Solbjørn Hvittsen

Solbjørn Hvittsen (sol-byurn vit-sen) is the son of the white bear-prince, male protagonist from East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

Although he, for obvious reasons, would rather not have been bestowed under a similar spell that his father once had, Sol tends to associate himself with the Royals simply out of convenience. Many folks of the Royal alignment tend to be actual princes and princesses, after all, and it is often with them, with notable exceptions, that are less likely to judge a select number of his characteristics as general haughtiness.

Personality
Solbjorn is a stoical young man with a penchant for determination, his air of dignified calm giving the impression that he’s a little more aloof than he actually is. Some may see him as your typical pretty-boy prince, avoiding the fact that he’s one of many destined dudes-in-distress while keeping away from the sun to maintain his notable fairness. Others might notice his more reserved nature, and brush him off as some rigid stick-in-the-mud who only cares about maintaining his legacy. Either way, it’s not hard to figure that he’s yet another well-off student in a sea of royalty.

Or so you think.

Not a ton of folks would guess that he’s already cursed. Not that he cares if people already know, but it could be said that he's done pretty well for "passing" as normal. Even less would come to the conclusion that he’s independently skilled when it comes to the outdoors, particularly at night, or at least those outside of his Beast Training & Care class. And for those who know his story, they might assume that his evil step-mom doesn't come into play until it’s time to fulfill his destiny. But she’s already invaded his life for better or worse, and the fact that his transformation will take full form at 18 means that, until then, he still has some rather, erm, interesting  habits most often displayed by the animal he’ll turn into.

Suppressing himself and shrugging off his hardships has not come easy, nor is it something that those around him would grasp without effort. It’s not that he wants to put himself on a pedestal, it’s just easier at times to keep his distance and let people assume than let them judge him for exactly what he is. Anger does not come easily to him but when it does, his instincts are not far behind, and being a mere two years away from taking beastly form does not help one bit. All in all he’s a reserved yet stalwart young fellow who wants someone to understand, but like everything else in his life, the silver spoon that others see him use has not the sweetest porridge to dine on.

Appearance
Whether due to his bear of a curse, perhaps or his inclination for the outside in spite of his condition, Sol is 6 ft 3 inches and somewhat stocky even during those rare moments where he isn't wearing a plethora of layers. His skin is exceptionally pale as a result of his albinism, hence why he's often covered from head to toe. He'll usually wear a brimmed hat over his white, mildly tousled hair to help keep him out of the sun.

His bright blue eyes are suspectable to photophobia, or sensitivity to light, which he'll combat by wearing a pair of blue tinted glasses while outside. As Sol has low vision he'll bring a clip-on monocular to help see from a distance; while reading or in the classroom, reading glasses and a dome magnifier are his aids.

Basic Summary
A Norwegian story collected by Asbjornsen and Moe, East of the Sun and West of the Moon goes as followed:

Some white bear, often drawn as a polar bear, and sometime during the fall season, knocks on the windowpane of this farmer peasant dude with a bunch of pretty kids but of course, the prettiest is his youngest daughter. ​Conveniently, he lets the bear in and said bear asks to take in his youngest daughter for exchange for all the riches he needs. The dad surprisingly asks his daughter but she was all "No!" so the bear lets them sit on the whole thing until next Thursday. Wotta nice guy.

So because the dad's a greedy bastard he convinces her to go with him because he needs the mulah and yada yada, she goes with him and they arrive in this sweet silver and gold enchanted castle hidden in the mountainside. The bear also gives her a silver bell which gives her anything she wants with a singe ring. He's a pretty nice guy ain't he, not to mention dat sweet room service. Too bad it has literally no plot significance after that. Anyways after grabbing some munchies or something she goes to bed and turns out the light.

Meanwhile some mysterious stranger she never sees joins her in her bed chambers. D'ohoho. But plot twist: It's actually the godammed bear. So the girl gets bored and lonely because his bear-hubby's rarely around during the day and she wants to see her family. He lets her go on the condition that she shouldn't talk to her mother without others around, let alone heed to her advice. Because there would be no plot otherwise, she does exactly what he tells her not to do.

The mom suspects that it's a troll joining her in bed and tells her to sneak in a tallow candle with her the next time they're sleeping (while not doing the frickle frackle because c'mon). So when the girl does she finds an attractive hunka prince. Because apparantly acting upon her ladyboner while her significant other is asleep is A-okay, she kisses the dude. Three drops of tallow spill on his shirt and he wakes up.

Turns out he has a troll of an evil step-mom and if she'd have kept it in her pants for the rest of the year, then maybe he'd have eventually turned human permanently by then, rather than having to marry his step-mom's daughter, a troll-princess. Because incest is ethical when they're not related and the marriage is only bad because they're trolls and therefore not Christian, amirite? More on the Christian bit later.

