information she had to share with him was that she was pregnant, though. Ash never learned this, and so Morgan gave birth out of the public eye, eventually giving up the child to her aunt Nimue, to be raised as her own.
With the war now in full swing, Ash and Embry were deployed to different stations, and wouldn't actually see each other for another three years. Ash attempted to keep in contact through email, but Embry never responded, likely because of what happened with his sister. As time passed, Ash raised rank to Captain, and eventually would be Embry's commanding officer when he got called back to combat. Before then, he would be stuck in England, on leave from duty, befriending an older gentleman named Merlin and following him to the kind of parties upperclass politicians attend, to which Ash has no real fondness for. At one of these parties, he would meet a girl named Greer Galloway, the second love of his life.
At the time she had been sixteen, and Ash twenty-six. While their ages meant nothing could occur between them, Ash was still irrevocably changed by her — she, the granddaughter of an Ex-Vice President of the United States, with observational skills powerful enough to note that Ash suffered longterm insomnia. The two share an impassioned kiss, but separate before it can go any further. Ash knows it's unthinkable to pursue an underaged girl and so makes zero attempts to engage with her, despite the fact that he wants to, and that Greer begins sending him emails that range from wartime discussions, to her sexual preferences. In the interim between heading back to war, Ash has a hookup with a random man in England, and comes to the conclusion he is uninterested in having penetrative sex with someone he isn't in love with.
Things with Embry had every potential to be better after then, but given that Embry was concealing his attraction to Ash, really weren't. However, the war amped up in earnest after then, and there was little time to develop any lasting relationships among the fighting. Embry and Ash and all their men had, on a particular occasion, found themselves stuck in a dilapidated building as Carpathian separatists swarmed the building, using strategic thinking to get the men out. However, the bloodlust of fighting and killing had taken Embry by the throat, and he stayed back in the gunfire, somewhere near insane with the adrenaline rush. Naturally Ash stuck with him, pissed off that his orders for escaping were ignored entirely, and ended up with Embry getting shot twice. Eventually Ash managed to secure them a way out and he carried Embry, bleeding and near death, to the relative safety of nearby brush.
Out of his mind with panic and anger, he patched Embry as best he could and proceeded to carry him on a journey through the wilderness to get back to their camp. At some point during the progression, Embry had woken up in a morphine induced haze and, seeing that Ash had both saved his life and was unimaginably angry with him, offered up everything that he could to make the situation better — that is, he let Ash dom him, while bleeding out of his gunshot wounds. From then on, their relationship was distinctly sexual, though always flirting on the border of romantic, and kept secret from the military at large.
It kept escalating from there, while Embry was on leave for recovery. Ash wrote him everyday, though once he came back to the war, Embry was very paranoid about their relationship getting found out. Merlin had warned him about getting too close to Ash upon reading their private emails, and Embry was understandably spooked after then, given that he had some big aspirations for Ash's future, and didn't want him to be hindered by a public boyfriend. Ash, naturally, really didn't care if anyone knew about their relationship, and always prides love above his career, but respected Embry's wishes in keeping in secret. Ultimately Embry would say he was incapable of loving Ash the way Ash loved him, and Ash made himself alright with having Embry anyway he was allowed.
This carried on for another six years. Together but now, Ash ready to commit and Embry pushing him away. Eventually this would result in Ash getting a promotion to Major, and choosing instead to propose to Embry, who would say "no." In the next few months, Ash would meet a nice girl named Jenny and eventually propose to her instead. The day before, he would see Greer for the first time in six years and share a moment of intimacy, before inevitably breaking her heart at a ball thrown for his birthday dinner, where he asked Jenny to marry him. Destroyed, Greer would go on to spend the night with a stranger instead — Embry Moore, the man she lost her virginity to.
