~A peasant woman, Max's mother.

~Molly is something of an archetype--motherly, mild, honest and affable. In the midst of a flurry of tumultuous temperaments and with the gravity of war looming overhead, she manages to dig her heels firmly into the ground. She adapts to her circumstances with the aid of a refreshingly simple, unequivocal insight--one that's not only limited to being personally beneficial.
There's an earnest steadfastness underlying Molly's warm countenance and diminutive stature--the core of her personality that makes her capable of tolerating her precarious situation, bearing a sincere smile on her face all the while. She's equipped with an intuition that allows her to mediate with a good deal of success as well, knowing just how to confer with the troublesome personalities that surround her.
She develops a particular fondness for Dustin and, in recognizing that even a tenacious personality such as his may require some outside source of esteem, she is graciously obliging. It's Regin who offers her the greatest challenge, being oftentimes all together unapproachable. Intimidated and charmed by him at the same time, she becomes frustratingly diffident in his presence.
The rather grandiose Faolan family home in Ainessa, Fithbae, is inundated with romantic appeal for Molly…who becomes instantaneously affixed to it. For someone half obsessed with all the sentimental ideals of home, it's an impossibly perfect place. She indulges in it, deliriously happy when she feels unburdened enough to be thoroughly enveloped. Her delight, though, is frequently interspersed with sobering reminders that the outside conflict threatens to make her residence a very temporary one.

~I had read some wildlife-based stories by Ernest Thompson Seton when I was very young--one of which was about rabbits. The mother rabbit in the story was named Molly and, for whatever reason, thereafter, I always associated the name with maternal characteristics. I eventually assigned that name to a character of my own creation, who is, from my perspective, the embodiment of motherliness. Interestingly, the name Molly is derived from its popular use as a pet name for 'Mary'…the name of perhaps the most iconic mother of all.
I've spent a good deal of time trying to deepen, in a sense, the personalities of many of my characters--to steer them away from being stereotypes in an effort to make the story more interesting. I find, though, that the interaction of a bunch of psychologically deep characters can, in itself, become very trite…it's sometimes too easy to over-think everything. Molly serves as a good reminder that things don't always need to run down into the arcane, unexplored depths of humanness to be meaningful. Substance can be found in that which is straightforward and readily apparent as well.