He leaves the next day and and the whole castle-mountain disappears, but before then he tells her that they're taking him to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon. She angsts her tears away until it's time to kick it into gear and save her man. So our leading young lady meets three old woman who have no clue where that is, but each end up giving her three golden-tinted items and a horse each in chronological order: An apple, a comb, and a spinning wheel. She then comes across each of the four winds, with the North Wind being the only one powerful enough to bring her to her destination. And so he does, all via traveling across the sea like a boss.

After that, the former bear-prince's bride-to-be hassles her three times for each of her golden trinkets, all of which the girl exchanges for a night alone with her hunka man. Unfortunately said man is given a sleeping drink/is basically drugged up by said troll-princess two times, but a group of lovely Christian prisoners tell him of them that his true girl came to save the day so on the third night he's wide awake, and lays out a plan:

On the day of their wedding he says that only the woman who can wash off the tallow spilled off the white shirt he wants to wear during the ceremony. Both troll-mom and troll-bride cannot, because of course the tallow was spilled by a Christian and of course trolls are somehow not Christian enough to scrub it. Which turns out to be true because it turned out dirtier than before. His true-blue girl successfully washes it off and all the trolls in the castle including them explode in a fit of rage. Our lovely pair free the prisoners, take all the gold in the castle, and ditch the place because reasons.

Tl;dr and Variations

It's basically Beauty and the Beast, the second but not-so-well-known bit of Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, and The Singing, Springing Lark but with snowy mountains, kind old ladies, personified wind currents, lots of gold, polar bears, and spontaneously combusting trolls.

Slight variants of the same tale will give the story two beds for the bear-prince and youngest daughter to sleep in rather than one, and may omit the old women entirely while making it so said prince sees her on his wedding day and comes up with the plan right then. And the Christian prisoners/Christianity bit might be excluded as well, because it's probably species-ist or something.

While it's possible that Sol's reliving of the tale could potentially go with the admittedly sanitized/censored version of the tale, but since Jade Encrusted Bugs could care less about it we'll just have it so his dad went through the story as narrated in the rather biggish summary, while assuming that this is the version that Sol's going through.

How Solbjorn ties into it
As trolls are commonplace in Scandinavian folklore, and of course everyone has loved ones in high and low places, the troll-princess was not the only biological daughter that the prince's step-mother had. In fact, the troll-woman's youngest daughter was sent away from east of the sun and west of the moon, a precaution made in case the worst of the worst happened before the marriage.

Well, she found out what happened. The whole of her family was gone, just like that. All because of his wretched step-brother, his true bride, and those meddling Christians. If her family suffered in the prince's hands, then what was left of his own, flesh and blood, would suffer as well.

By the time she tracked them down, both monarchs had a beautiful four-year-old son who was more fair of face than the two of them together. Well, had for the late queen who'd risen from peasant life to royalty. The young woman had died of an unknown illness, an unfortunate happening that devastated the prince-to-king who now took human form. Since destiny was to take place, the remaining heir of the royal Troll family was given joint-custody with the king over the child, therefor taking the part of his step-mother. The she-troll also had a daughter of her own during her travels, appropriately names Ishara, and so an arranged marriage was begrudgingly planned for Sol and the young troll-princess.

The first thing she did when the young prince was in his custody? Cursed him so that he would take the form of a bear on his 18th birthday. The enchantment from prince to beast, however, was different than the one that the last prince had. Rather than an immediate transformation, hints of his animality were to slowly creep as he grew. A keen sense of smell; inhuman strength; a specific eating habits relating to the skins of many a seal, as would a certain species of bear, although a carnivorous diet and particularly sea life sustain him for the time being.

And of course, though the above is not quite limited to what's listed: The unpredictable, even dangerous instincts that come with all of it.

Family
Solbjorn's family, as thusly described, isn't exactly the most conventional. Since his dad and step-mother aren't married, and with the latter inheriting the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, he spends a portion of time between both his father and the aforementioned living quarters. When away from school, the weekdays are dealt with at his dad's hidden mountainside palace, which was rebuilt after the tale, while during the weekend he stays with the she-troll and her daughter, which he travels to through the power of his step-mom's mirror portal.

Sol gets along well with his dad, who is strong yet loving as a noble king should. While he can be particularly stern when his exact instructions aren't followed as said, he accommodates for his son's needs as well as he can. The younge prince was taught from a young age how to navigate, track/gather, hunt, and generally live off the mountainside and surrounding forests as preparation for his destiny. In turn these teachings have helped him learn to blow off steam when his instincts spring up with unexpected force. These activities normally happen during the mornings and evening, primarily as a way to avoid the worst of the blistering sun.

