New York By Night:Prince of New York
Name: Roland Seegar
Embrace: 1874
Apparent Age: Late fifties
Clan: Ventrue
Covenant: Invictus
Discription: Prince Seegar appears at once as both as hard and timeless as a craggy mountain and as comforting and warm as a down blanket on a winters day. His grey eyes have the sort of tempered warmth a loving fathers eyes have, and hold the same look, promising love and praise or swift punishment, depending on his mood. Few have seen him in anything less formal then a sweeter vest, and Prince Seegar never attends court in less then a three piece suit.
Background: Orphaned as a child, Roland Seegar grew up in Boston in a Catholic orphanage. From an early age he served the church, as an alter boy and assistant and much later as a Priest himself. In the Civil War he was a surgeon and a Priest, healing those he could with what medical skill he had, and sending to the afterlife those he could not. A fragment from a mortar shell left him with a scar just below his left temple, almost invisible now.
Roland Seegar was embraced by the then Bishop of New York, Isaac Saur, in 1874, the man enjoying the talks they had and more, seeing promise in his conviction and temperance. During the Time of Troubles in New York, Roland took the side of the entrenched Old Guard, despite his youth. Following the Old Guards defeat at the hands of the younger Invictus and their allies in the Circle of the Crone Roland followed his sire and other Lancea and Invictus into Exile in Boston, where he would spend the next half dozen years.
Prince Seegar's sire was recalled to New York by Tabitha following her Night of Ashes when the Elder, then the Prince of New Jersey, slew the upstart court of the New Guard and devoured the Prince of New York. Tabitha made Bishop Saur the Prince of New York, even as she declared the Princedoms of Queens and the Bronx as well as New Jersey to be territories of New York. Roland had since joined the Invictus, despite all assumptions that he would join the Lance. He became Seneschal of New York and often served as acting Prince as his sire was often occupied with the duties of being Arch-Bishop of the largest American city.
In 2004 Prince Isaac Saur entered Torpor, placing Seegar on the throne. So far the young Prince has managed to maintain control of New York, but in Elysium and other, darker places kindred conspire. And Prince Seegar does not inspire the fear his sire once did.
Storytelling Hints: Roland has been Prince for less then a decade, sitting on a Throne given to his sire by one of his Regents, Tabitha. Fear of the monstrous girl, one known to feed off the blood of her fellows kept his sire safe from any of the other Regents. But Roland know's the girl does not see him the way she saw his sire. He has spent the better part of a century running the city, even if his sire ran it in name. His connections are vast, and his power base hard for most to fathom. Still older and and more experienced monsters eye his Throne. Some may well imagine themselves more fit to sit it.
And then there are the Carthians. Fifty years ago Roland thought them a passing fade, yet the young Covenant now out numbers the Invictus and Lance combined in New York. They call for votes, for Carthian members of the Primogen. The First Estate is well entrenched but Roland and the inner circle know they can not hope to match the soldiers the Carthians could muster should it turn to that. Still, giving them any sort of power or voice erodes his alliances and bargains with the other Invictus, allies he can not afford to loose.
And so the man that appears as strong as a stone wall and unworried as a champion poker player walks on egg shells. Everything he does, every move he makes or decree made public is carefully weighted. For the wolves are at the gate, waiting to rush in.
