Leck

King Leck of Monsea was the king of Monsea, and the father of Bitterblue. He had a mind-control Grace that allowed him to influence and control other's with his words. He was eventually killed by Katsa.

Background
Leck was born in Monsea, to a game warden Larch and his wife Mikra. He was originally named 'Immiker', after his mother, who died in childbirth. While his father worked as a game warden, he was cared for by his nursemaid.

Even before his eyes settled, it was clear Immiker was a strange child. He was unnervingly calm and intelligent far beyond his age. It unnerved the nursemaid, who soon resigned. Larch was happy to take over caring for his son, as he was mesmerized by the child and thought of little else.

One night, when Immiker was three years old, Larch was distraught to discover the boy's brown eyes had turned red and grey. He was a Graceling. And as soon as anyone found out they'd report it to the king, and Immiker would be taken away to be raised at court, in case his Grace might one day turn out to be something useful, and Larch might never see his son again. To escape this fate, the two fled into the Monsean mountains, where Larch hoped they could live undisturbed.

But the mountains proved impossible to survive in. They were freezing cold, barren and rocky, and full of dangerous predators. When things took a turn for the worse and the two ended up in a deep underground cavern, Immiker used his Grace at his father's expense. He ordered the man to walk in spite of his severe inuries, and give him all of their food rations.'You must protect me, Father,' he kept repeating, and it was all Larch could do. They stumbled out, days later, now on the other side of the mountains and in a country called the Dells.

There were no Gracelings in the Dells, so Immiker was free to live as he pleased. His Grace allowed him to live in comfort and gain followers to protect and teach him. He also began to show sadistic tenancies: catching small monsters and torturing them for pleasure.

Immiker allowed his father to believe his Grace had yet to appear, making the man easier to control. When he was ten years old, Larch finally had a moment of clarity and asked him if his Grace was mind control. Immiker responded by stabbing him in the stomach and leaving him to bleed to death.

He left his home, burning it on the way out, having grown tired with his current set of minions. And for his new life, he chose a new name: “Leck,” the way the Dellians had mispronounced Larch.

Fire
Over the next year, Leck used his Grace to assemble a group of followers, including the criminal archer Jod, and take control of the estate of Cutter, a poacher who sold monsters on the black market.

Cutter began to tell him of Lady Fire, the monster woman who could control minds, and Leck became fascinated with her. He started sending men to capture her, but every attempt failed, and he ordered Jod to assassinate those who were caught before they could reveal any information about him. Leck accompanied Cutter to the palace on a business affair, hoping to finally meet Fire. When she happened across him strangling a monster mouse and ordered him to stop, he was delighted to find his words had no affect on her mind.

A few weeks after returning from the palace, Lord Archer arrived at Cutter’s estate, having been told by Fire that Leck was tied to the mysterious foggy-minded men that had been following them over the past few months. Leck ordered Jod to kill him, and put the soldiers Archer had brought under his control. He used what they knew about Fire, particularly that she had a fondness for children and animals, to devise a better plan for capturing her.

Leck and Jod returned to the palace while the winter gala was taking place. They captured Princess Hanna and her puppy Blotchy, and used the two’s anguished cries to lure Fire in. When she came running, Jod knocked her out with dart filled with sleeping potion. They fled on a boat, narrowly avoiding being caugt by the palace guards, who were alerted by Fire calling to her guards to help her protect Hanna.

Leck took Fire back to Cutter's estate. He planned to offer her a partnership, but before he could make the proposition she hit him with a sleeping dart she'd stolen from Jod and escaped, stealing one of Cutter's river horses and starting a fire that would engulf the whole mansion.

Once conscious again, Leck killed the few of his men still alive and persued Fire across the mountains. After he found her, he explained he wanted her to be his partner help him conquer the Dells. She rejected the idea and attempted to kill him, but was too slow and feeble in her weakened state. As Leck aimed an arrow at her, Fire’s horse reared at him and kicked him in the eye, permanently damaging it. While writhing from the pain, Leck stumbled and fell into a deep crevice in the moutain, much like the one he had originally fallen through with Larch.

Between Fire and Graceling
Leck survived the fall. It's unknown if he was injured, how long he was down there, or how he escaped, but eventually he found an exit that took him back to Monsea.

He arrived at the Monsean castle and begged for money, food, and shelter in return for stories. He wore an eye-patch over his injured eye, which still held a hint of it's original coloring, thus marking him as a Graceling. He regaled the castle residents with tales of the fantastical Dells and its many wonders. Eventually this caught the attention of the king and queen. Charmed by the boy and having no children of their own, they took him under their wing. When he turned sixteen, and the couple still had no child to inherit the throne, they named him as their heir. Shortly after, the couple and all their advisors died under mysterious circumstances.

Leck’s Grace allowed him absolute power over his kingdom. He was free to do whatever despicable deeds he liked without suspicion or consequence, and few were capable of seeing him for the monster he was. Of those few, he was of course capable of having them killed or confusing them into forgetting the truth. Across the seven kingdoms people viewed him as a fair and loving ruler, especially kind to animals and children, a particularly perverse lie as he used them as subjects for his brutal experiments.

He had always been amazed by the advanced art, architecture, and medicine in the Dells, so he tried to recreate that image in Monsea. He appointed doctors as his new advisors, and ordered them to help him perform bizarre and deadly medical experiments on unwilling victims. He was fascinated with Graces, and thought that he could switch the Graces of two people by switching their eyes, but this only killed them. His other experiments had to do with pregnancy and fetuses, though he never made any medical discoveries.

When he was around thirty-six, he travelled Lienid and met with the royal family. He decided he wanted their Princess Ashen, who was eighteen years old, as his wife, and returned with her to Monsea, where they were married. They had a daughter who they named Bitterblue.

Leck's obsession with the Dells never abated, and he convinced many artists to fill his castle with sculptures, wall-hangings, and pruned shrubs that all depicted Dellian monsters. One wall-hanging, which he placed in the library, was a depiction of Lady Fire in their final confrontation. He made many adjustments to his castle's architecture in an attempt to make it look more like King Nash's castle in King City. He had several watches made that kept Dellian time, and had all the people in his court operate by that time. He renamed the River Silver that ran through his capital city the River Dell, and built three bridges along it, modeled after the bridges that spanned the Winged River in the Dells. However hard he tried, though, he always felt that his creations were inferior to what they were based on, and this constantly angered and frustrated him.

Around the same time as Bitterblue was conceived, one of Leck's 'favourites', the sculptor Bellamew, became pregnant with Leck's daughter as a consequence of Leck's 'experiments'. Bellamew was one of the few who could resist Leck to some degree, and concealed from him their Graced daughter by telling him the child had died. Leck killed her in a fit of rage when he discovered that the girl was alive, but he was never able to find her.