Although he had only known her in his much earlier years, Sol remembers his mother's presence somewhat. He has memories of the pang he felt while missing her when not allowed to stay in the same room as a result of her sickness. Although he'll mention that he was young at the time as a means of minimizing minimizing it, a small portion of his mind wishes he could have made a proper goodbye before her time had come.

With his step-mom, things are a different story. The only thing preventing her from literally exploding on the very sight of him is knowing that he doesn't like staying with her in the first place. After all, any ounce of his misery means that she's helping to avenge her late maternal family. He finds himself more often than not cooped in her castle, as the older troll would rather not deal with him escaping, let alone would she want to bend over backwards for his condition.

His being around Ishara, the niece of the troll-bride, isn't at all bad however, although neither of them are looking forward to their almost-marriage. While Sol isn't terribly fond of of her obsession for gold, his step-mother's hate never rubbed on the troll-princess, as both treat each other as any brother and sister with good relations would. She's aware of and looks pass the curse her mother gave him, and Sol is often the first to defend the girl from the occasional prick who thinks being a troll and an antagonist is enough reason to harass someone.

Friends
As one can figure, Sol doesn't have a whole ton of friends, but will often be seen around what could be considered the royal "clique" of sorts. He tends to relate more with the (to-be) enchanted and not-quite-as-human princes and princesses, although his human physique tends to help him blend in with both.

This isn't to say his only friends are Royals and royalty however, nor that they're all beast-like in nature.

One of his closest childhood friends is the adopted daughter of one of the old women in his story, the one who gave his late mother the golden spinning wheel before finding the East Wind. Both his father and the woman, upon knowing that they both had different types of albinism, thought that it would help for the two of them to have friends who shared a similar condition. They've had each other's backs since,  with the helpful young girl aware of his step-mom's curse/helping him out and vise-versa.

He also has other friends who are not royalty and/or happen to be Rebels themselves, but that is a paragraph to be written for another time.

Romance
Although he doesn't know who his destined true bride will be, to properly detail upon the romantic portion of his life would be difficult without mentioning his destiny.

The one thing that should be clear: Although he may identify as a Royal, in his mind he'd be more than happy to have anyone he falls for, destined or not, to stay with him in a certain castle for a year once his complete enchantment kicks in, with no tallow-spilling or his step-mother kidnapping him like in his story. He would have to by default relive at least some of his father's tale, after all, and it doesn't look like his step-mother will be taking away the enchantment on her own anytime soon. Besides, he would rather this to happen than endanger his step-sister via literal anger-filled explosions.

He does find the whole entering-his-woman's-bed-chamber just ever so slightly awkward however, being asexual (though hetroromantic), but he's quick to remind himself (and any potential significant other of his) that sleeping in the same bed could easily be interpreted in the utmost literal sense, as opposed to hinting at any unwanted hanky-panky.

Of the few times he's taken up any romantic interest, those former interactions have led him to be wary about explaining how to break the curse. Unfortunately they, between different points in time, had mistakenly thought that he wanted them to stay with him in his bear form at the enchanted castle, and that he was going too fast with the relationship at hand.

Each separate account ended with them not knowing that he was just explaining what the curse enacted without trying to hint at the implications they saw. The events surrounding his previously failed relationships, quite understandably, have made him apprehensive about trying to initiate them in the first place.

Basic
As mentioned before, Solbjorn dawns quite a few layers, wearing a thin light and dark gray cardigan, a red and royal blue waistcoat, and a light blue faux fur vest over a black and navy turtleneck sweater. The waistcoat in question has six buttons in rows of two-by-three, three of them silver and the others gold and sun-shaped.

Over his head is a gray hat, where his pointed silver and gold crown, to symbolize the colors of the castle he is to live in, sits along the corners of its brim. It is encrusted with pearls by its tips, and along its borders with sky blue and ruby red gemstones. The front most gem(s) have been carved to appear in the shape of the sun and a crescent moon, the jewel above an amethyst violet.

He wears regular blue jeans that tuck under a pair of brown, durable boots with gray-black fronts and a gray tongue with a tear-shaped flame design. His shoes along with his crown are trimmed with a similar material as his frontmost vest, as are his fingerless gloves.

Legacy Day
[TBA~]

Trivia/Notes

 * Although he's 16, Sol is a sophmore due to having been born in autumn.
 * Specifically, he has type OCA1a albinism.
 * During those rather occasional moments where they're together, his step-mom has been known to pester his father about the gold he'd taken from her late mother's castle. Through both annoyance and pity she has slowly aquired a good amount of the gold her family once had, and due to the small size of his northern reign, the king  worries that marrying the youngest daughter of a simple peasant family won't be enough to sustain his kingdom, even if his son aquired the gold his step-mother has taken.
 * And more to come~