Age: 12 (b. February 27, 1087)
Title: N/A
Spouse: N/A
Children: N/A, he's a kid himself!
Traits (4 points): +1 Personal Combat, +1 Scout, +2 Survival
Etienne is the son of humble farmers from the village of Cloyes-sur-le-Loir in the Orleanais, and thus, a figure of no note in the ongoing crusade. A zealous churchgoer who fantasized about becoming a knight with his friends, he was swept up in the excitement of the People's Crusade back in 1096 and snuck away from his home to fall in line behind Peter the Hermit with some of the other boys from Cloyes, personally armed only with a butcher's knife and whatever stones he could find from the riverbank.
Then-eight-year-old Etienne did not kill anyone as the People's Crusade made its way through Europe, devastating Jewish communities as they went, but he did indirectly participate in the killings of Rhineland Jews by pointing out those Jews who tried to escape the wrath of the older crusaders. Nor did he kill anyone in the Balkans, where he served as a camp lookout while the army repeatedly blundered into hostilities with the Magyars and Byzantines. No, unlike many of the adults of the People's Crusade, Etienne can rightly say he saved his blade for the infidels, having first fatally struck a Turk on the head with a rock at the desperate 'Battle' of Civetot (where all of his remaining friends from Cloyes died or were taken by the Turks) before fleeing to an abandoned Byzantine fortification with Geoffrey Burel's contingent.
While the Byzantine navy ferried them back to the European side of the Bosphorus, Etienne entertained thoughts of going home, though it was obvious to all that they had definitely not reached Jerusalem. At least they had come (kind of) close, right? But the real crusaders showed up soon afterward, thousands of knights atop mighty steeds and professional sergeants in ringmail, and there the boy decided that if he were to stick with them, he might actually make it to Jerusalem after all. And that's what he's been doing for the past three years. As the older crusaders have perpetually kept him as a camp sentry, stuck with the rest of the non-combatant camp followers, the only action he has ever gotten to see was whenever the Saracens raided the crusader encampment. His kills were few - actually, exactly one, it was a Saracen raider who was already half-dead from a wound inflicted by his previous opponent - and humiliating defeats where he had to be bailed out by the older knights and soldiers, many, though at least he got to loot a dagger he keeps thinking is a sword out of it.
Etienne hopes Jerusalem will be different. He wept upon finally laying eyes on the holy city, as did many of the adults. And the situation for the crusaders has gotten desperate enough over the summer, while he has grown tall enough, that he's been reassigned to help with what everyone hopes is the final assault on the city - finally, he would be fighting for real. Etienne now consigns his soul to God in nightly prayers, simply waiting for the time where he would be falling in line behind a siege tower with the rest of the poor infantry to do or die. |