Valancourt Bolton
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| Portrayed by Aidan Turner | |
| Full Name | Valancourt Bolton |
|---|---|
| Title | Mr Bolton |
| Associated Noble House(s) | No connections |
| Date of Birth | 21 August 1777 |
| Father | Sir Linley Bolton (deceased) |
| Father's Rank | Baronet |
| Mother | Lady Rosamond Bolton (deceased) |
| Mother's Rank | Gentry |
| Town Residence | Bolton House, 16 Lower Berkeley Street |
| Income | ? |
| School | - |
| University | none |
Val Bolton is a bachelor from Yorkshire, plagued all his life by an unpredictable and extreme temperament. Years of whoring and gambling have grown tiresome, and he comes to town to amuse himself for the summer.
Val is played by Micaela.
Family
- Sir Linley Bolton, b. 1741 d. 1794 - father
- Lady Rosamond Bolton, née Walthorpe, b. 1756 d. 1790 - mother
- Sir Lorenzo “Laurence” Bolton, b. 4 Mar 1773 - brother
Background
Born in a heat wave, Valancourt came into the world after a particularly troublesome confinement and birth, and was laid in his exhausted mother’s arms screaming like a banshee. He didn’t stop screaming for several months. Being decidedly the spare, and a sickly child to boot, born to a weakened mother, he was to be the last of the Bolton children--the last thing to come of the union that would ever bring either parent any joy at all (he did not bring it easily).
Sir Linley was, put simply, a brute. He indulged in spirits; he gambled; he beat his wife. Lady Rosamond was an idealistic convent-educated debutante when she married, lively and pretty with a weakness for novels, and Sir Linley did a good job of pretending to be palatable until they crossed the threshold of Oakfield Manor. Affection withered on the vine, and the sour resentment that remained would poison the rest of their days. She had never been strong of spirit herself; indeed, her contemporaries recalled that sometimes she would disappear from society for weeks at a time, and was widely assumed to be sickly. Her delicate appearance did nothing to dissuade them, and the discovery that her husband was a bully broke something inside of her. Her behaviour became more unpredictable, and her husband tried harder to control her.
Despite this, the Bolton parents were largely absent from their younger son’s life. Sir Linley was off doing whatever it was that distressed Mother (and his man of business) so, and Lady Rosamond was either in her room all day or out attending parties and hosting them with alarming frequency. When they were home, Val spent most of the time hiding behind his brother, and as a whole he was raised by the usual cabal of hired hands until he was of age to attend school. Always easily distressed, young Val did not take well to formal education. Two years of bullying, bed-wetting, and caning, as well as several different schools later, he was brought home and haphazardly educated from there. When his parents were not present, he was free to do largely as he pleased, wandering the estate at will.
As he grew, he noticed that his home was, in places, falling apart. The roof leaked; the stables were a near-ruin; ordinary repairs were never made. It was not until he was older that he would discover the state of the estate’s accounts--namely, that his father had nearly ruined them. When he was thirteen, following a period of melancholy, during which his father grew agitated and repeatedly attempted to rouse her from her room, Lady Rosamond died in the country under mysterious circumstances. With the light gone out of the world, Val did his best to avoid his father until that man’s death years later, falling ignominiously off a horse on a drunken midnight ride and being found the next morning by the groom, neck broken.
As an older adolescent, he began to experience many of the same symptoms his mother had--periods of melancholy in which nothing would get done, phases of frantic mania in which too much did. He became entangled with a young married woman in the village during one of these cycles, and fancied himself her knight in shining armour. Her husband didn’t think so. The husband disappeared, and besides a token inquest (which turned up little), nothing else was ever said on the matter.
At 21, Valancourt decided it was time for him to go to town. A fair gambler and charming enough fellow when he was up, he gathered the sort of noncommittal friends one is prone to in young adulthood, and embarked upon what he had decided would be an illustrious career as a poet. He had showed vague inclination towards literature as a boy, though no special talent; this was irrelevant. With what allowance he could wring from his brother, he kept a mistress of the lower classes in his own rooms and ran with the type of crowd that will inevitably get one into trouble, regardless of personality. After a fight, the mistress, a lady of little virtue and less family, disappeared. Nobody had much interest in connecting her to the farmer. He said she’d gone home to the country to marry some childhood sweetheart.
He has ambled around the country (and several other countries) looking for a purpose and finding trouble, occasionally being dragged out of gambling hells or opium dens by his elder brother--the only man in the world he respects, and probably the only one he likes. Bored of the seedy world of taverns and women of easy morals, ever seeking a change, he has come to London to see what can be gained of the famous Season.
Personality
Sir Linley liked to say that the August heat had addled baby Valancourt’s brains. He rarely ceased crying as a baby, was prone to emotional outbursts as a boy, and by the time he had reached adulthood, had established the pattern of periods of melancholy and fervid mania. He has never been required to mature, being protected by his older brother in all things, and naturally disinclined to make an effort in any arena. He pursues nothing that does not please him, and hates to clean up his own messes.
Regardless of the troubles in his mind, he is a cruel and selfish man at heart, with a weakness for pretty women but little interest in ever marrying. Women are, in his opinion, generally stupid creatures, and more trouble than they’re worth. This does not stop him from carrying on with them, of course--only keeps him liable to diatribes on their shortcomings as a sex. Society women are the worst of them all, he is fairly certain, though he has met precious few of them in his oddly-secluded bachelor’s life. He is vain of his appearance and dreads the oncoming march of age; it is rumoured he colours his hair and applies creams and ointments in quantities and combinations that would put the most beauty-conscious woman to shame. He is easily hurt and slighted, and has tried to dull this instinct with either intoxicating substances, women, or simply avoiding anything that displeases him.
There is also, of course, his irritability and quickness to anger. He inherited his father's anger along with his mother's instability, and it is not hard to make him furious, though he is largely unconscious of his honour or reputation. He has never been called out, or if he has, he has refused to show. There is no gentility to his rage, only unleashed and immediate animal hatred, and it is a terrible thing to behold. He is prone to violence and cares little for the pain and distress of others, and in combination with his brother’s care of him, he has turned into a pestilence of a man, lacking impulse control and most redeeming qualities.
That said, if unruffled and feeling up instead of low, he can be a pleasant enough figure in a drawing-room, and minds his manners admirably. He can dance tolerably well, and can carry on mindless conversation without shocking too many people. He can charm when he wants to, and there’s a reason he has such a number of conquests. No--if one does not pay attention, Valancourt Bolton comes off as nothing more than a somewhat odd young man with sad eyes. It’s what he does in back rooms that’s the danger.