~A young officer of The Iomad and cousin to Leandra Aneasta.

~Descended from a family rich with military prestige, Cullen is obligated to sustain the magnitude of his heredity. Reckless and waggish by nature, and devoted to the idea that his existence is indelibly charmed, he lends little immediate concern to this preordainment…until Regin Faolan threatens it.
Cullen and Regin have a relationship that wavers capriciously between loyal friendship and arch rivalry. They're imaginatively roguish enough to keep each other amused, but Cullen's fiery and umbrageous personality can't help but render him severely frustrated at perpetually playing the auxiliary role. Running out of arenas in which he's not outclassed, he latches onto his military destiny with deliberate fervency. Meanwhile Regin (suddenly winning charisma points and royal favor in this same arena) is characteristically oblivious that he's treading quite boldly on some sacrosanct territory in Cullen's ideology.
Cullen's relationship with Leandra is only slightly less enervated. In their ruddy and over-privileged youth, they share a mutual compulsion for name-calling, hair pulling, and a variety of other sorts of sibling-like beleaguerment…but with little permanent detriment to their cousinhood. Cullen's impish behavior toward Leandra is occasionally interspersed by moments of benevolent sapience-the sort that is in an elder brother's nature to give.

~Part philosopher and part joker, Cullen's been rather interesting to work on. He's come a long way in a short period of time. Although vacant from my attention for quite a while, I gradually became aware of his overall importance-even though his active role is focused in the portion of the story that precedes the part I'm publishing here on my site.
I can only assume that he's some conglomeration of a few initial character sketches (in which he always seemed to be wearing a catty smirk) and what, at the time, was a newly adopted orange disaster--my cat, Calvin. By means of some anomaly, I find Calvin's destructive antics rather endearing. I think that transferred, to some degree, to Cullen's character.
In naming most of my other characters, I diligently searched for names that I liked both for meaning and for sound. Naming Cullen, however, went quite a bit differently. If I remember correctly, I told my best friend, Candy, to choose from a book of names. She closed her eyes and pointed to one at random. Cullen it was.