The second child of Andre and Sonja t'Corbeau, Darman has ever looked up to sister but lived in her shadow. Growing up, his father's favor for her was never less than obvious, and though his mother loved him just as deeply, it was the former's approval he sought. Maybe it was some instinctive understanding that a mother's love was unconditional (and thus somehow less a prize), or maybe it was the fact that she died before he was old enough to understand it in a meaningful way. In her absence and his sister's exalted presence, Darman grew ever-more hungry for some sign of that same approval.
As a child and youth he did everything to prove himself worthy to his father: With his tutors in law, language, politics, numbers… he was naught but obedient and studious. When old enough, he began training like his sister did, with the same Wraith instructors, and he displayed what surely must have been many of the same aptitudes as she. They were of the same blood after all, and he no less devoted, no less eager, having grown up in awe, rather than fear, of the dark stories of his family's deeds and accomplishments during the War, of his father's role in bringing chaos and terror to Rivana. Yet despite all he did, things fell through. His father pushed his sister, while Darman was left to his own drive alone. And while he lacked nothing in that regard, the subtle shift in treatment was quietly heartbreaking, subtly demoralizing, though he ever pretended nothing was wrong. Then finally there came a point when it was time for their training to be more than theory, more than practice, but action. Talia was sent away, first once for a long time, and then often if more briefly in the future. To where or what end, he never knew. But Darman stayed behind. An heir and a spare, as the saying goes; it was obvious enough which one he was.
Still, dawning manhood and his sister's absences afforded Darman rare attention from his father, constructive or otherwise. He began to learn the business, and while most of the daily and practical lessons came from other relatives, such as his uncles Giralt and Dimitri, and other Syndicate associates of the family, his father oversaw the critical moments: his first murder, the quietly-slit throat of some merchant he didn't know and who barely gave the lanky youth a second glance, or even his first fuck, one of a batch of girls bought off the Brolund and taken to one of their houses. In the latter case, Darman took rare (if perverse) pleasure in his certainty that this was one bit of parental mentoring he alone had enjoyed. These moments inspired brief sparks of hope in the young man, which would flicker and die whenever his sister returned home.
Still, they were years where Darman began to grow into his own by sheer necessity of custom if not quality of parenting, he coming of the age to make public appearances at court functions and other gatherings. While there was often a sense of him serving as his sister's surrogate, appearing where a t'Corbeau heir was needed while his sister was mysteriously indisposed, Darman made his own friends all the same. Starved for affection of the kind he desired but less often received at home, he sought it openly and readily in public, and often won it. It was, at the very least, a larger and freer kind of stage, one with rules he could understand, unlike those indecipherable principles behind his father's criticisms and disinterest. Out and about, in wider society, he was judged by what he was and by his actions… or rather by whatever he could convince people he was, and that itself was a freedom he revelled in. Amidst this, he quickly joined the Circle, his prior discontinued training still more than enough to impress some of the other young men and their older mentors in friendly spars, while their lust for life and close fraternal bonds helped fill vacancies left gaping by his upbringing. Knowing more than a few good family-connected establishments, he quickly became popular for leading tavern crawls and other less proper outings.
As he matured, Darman settled into the life he seemed destined to live, ever trying to delude himself into satisfaction in it, but rarely feeling such. Both he and his sister gained in responsibility, although his always the lesser, the insignificant, that as certain as the rising of the sun. He took to his own duties competently, but without zeal and doing only as much as was asked of him, the fiery ambition of his youth dying away, smothered to ember in his own heart and mind. It had dawned on him, somewhere in the swift years of his increasingly misspent youth, that there was only one way he would be seen his sister's equal, only one way he would gain his father's affection or at last respect… along with his inheritance. And it was a realization he had rejected as quickly as it came upon him. Failure in such a thing would have been his death, and victory would have been worse, as for all his envy he idolized his sister, and loved her. His father's love or approval was not worth her life, nor was he sure that such a sacrifice would win it. So Darman gave up on all such things, the passion draining away.
Except no one would ever guess, never know it to look at him. Playing the family's courtier, squelching his own frustrations and regrets, he formed a mask of levity and nonchalance so perfect he eventually forgot he wore it. He was the consummate face and go-between, whether in formal court, out gallivanting with the members of his club, or among the family's Syndicate associates. There he was ever ready to address the concerns of his sister's soldiers, to bargain with or appease the other families, unconcerned for his own pride or dignity. The grease between the wheels, the libation that loosens the tongue, maybe that was his destined role, and he accepted it with an outward smile and no great joy.
And then his father died.
It was an anticlimax to a life spent almost entirely to that moment in service of the man's inscrutable standards, a sudden absence without closure. But in the man's absence, in the full light of his sister's ascension, Darman's life became by some measure easier, even if all the prior scars remained. Unlike in their earliest childhood, Talia seemed over-eager to treat him well, although her acceptance (and his promotion to her right hand within the Syndicate) felt odd and uncomfortable, recognition he had never received under his father. Darman continued to smile through it all, of course, his carefree facade now well-ingrained into his being, while internally wondering at his true place. His sister solved at least some of these doubts by making official the unofficial course of his life in those intervening years, putting him to work in the courts, in his club, and at the taverns, brothels, and every other place where a personable young man might hear things of value spoken or earn confidences.
And this is the life Darman now leads. His sister remains the Wraith-errant, the mastermind, the hero and leader, everything her father ever imagined, and he remains… the smiling, glad-handing, part-time spy, managing the trivial that she has little time for. Of course, there are times when even his perfect mask has cracked over the years, a handful of Syndicate killings that could easily have been given to any thug or underling that Darman instead carried out himself, spilling blood in filthy alleys with his own blade, if only to feel the thrill of the life he was denied - or perhaps to please his sister in the way he never could his father.
