Difference between revisions of "Euna Miriel"

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Euna Miriel
Biographical Information
Race	Human
Homeworld	Coruscant
Mother	Karolyn Riel
Father	Treblus Mir
Spouse
Siblings	Auri Miriel, Damos Miriel
Children
Born	Year -8, Day 131
Imperial Service
Branch	Imperial Army
Positions	Legion Executive Officer
Prior Service	Imperial Navy, Operations Adjunct, Fleet Chief of Staff, Imperial Academy Training Officer, Imperial Army Legion Adjutant
Awards

Euna Miriel is a retired Captain of the Galactic Empire's Imperial Army. She was born on the planet Coruscant and was raised by Treblus Mir and Karolyn Riel along with her two siblings until she left home to join the Imperial Academy at age 17. Euna is perhaps best known for her humorous artwork that started out as random drawings to amuse her unit and then spread to the rest of the military. Her portfolio can be seen here: http://www.freewebs.com/eofeeecurator/

Early Life

As the eldest daughter of a nouveau riche immigrant family, Euna grew up on Coruscant in a life of privilege and obligation. Her fight for survival was not the struggle to find food and shelter, but in how to navigate the treacherous waters of high society. She attended the best schools, learning etiquette and language and visual arts, the subjects that were deemed proper for a lady of the galactic gentry, and she excelled in these academic endeavours starting from a young age.

Euna Miriel, age 6

However, the trial-by-fire social education proved to be much more of an ordeal; the established gentry looked down on the nouveau riche, and the prejudices of the parents often manifested through their children, with whom Euna had to interact. The schoolyard, the mall, and the countless parties became social battlegrounds, the hapless children serving as pawns for their scheming parents until they became old enough to be complicit in those very schemes. Through it all, Euna learned how to keep up with fashion, listen for bits of interesting gossip, negotiate the constantly shifting alliances, and, most importantly, how to charm and persuade. But while these skills would eventually prove valuable to her, Euna found the struggle for social status to be extremely petty, and the tactics involved to be distasteful. Because of the social aspirations of her family, however, she felt she had no choice but to partake in the vile circus.

Things came to a head during Euna's adolescence. Everyone is a little bit rebellious during the transition from childhood to adulthood, and that was certainly the case for young Miss Miriel. At fourteen, she took up speeder racing as a pastime. Her first exposure to the underground world of speeder racing was, of course, because of a boy.

Euna in her speeder racing kit.

Rafe Solo was the dashing, cocky scion of a Corellian noble family, though Rafe's branch of the family had been on Coruscant for so many generations now that they were now more Coruscanti than Corellian. Nevertheless, they were proud of their heritage, and so they actually encouraged Rafe to engage in the dangerous, ambiguously legal vehicular activity, as a way of setting themselves apart from the rest of the primarily Coruscanti gentry. Euna tagged along with a group of friends (or frenemies, depending on who you ask), to watch Rafe as he sped through the streets, dodging buildings, machinery, and other speeders in a bid to outdo the mostly lower city racers.

Of course, because of her family's status as nouveau riche, Euna didn't have the same leeway when it came to the pursuit of romantic relationships. Rafe and his family had a reputation as rebels, but they were rich, established rebels, and so they were fair game for marriage to the rest of the aristocracy. It was fine for the children of established families to engage in flights of fancy, just so long as they did their duty and married the right person when the time came. But for the children of the nouveau riche, they had to do everything in strict accordance to tradition, to show that they could belong to the true high society. As a result, Euna's parents were ostracized for her deviance from the "proper", and this was transferred onto Euna, resulting in frequent fights with her parents.

Teenage Euna attending a ball

As can be expected, the tension only caused Euna to act out even more. Rather than just be mildly scandalous and flirt outrageously with the rebellious Solo boy, Euna had to go and actually race herself. It didn't start seriously, of course. Rafe just wanted to show off to one of his admirers the power that he had to deal with while racing. But Euna developed a feel for the yoke, felt herself seduced by the purr of the repulsorlift engines. Soon she was making trips to the lower city on her own, and partook in the races even if Rafe wasn't there. She became friends with the lowlifes, and though she was always a little bit apart because she was the girl from the upper city, Euna felt that these friends were truer to her than any that she had in the sunlit levels. It restored some of her faith in friendship, but it also allowed her to adopt an air of superciliousness when she regarded her peers when she attended balls and soirées.

Ironically, it was at those social functions where Euna really came into her own. It was at a military ball where she had her first encounter with the officers of the Imperial Navy. Bored and disdainful as she was of the scrabble for social dominance, Euna found herself drawn to the conversations of the military men in attendance. They were, of course, there to demonstrate the military power and prowess of the Empire. But unlike the majority of the rich men who attended the balls, the military officers had risen to their positions of prestige on account of their own actions. As Euna was regaled by the stories of their adventures in space, she became inspired of the meritocratic nature of the military, and she resolved to join the Imperial Navy once she was of age. She applied herself to mathematics and the sciences, which had largely been neglected in the insular world of the gentry, studying the subjects that the naval captains had advised her to explore.

When she turned seventeen, Euna applied for and was accepted into the Imperial Academy. Her parents reacted by disowning her, as she had shattered their hopes of marrying into a more established family. To Euna, however, it was a relief, as she was now free to make her mark on the galaxy without the burdens of the obligations she had been saddled with since childhood.