Gauchier’s life began as a storybook happily-ever-after. Their parents, a young noble-commoner couple who had shirked many traditions for their marriage, raised them and their older twin Roi lovingly on the small barony of Alacci, near Miras city. There, they spent their childhood in slow and blissfully unremarkable peace.

The idyllic days would end when Gauchier was 9. On a routine family trip to visit relatives in Belport, a freak storm overturned their ship and drowned both parents, along with many other passengers. Gauchier too nearly drowned, but was saved by Roi’s tenacity. Battered and half-dead, Gauchier was rushed back to their home estate, only to be immediately isolated from the world by their grandfather - an overprotective, grief-stricken move that would have lasting consequences. Without adequate support, Gauchier’s condition deteriorated and Roi grew frenzied with helplessness. In the end, a contingent of their aunts - their mother’s commoner sisters - arrived at the estate in a fury and wrangled their grandfather into sharing the twins’ caretaking. In the hands of their extended family, Gauchier finally recovered, but the new friction between the twins and their grandfather would never mend.

The next few years were spent split between Alacci and their aunts’ various residences in Miras city. While in the capital, the twins got to have a taste of bustling city life and commoner freedoms. Back in Alacci, they were raised strictly by their grandfather, who maintained a distance but carefully saw to their tutoring and needs. Gauchier held onto the belief that their grandfather still loved them despite his austerity, but Roi increasingly resented him.

As they entered adolescence, the twins’ paths began to diverge. Roi, as the heir, was given more lessons on politics and administration, while Gauchier was trained for military service. Each twin preferred the other’s subjects, however, and Roi was itching to rebel against their grandfather’s wishes, so they covertly started to swap places for their lessons. This harmless-seeming trick quickly snowballed as both twins found they were much better suited - and much happier - in their opposite role. When the age of adulthood approached, Roi finally asked whether Gauchier would entertain a longer-term switch - that is, whether Gauchier would stay to masquerade as Roi in court, while Roi went to the military under Gauchier’s name. Seeing how much Roi desired this, Gauchier acquiesced.

The twins thus debuted to society with the other’s identity. Gauchier came to be known by all their peers as Roi, the polite and good-tempered heir of Alacci. They studied fashion and design in the capital, made many friends, and developed a reputation for connecting artists to noble commissioners. Everything was smooth sailing and Gauchier was happy - yet also constrained. Conscious of how they were only borrowing Roi’s position, they carefully avoided investing themselves in anything consequential. In particular, they deflected all potential suitors, regardless of their own feelings.

Roi, who had been thriving in the military, started to cotton onto the fact that their ruse may be damaging Gauchier’s long-term happiness more than helping it, and that Roi had actually palmed off the more difficult role to their sibling. In their regular letters to each other, the twins began to discuss coming clean on their lie. The arrival of war and then the death of King Giovan was the final nail in their decision. Roi returned from the military for the royal funeral and the twins subtly swapped back. Withdrawing from the public eye, they prepared to announce - and damage-control - the reveal of their years-long deception. Yet before they could, a new crisis arrived at their doorstep in the form of several half-dark-elf fugitives. The Kingdom’s crackdown on spies was in full swing and the twins’ Belporter cousin had been arrested for harbouring the half-elves, so he had sent them secretly to Alacci to beg for help. Shocked but too soft-hearted to turn them away, Gauchier agreed to personally take the half-elves to the Empire, where they would be safe.

To the world, what happened next looked like this: Roi, the quiet and courteous heir who had always attended court, became more spritely and loud. At a luncheon they were hosting one day, they abruptly announced to everyone that the ‘Roi’ they all knew had actually been Gauchier, the younger twin, all this time. Roi explained and apologised for the twins’ swap, concluding that they, the real Roi, would now rightfully take up their responsibilities as heir, while the real Gauchier had left Miras to pursue their own freedom at last.

The truth, little known to most, was that Gauchier had become entangled in underground dealings while in Koben and was unable to return, thus forcing Roi to cover for their absence. Gauchier would spend the next two years caught in a whirlwind of unexpected encounters, back-alley drama and falling in love. Despite and because of it all, they found themselves happier than they had ever been. For the first time in perhaps their whole life, they were their own self.

Their time in Koben ultimately ended in heartbreak, however, and Gauchier returned alone to the Kingdom. Roi covered their tracks by saying they had travelled back from Estraude and this, along with Gauchier’s obvious dejection, led to a story that they had eloped with some no-good Estran. It suited the twins not to dispute this so, soon enough, this became the assumed truth behind their disappearance. Thus Gauchier, the polite yet also somehow wildly improper younger noble, settled back in Miras.