History Characters / ToShapeADragonsBreathStudents

* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Marta is blonde and kind, even if a great deal of what she considers "kindness" borders on being insensitive without meaning to be. She's kind to Anequs from their first meeting even if she's casually racist and eventually starts to be less so; when Anequs doesn't have proper ballgowns to attend festivals that require it, she insists that she be outfitted properly and even finds colors that set off Anequs's skin tone well. She's not as cruel as others are to Anequs or Theod once she gets to know them. And while it does take some time--and Anequs's connection at first--she comes to accept Sander's differences and learn he's pleasant and smart in his own way now that his mother isn't in the way of him making said connections.

* BeneathTheMask: Theod spent years being trained, as a servant, to be as unemotional and unnoticed as possible. He constantly puts on a blank, unemotional face at school so no one knows how he really feels in a situation--out of place, scared, and uncomfortable around the upper class people he's expected to [[YouAreACreditToYourRace present himself to as proof nackies can be "Civilized"]]. It takes getting close for Anequs to see behind it and expose his vulnerability, but anytime he's uncomfortable or stressed--often on school grounds--the blank unemotional face comes right back.
* BookDumb: Theod went from his first six years in an orphanage to serving in Herr Isbrand Malher's home, where he trained in service with desires to become a footman at best before Copper bonded to him. He never went to primary school like the other students and had no formal education; at his arrival at the academy, he couldn't even read. He is however, skilled at dragon knowledge--able to explain all the dragons on campus to Anequs at their first meeting--friendly with the dragonhall staff, and knows quite a bit about upper class ways as he was being trained to serve them. And how they're being used against him now that he's a dragoneer.
* EmbarrassingLastName: Knecht pretty much means "jarl's servant" and is given as a last name to almost anyone at the New Linvik orphanage Theod grew up in.

* UninvitedToTheParty: Marta suspects--without being direct about it--that she was not invited to Dagny's tea party being hosted the same time Theod is attending a hunting party at the Sørensen estate. She says she'll have to host her own party and invite Dagny to point out the slight.

* TheUnFavorite: His mother Frau Jansen is ashamed of him and considers him a disappointment. She often forced him to stay hidden in his room when having callers, and sent his older sister Lisbet away for primary school so they wouldn't be together and she wouldn't be "tainted". He says that if her mother had had her way, he'd have been shut in an attic as a child and never let out, the way many parents do their "unusual" children.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: At their first meeting, Anequs doesn't like Ivar by his smile alone. Soon after, Ivar insults Anequs to her face. He calls the indigenous people of New Markesland primitive, backward, and unambitious while saying his people, the Norseman, are civilized; says that having her and Theod at the academy is nothing but an "experiment" of Frau Kuiper's to see if savages can even be truly "civilized" (with the implication they cannot be), brags about being a descendant of one of the first colonizers, and then asks if Anequs has read ''The Species of Mankind'' that is a treatise on how Anglish are of course, superior--and ''then'' asks if she can read at ''all.'' In short, he's a complete piece of work from his first appearance, and only Niklas telling him to stop it because they're among ladies--and not because what he's saying is racist--makes him go quiet shortly before they depart.

A second year student at Kuiper's, seventeen years old. Theod is the only other nackie dragoneer at Kuiper's along with Anequs, being Naqisit. However unlike her, he is disconnected from his culture, having been raised in an orphanage (after his parents were executed for their part in the Nack Island uprising) and later sent into servitude. He expected to spend his whole life as a servant until a dragon hatchling bonded to him instead of his master's sons; the scandal of a nackie having a dragon at all rose to the level of a moot, where Frau Kuiper offered to pay the value of the egg and accepted him into Kuiper's as a student on scholarship. His dragon is Copper, an akhari--a Kindah breed similar to a bjalladreki.