Ethel Barret
Lady Ethel Tabori- Barret
Lady Ethel Barret was the wife of Baron Orlan am Tabori of Mull and the mother of the last Tabori Baron, Milo am Tabori. She was a deeply troubled young woman and her marriage to the Baron of Mull was a twelve-year ordeal that eventually caused her to take her own life.
Promised by her moderately wealthy father to the future Baron's only son, Ethel was married at the age of 15. Her husband, Orlan, was not a kind or gentle husband, and the heir to the barony was often known to beat his wife whenever the mood struck him. While she was pregnant with their first child, he punched her in the face at a dinner party so hard her two front teeth were knocked out of her mouth. She never smiled in public again after that, and rarely (if ever) spoke in public for fear of someone seeing her broken smile.
After the birth of their daughter, Millicent, in 170 AF, the frequency and intensity of the beatings only increased. As the years passed, the scars of the beatings became more and more apparent to anyone that cared to see them. Unfortunately, few took the time or made the effort to notice the wear this was placing on the frail and delicate young woman. Ethel became pregnant no fewer than four times after Millicent was born, but the pregnancies all failed before they came to term. Then, in 181 AF, Ethel became pregnant again just before her husband went hunting in the far north of the Kingdom. While on a hunt with the Duke of Hekmo for the legendary Mastodons, Orlan was severely injured and was required to remain with the Duke while his wounds healed. This convalescence took 11 months, and while Orlan was away, Ethel gave birth to their second child, Milo.
Ethel was heard by her servants to passionately pray every night and every morning that her husband would return so happy with the birth of a healthy male heir that he would stop hurting her. Her prayers were not answered, however, and as soon as the future Baron returned to his apartments at Mull Castle, the beatings renewed with even greater ferocity and frequency. In the early weeks of 182 AF, after a frigid cold night and a particularly harsh night of abuse, Ethel's servants came into her apartments to find the young noble woman hanging dead and frozen by her neck with a belt through the opening of her garderobe over the steep bluffs of Castle Hill. Her infant son, Milo, never uttered as much as a whimper in the cold and empty room.
Relationships
