How do you solve a problem like Maria?

Personality: Maria holds herself in a very masculine fashion. Not having a mother figure she idolized her father and wishes to be a great warrior just like him. She is the most stubborn person you will ever meet and is very outgoing. Although she adores being complimented on her talents and strengths and even boasts shamelessly about them, she dislikes being called beautiful or pretty. She is not secure at all as a woman and will get very defensive about having any of her traits compared with one.
She is competitive and hates to lose. She is incredibly loyal to friends and family and has quite a lot of honor. She is always very proud of her achievements and often brags about them.
She likes to drink a lot and can get rather wild at times.
Although she will try her best to fit her chivalrous role as a knight she pretty much ignores woman as to not give them the wrong idea. She also tries not to flirt with men so she does not blow her cover.


Background: Maria is the eldest child in a large noble family and the only daughter. She grew up with her many brothers and spent her childhood riding horses and playing with toy swords. Her long white hair was always in a mess, her knees and hands almost always covered in dirt and bruises from climbing trees and rough play. For as long as she can remember she always wanted to be a knight and she would tell people often about how that one day she would be the greatest knight in all of the kingdoms. However her dreams were crushed when she was told that girls could not become knights.

When she turned 12 her father decided it was best to start treating her like a daughter even if he had no idea how to raise one. Trying to get her to wear dresses or even bathe turned out to be a challenge. She was difficult about everything and just wanted to play with her brothers and friends. Maria knew she was a girl of course, she just thought it was a stupid rule that she was not allowed to do what all her brothers and friends were able to do. Dresses were impossible to play in and girls hobbies were so boring and having to do them made her very agitated and unhappy. Now that she dressed like a girl she would get comments on how pretty she was and how lovely her long white hair was that was now brushed every morning instead of being let to go wild. The comments made her feel uneasy and she hated how they made her blush. Her friends and brothers no longer wanted to play with her and all the girls thought she was too rough and strange to be friends with. When she went anywhere near a weapon she was scolded and even when she rode she had to sit side saddle and at a walking pace. She finally got sick of it and when she was 14 she cut all her hair off with a pair off horse clippers.

She would refuse to get dressed into her girlish dresses and would just be a nuisance in order to pass the time. Her father finally could no longer stand to see his daughter act like this and gave in and stopped trying to force her to act completely opposite to her nature. Knowing that life cooped up like this was slowly driving them both to their limits and that no amount of etiquette classes were going to help her father decided it was best to at least try and teach her some discipline.

After having a long discussion with a family friend, Maria was sent to live with the family friend and work as a squire. Since the Beilschmidt family was well known for being rather large and extended no one even second guessed the boyishly dressed and eager squire who acted just like any other young teenage boy, just accepting that she was one of the many boys in the family. Her father knew this was something she had to grow tired of in her own time.

But she didn't grow tired of it, she excelled and progressed to even become a knight. She always had a rather athletic yet slender frame along with a small chest, so hiding her body under robes and armor was not a very difficult task. Her voice was rough and commanding from always yelling and she had trained herself to speak deeper and now that just came naturally too.

She was happy.

However she did always have one regret that she would deny even if it was known. She could never act on romantic feelings, for the sake of her career and her passion she had to accept she could never confront someone about her feelings. She watched quite a few teenage crushes get lovers yet she let them go...always believed that it was a distraction from her true dreams.

Francis was a childhood friend and they did confide their biggest secrets with each other. He originally was drawn to her after noticing the young knight was uninterested in female attention and thought he had found someone in a similar situation as himself. After getting to know him better she confided her secret to him. They then developed a strong platonic friendship with each other.

When Francis became king, he knighted her and she continues to be very loyal to him as a close friend and as a knight.