Editing Joseph Wyndham-Castel (section)

== Character History ==
Joseph’s mother, Viviane Castel, came from a long line of monster hunters in Road’s End. Growing up, this meant she was always an outsider. The other children never teased her, because her family was feared, but they never accepted her either, for the same reason. Her parents were often away for long stretches of time, seemingly more concerned with their dealings with the fey, than with her. As soon as she was old enough, Viviane moved away from Road’s End and put that life behind her as much as she could, getting a scholarship, going to college and then law school, becoming a lawyer and being the epitome of respectability, eventually settling in the city of Boston. She married a man, Christian Wyndham, from a well-to-do family, involved in politics. Christian knew little about Viviane’s past, only that she wanted little to do with it, and respected this.

Little did Viviane know that, though she might wish to be done with the fey, they were not done with her. They followed her to Boston, keeping track of her, and when she had her first child, left her a “gift”—they replaced her son Joseph with a fey changeling. This only became evident when Joseph was going through puberty and began growing horns. Viviane and Christian first took the teenager to the doctor, though Viviane feared she already knew the answer. When the doctor told them that Joseph did not appear to be fully human, Viviane had to tell her husband and son about her past, her family and their frequent dealings with the fey. The relationship between the three underwent considerable strain, but they managed to stick together as a family. At first, they tried clipping Joseph’s horns, but as they grew longer, this grew less practical and he took to wearing a hat to hide them. Joseph attempted to follow his mother’s urgings of trying to have a normal life, but he felt less and less at ease—and people began reacting to him strangely, even with his horns hidden. Something about his aura left them unsettled.

After Joseph dropped out of college, Viviane realized that Joseph would never be normal. She reluctantly encouraged him to go to Road’s End, telling him how to get in touch with her old family there, herself contacting them for the first time in many years to tell them Joseph would be coming. He is now living with Eddie, as he tries to learn more about his fey heritage and who and what he is. Eddie has begun training Joseph to be a hunter. Joseph is deeply ambivalent about being in Road’s End—on the one hand, he is driven to find out more about his fey heritage; on the other, he is resentful that he isn’t who he thought he was growing up and that he can’t live the normal, human life had envisioned for himself. He finds himself doubly out of place—a city kid in a deeply rural area and a changeling among humans. He is both drawn to and resentful of the fey. He’s also begun to realize that somewhere out there is the person his mother gave birth to, raised by the fey—he’s both eager and afraid to meet his counter-part, wondering what the “real” Joseph Wyndham-Castel is like and how being raised among the fey has affected him.