The Rottborne Family

The Rottborne are one of the oldest noble families of the Tolona Peninsula, and also one of the most traditionalists. They follow old nobility rules in their daily lives and aspire to more than the life of the common folk. The Rottborne are considered particularly entitled by the remaining noble families of the region and are criticised for demanding the respect and reverence that used to be directed at Senhoras, even though the family has only been granted the title of Dame.
Even though the Rottborne believe themselves to be the prime examples of humanity in the world, most people who have to the misfortune of dealing with them end up regretting their life choices. It is truly a wonder that the Rottborne found enough people to marry them over the centuries to continue the family legacy. Money is probably involved. A lot of it.
After the revolutions that ended the nobility's privileges over the masses, the Rottborne founded the Rottborne Builders, a company specialised in building lavish buildings for local governments in the Tolona Peninsula. They are active mostly in West Tolona, but have spread through the whole region. It is an open secret that Rottborne Builders is just an excuse for illicit money-making and for giving the family more influence in politics than they should. But since the people who would have the power to stop them are doing something similar, nobody does anything, and the Rottborne are allowed to keep being the proverbial pain in everyone's behind with not even a formal warning.
The first time in recent history when the Rottborne were forced to face serious consequences for their acts was when Briennus Rottborne used his school classmate for his Virility Test without informing said classmate of his intentions. The classmate, a boy named Apollon MacLeto, ended up having the child, but went to court to take away all of Briennus's paternity rights. This meant the Virility Test was declared invalid, and Briennu's reputation took a nose-dive into oblivion. His mother was not pleased, but the rest of the world shared a laugh.

Public Agenda

The Rottborne are an ambitious sort who believe they are entitled to all the best things in life because they were born great that way. Ethics and morals are not always concerns for them (at least until the Briennus Fiasco). They use the Rottoborne Builders to give them access to local government and to get extra money on the side by overcharging for their construction projects. The illustrious line of the Rottborne features its fair share of liars, scammers, blackmailers, and borderline homicidal sorts.
Everybody knows this, and yet there is always someone willing to play their game with them.

Assets

The Rottborne family owns the Rottborne Building company, which officially builds all the grandiose buildings in the Tolona Peninsula (and unofficially gets them a lot of illegal money).
Their family home is a mansion built back when the nobility still held all their original status and power. One of the signs of the mansion's age is the fact that it has a servants's quarter in the basement (because back then families had "servants" who lived in the manor and had to work around the clock to fulfil their masters' demands). One of the signs of the Rottborne's aged mentality is the fact that those quarters are still in-use (though the modern-day "servants" are protected by proper worker rights laws that prevent them from working more than 5 hours per day, four times a week).
The Rottborne would probably like to include their "servants" under their assets too, but fortunately modern day laws and common sense forbid such a thing.

History

The Rottborne like to tell the world that they are a family "as old as time" and have been part of the nobility since their rise as a class after the Catharxis. Those claims cannot be verified, however, because a fire in the Rottborne manor in 1678 destroyed all of the family's historical records. Modern-day Rottbornes do not like to mention this incident, because anytime they do people are likely to comment on how suspicious the fire was, since it only burned that one specific room where the records were kept and happened just as the Rottbornes were about to be brought to trail by the Revolutionary Justice System. They were spared from the harsher penalties imposed on the nobility because all the "concrete evidence" that they were nobles burned with that room.
One old fact about the Rottbornes that is not contested is that they worshipped the old Bear-God Tyen. The family name comes from Rotto, an archaic word for bear, and bornit, meaning "to worship". The bear is still part of their crest.
The current head of the Rottborne family is Rohesia Rottborne. She is as ruthless and inconsiderate as one would expect a Rottborne to be, but she has shown signs of what would probably count as compassion when she offered her impoverished piano teacher the chance to help her with her Virility Test in exchange for a lot of money and noble privilege (either that, or she was just preying on a vulnerable adult, which is a whole new level of ruthless and inconsiderate). The piano teacher accepted the proposal and Rohesia gave birth to a boy named Wilhelm.
Wilhelm's birth allowed Rohesia to marry another noble man by the name of Nuno Montanha (who had to be persuaded into following the Virility Test tradition, because his family had long given up on such ridiculously outdated traditions). The couple had two children: Isabel Maria and Briennus. Due to the nobility's naming convention, Isabel Maria inherited her father's name, and Briennus inherited the Rottborne name.
Rohesia had been managing the family's affair without much trouble until her fifteen year-old son got his classmate pregnant. Rohesia of course knew that her precious son could have done nothing wrong and accused Apollon of lying about not wanting to get pregnant. The way she saw it, the fact that Briennus and Apollon were friends and had been making use of Briennu's King-size bed for almost a year at that point could only mean that Briennus had asked Apollon to give him a child, and Apollon had enthusiastically complied. She thought Apollon had changed his mind and was punishing Briennus for it. She persecuted Apollon even more savagely than her son. Unfortunately for her, the court ruled in Apollon's favour, and both Rohesia and Briennus were forbidden to ever contact Apollon's family again.
Briennus eventually convinced a servant to have a child with him for his Virility Test, and he married Ysabelle Caballera.
Rohesia's other children live less eventful lives, and are actually much nicer people than she is.

Bears in Arms

Type

Political, Family

Parent Organization

West Tolona

Location

Tolona Peninsula

Notable Members

• Briennus Rottborne