Briar Family

The Briars are one of many Ostanian households wrecked by the second war with Westalis, remembered chiefly through the pair of children they leave behind. Their story sits with Yor and Yuri, who lose their parents young and are forced to raise themselves in hardship, one sister sliding into contract killing and one brother rising into state intelligence.

Records of the Briars' private life are thin. The parents settle in Eastern Nielsberg, where Yor is born first and Yuri arrives seven years behind her. The home seems content until the second East-West war claims both parents under causes never made clear, stranding two small children who have only each other.

Yor takes charge as guardian, feeding and nursing her brother however clumsily. With money short and Yuri's schooling in doubt, she slips into Garden, an underground assassin ring, and trains beneath the Shopkeeper so she can pay for his education without letting him learn the source. The pay proves generous enough to send him to class and cover whatever he wants.

Both eventually relocate to the capital, Berlint. Yuri's sharp mind lets him skip grades and reach college at fourteen. A role with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs later draws him out of their shared home, and from there Ostania's counterintelligence branch, the State Security Service, recruits him, while Yor clerks at Berlint City Hall and keeps killing on the side. When Yuri suggests introducing her to a suitor before he accepts a promotion, Yor seeks a partner to keep up appearances and meets Loid Forger; the two strike a sham marriage that suits both their secret goals. She then neglects to mention any of it to Yuri, who learns of the wedding through their friend Dominic and comes knocking to interrogate the husband his sister has supposedly kept for a year.

The family counts four members. The unnamed mother and unnamed father both die in the war while Yor and Yuri are still young. Yor, the elder child and a Garden assassin, now goes by Forger after marrying into that household. Yuri, the younger, works as an officer with the State Security Service. The surname Briar derives from Little Briar Rose, one title for the Sleeping Beauty tale, and ties into the rose motif shared by Yor and her mother.