Martin Darling

Martin Darling is a private of the 1st Battalion 2nd Guards, serving as a batman to Captain Benjamin Blackwood. He is a player character belonging to Keiju. His PB is Sam Riley.

Family
Father: Henry Darling

Mother: Anne Darling (née Smith)

Siblings: Matthew, Samuel, Elizabeth Turner (née Darling), Thomas, Mary

Early life and apprenticeship
To all accounts, Martin Darling was born into a good family. His father was a respected gunsmith in Leicester and creature comforts were seldom wanting. All the same, young Martin's childhood was far from happy. The relentless drive that had built his father's success infected the household, making life hard to bear. Martin, as the youngest, bore the brunt of it. His father's attempts to teach him the gunsmith's trade all met with failure, at least in Henry's stern estimation, and eventually Martin was packed off to be apprenticed to a gentlemen's tailor across the city.

This too ended in failure after slightly less than two years. Martin's best efforts to do well were treated with sneering contempt by his apprentice-master, whose opinion of the boy had previously been coloured by conversations with Henry Darling. The high expectations held of him were almost never met and eventually Martin found himself sent home, declared unfit for the highly-skilled, demanding work of a tailor. His failure was regarded as a validation of reality, especially by his father, and the following two years saw Martin being used as little more than an errand boy.

Service as a Coldstreamer
His encounter with a recruiting party happened entirely by chance, but his desperation to escape from his father led Martin to volunteer to enlist without a second thought. Anything, he felt, had to be better than his present life. This belief was speedily proven wrong but by the time it was, it was too late to do anything about it. Martin had gone for a soldier and was destined for Portugal with his new regiment. He arrived in Lisbon in January and within two months found himself moved from his original company to the Light Company, alongside several others, to replace losses incurred in a recent engagement. As luck would have it, he was also appointed to serve as batman to the Light Company's captain, though he would not call this 'luck' by any means.

The battle fought at Talavera was Martin's first action and, while he did not run away, he was told by every corporal and sergeant who saw him that he'd conducted himself about as well as a brainless chicken. It was far from the sort of reassurance he needed after such a harsh introduction to the fighting soldier's trade and Martin drew no comfort from the more relevant fact that he had held his place in the line. He has lived under a cloud since, despite the army being in Spain and to all accounts on the road to victory. The idea of deserting has crossed his mind more than once but whether or not he has the pluck to actually do that remains to be seen.

Appearance
Martin is a small lad, not very impressive either in height or stature. His thin face, with slightly too-large dark eyes and a very light dusting of freckles across his nose, appears almost mouselike. He wears his dark hair short, almost close-cropped, for ease of maintenance. Being small has its advantages and he is tolerably quick when necessary. A slight build is not the only readily noticeable thing about him, either. His hands stand out, though perhaps only on a closer inspection, being long-fingered and seemingly soft and unhardened. He is not a lad very used to hard, heavy labour.

The manner of Martin's upbringing shaped his personality completely. An overbearing father and later an unyielding apprentice-master dominated his early years, leaving him with a deep sense of low self-worth. Joining the army was his means of escape, though he did not realise his error until it was too late to correct it. The army, to him, is simply a replacement for the apprenticeship he had left - hard and unyielding, and something to be feared.

Personality
Martin is not a brave fellow. In fact, he tends strongly toward being timid and retiring, preferring to avoid trouble whenever it presents itself. He is easily bullied, by officers and other soldiers alike, not the least because he fears disapproval and thus will do whatever is demanded of him, to avoid it. At the same time, he is aware that most of his attempts at doing things right will fail, as they have always done before. This was a mantra his father and his apprentice-master repeated at him at every opportunity, and with time Martin came to believe it himself.

His greatest flaw, as he views it, is his stutter. Whenever he is flustered, embarrassed, nervous, or outright fearful, his ability to speak clearly fails. The result is a stutter that lightens or thickens depending on the degree of his discomfort. Only when he is feeling completely at ease, such as when discussing a subject he is familiar with, is he able to speak without the barest stammer. These occasions are not common, and Martin resents what he perceives to be an inconquerable weakness.

Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths:

- Despite his aborted apprenticeship, Martin learned a great deal about the tailor's trade and is a steady hand with a needle. He keeps the sewing roll he made when he was an apprentice and seldom ignores an opportunity to use it.

- He is a sharp lad and learns quickly, even though he is quite ignorant about a great many things about the army.

- His is a sure and steady hand at delicate tasks. Secretly, he enjoys fine, detailed work such as tailoring.

Weaknesses:

- His stutter makes it difficult for him to communicate effectively, as so often he is in a state of poor nerves.

- He tends to run away, sometimes literally, from strong disapproval, which is not a very good thing for a soldier, especially in a Guards regiment.

- Martin's lack of self-confidence makes it difficult to adequately perform many of the routine duties expected of a batman, never mind a soldier. He assumes he will do everything wrong - and, accordingly, he regularly does.