In the next five years, Ash would run for President as a third party candidate under the guidance of Merlin, and with Embry as his Vice President. Surprising everyone, he would win. Tragedy would strike swiftly though, and Ash's wife Jenny would become diagnosed with cancer, and die shortly after the fact. At her funeral, Morgan would drop a bomb on Ash specifically to hurt him at his worst possible moment — the fact that she is his half sister, through their mother, who died giving birth to Ash. This shook his foundation aptly, and resulted in the somewhat unshakable Ash giving a series of extremely mediocre speeches. Given her recent loss, the public was entirely sympathetic, but the sympathy would dry up eventually. So, despite her hurting him, Morgan would go to him at some point, bring him to a sex club that specializes in public figures and monarchs dabbling in kink, and let him do whatever he'd like to her. Revisiting kink after having a strictly vanilla marriage woke something long dormant inside him, and for the first time in five years he would go to Embry, fuck him, and reinvigorate his feelings.
Budding a sexual relationship again with his long time love, he'd spend the next year or so attending the kink club regularly, being trained by professional doms on the intricacies of kink and safety, allowing everything he'd want to do to another person be done to him, so he could know what it feels like. On a whim, he would happen to see Greer for the first time in several years, sitting in church during service, telling Embry that's the girl from the emails. This is where Ash is taken from.
Personality: Positive Trait: heroic — By far the most notable thing about Ash is his sense of right and wrong. He spends an inordinate amount of time considering the just and right way to go about every move that he considers making, enough that it borders on an obsession to think twice about every move forward. You could describe him as thoughtful, meticulous, or strategic, but given that the baseline of his compulsion is always to care for the people he's in charge of, the word heroic comes to mind. While Ash would describe himself as an immoral man, his actions would lead you to think the opposite — he is thoughtful and deeply empathetic, with a big enough bleeding heart to envelope the entirety of the United States. He's even been given the title of "war hero" due to his leadership in the war with Carpathia and most notably saving a boat full of captive, local children. While it isn't a term he agrees with, it is one that suits.
Negative Trait: jealous — That said, Ash isn't entirely without fault. He has a lot of internal struggles with anger management and, given the nature of the series he comes from, is occasionally victim to bouts of jealousy. Being emotionally mature enough to communicate those feelings is generally how he proceeds, but he does reach a point at times when he completely shuts down inside his own jealousy. Expressing control seems like the only way he knows how to moderate his feelings — be that through domination or otherwise. Most notably, he does take it out on sexually Greer when a sex tape involving her and Embry goes viral to the American public, needing to express his ownership of her before he ever even tells her what's gone wrong. At the end of the day, Ash is just a profoundly emotional person, capable of a lot of heartwarming good, but also casting deep, dark shadows to get lost in.
Negative Trait: demanding — Ash is well aware that he is a difficult person to be with, in any sense of the word. He is not used to being told "no" and in general doesn't like to hear it — he demands a lot from the people closest to him, and is fairly unapologetic about these demands because they're just an inherent part that makes up the whole of him. Largely, Ash just expects to be followed without resistance. Of course, this isn't always the case. Being the President and a dom doesn't automatically make warring countries kiss his feet in reprieve, and being with someone as disinclined to submit as Embry doesn't automatically make him a perfect submissive when they come together. It's a struggle, but Ash is steadfast, stubborn, and patient. Ultimately, he always gets his way, through whatever means necessary — on the presidential front, even waiting for four years before a plot of his own came to fruition, revealing the Carpathian leader's involvement with the aforementioned endangering of Carpathian children.
Negative Trait: insatiable — Ultimately, there's no real satisfying Ash. He's a being wholly comprised of want and the ambition to get whatever his heart sets itself on, and once one goal is achieved another swiftly takes its place. He has this unquenchable hunger for life that never abates, and always rears itself up in every aspect of his life — it's a point of contention for him at times, given that he frequently remarks on how much he'd like to retire to a farm, and put the world behind him. Sexually he is unrepentant, and politically he's unstoppable. Although he will ultimately find his peace with the people he loves, everything always has its cost — Ash's ambition is a direct cord to his misery in life, the thing that pushes Embry away from him, and the thing that drives himself away from Greer. Powers and Abilities: Ash is an ordinary human, without any supernatural powers. He was a soldier during wartime and has extensive combat and military training, as well as having political strategy as the leader of the free world, but that's it. Inventory: his presidential american flag lapel pin, a box of letters from greer, and his annotated bible. Samples: at tdm. |
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