Reuven

By the age of thirty, Reuven had grown into a heavyset figure whose look was rough and severe. A messy mop of hair sat above a strong, stubbled jaw, and his mouth was notably wide. His everyday outfit paired a plain tank top with striped trousers cinched by a broad belt, finished off with a string of pearls, a regal coat bound in chain, and a modest crown. The strain of Esperia's later troubles left him visibly grubbier once he reached thirty-eight.

Going further back, at twenty-one, his face already carried an aged cast even though his frame was leaner and free of any beard. In those years he went without a crown and tended to favor a dark, militaristic outfit, swapping it for far simpler garments whenever he wanted to keep his royal standing hidden.

His grim looks matched a temperament that ran serious to an almost comedic extreme. He once read Brook's affection for Candelle as the setup for a murder plot and lunged at the musician after the latter turned down marrying his young daughter. Even so, Reuven set such impulses aside when his family's welfare was at stake, putting up with Brook's relaxed manner because of the swordsman's value as a royal guard and leaning on him whenever his wife seemed threatened.

Beneath that prickly exterior, the king genuinely looked out for his people. While still a prince, he would slip into ordinary clothes to walk among them and gauge how they were faring. Finding the boy Brook stuck in a scrapheap and shut out of schooling by his lowly birth, Reuven felt for him and struck up a fast friendship. When corrupt Marines later seized and abused the child, the prince intervened with force and freed him, brushing off any fallout with the World Government, whose protection of such officials he viewed as proof it could not be trusted. Years on, when Esperia could not meet the Heavenly Tribute, he turned down the offer to hand over a thousand slaves, judging that bondage under the nobles was worse than dying and choosing to defend his subjects instead.

A century ago, Reuven entered the world as part of Esperia Kingdom's ruling house. Seventy-nine years back, while still a prince, he stumbled across an eleven-year-old Brook scraping by in the kingdom's junkyard. The boy's playing, clumsy lyrics and all, caught his interest, and the two clicked at once, sealing things with a grim soup of frog, grasshopper, plus curry powder that Brook offered as a gift. The pair began passing time together, fishing and singing. Trouble followed when Marines arrested Brook on suspicion of running drugs for the Moulon Family. Reaching the spot just before the boy was put to death, Reuven came backed by Candelle and the kingdom's Battle Convoy, striking down the Marines for moving against an innocent. He carried Brook back to the palace, owned up to having hidden his identity, and proclaimed the boy Esperia's brightest new musician, ordering him housed there and enrolled in lessons, with Candelle taking him on as her page and arranging fencing instruction.

Inside the following two years, Reuven wed Candelle, raising her to queen, and the couple had a girl named Shuri. Seventy years ago, a garden mix-up saw him overhear Brook speaking of his love for the queen, which sparked accusations of an assassination scheme; the confusion eased only when guards warned that the Moulon Family had surrounded the opera house holding Candelle, though Brook had already cut down the gang earlier that day.

Sixty-two years ago, a peculiar haze smothered Esperia, wrecking its instruments before thickening into a deadly smog that claimed hundreds, Candelle among them, which devastated the king. With the economy in ruins and the Heavenly Tribute unpayable, Reuven spurned the demand to surrender a thousand slaves to Mary Geoise, igniting a war that Brook and the wider kingdom backed. The government fleet landed two months on and swiftly crushed Esperia's defenders, breaching the castle. In the aftermath, both Reuven and Shuri were turned into demons, and his own daughter delivered the killing blow.