The Beaver King, A Cautionary Tale of Medieval Dysfunction

Jessalyn, the Backward Pawn

Known among the courtiers as Slumthumb

Jessalyn and Bucker met as young teenagers, long before either of them mattered. She came from the slums—not a place of hardship so much as abandonment. Her parents were not uneducated, nor especially poor. They were simply trash. They did not work. They did not parent. They did not participate. Responsibility was not denied to Jessalyn; it was never modeled for her.

She was plain, strikingly so. Emaciated to the point of distortion, all narrow limbs and sharp angles, with a neck that seemed to run directly into her head, giving her upper body a blunt, thumb-like silhouette. Her hearing was damaged early in life. Whether from neglect or injury was never established, and no effort was ever made to correct it. Her clothing followed the same pattern as the rest of her life—not revealing, not provocative, just scummy. Worn incorrectly. Chosen poorly.

For someone so small, Jessalyn was aggressively mouthy. Loud. Distasteful. She carried herself as though she were dangerous, mistaking volume and persistence for strength. She was not strong. The castle guards knew her well; they had been summoned for her behavior dozens—some said hundreds—of times before she ever entered The Log Cabin Castle in any sustained way. This Minstrelle shall state canonically that superficially I rather like Jessalyn. So much potential in such a wasted position.

King Robert liked her too.

He liked that she was easy to press down, easy to frighten, easy to reward just enough to keep compliant. Jessalyn mistook his attention for favor. In truth, she was useful because she was unstable, offensive, and desperate to be seen as something harder than she was. She was easy to play.

Jessalyn could read and write exceptionally well. This fact irritated her. She adopted a crude slum dialect—borrowed slang and affected speech patterns—to sound more dangerous, more “real,” as though intelligence itself were a weakness she needed to disguise. It fooled no one of importance.

There were signs long before the Breaking that Jessalyn was unwell. Many suspected she struggled with her mind far earlier than anyone admitted. Some even claimed to have heard her ask for help—quietly, poorly, and without the language to make herself understood. In Beaverton, such attempts were noted and then ignored. Help was not offered. It never was.

Jessalyn had no work ethic and never pretended otherwise. She demanded that Bucker be the one to work, to provide, while she remained at home. Yet like her counterpart Faylee, she had never been taught how to keep a household—nor did she possess any interest in learning. Where Faylee lacked guidance but retained willingness, Jessalyn lacked both.

She was not filthy. Not chaotic. Not openly degraded like the Brentin household. Her neglect took a quieter form. She simply did nothing. Days passed. Aspirations were spoken aloud and abandoned. Plans were announced repeatedly and never pursued. Jessalyn liked the idea of becoming something more, but resented the labor required to do so.

She lived for long stretches within the log cabin castle itself, surrounded by examples she could have followed. She could have asked the Beaver Queen for instruction. She did not. The Beaver Queen, for her part, never assumed a matronly role, never offered supervision or correction—despite the proximity. Beaverton did not believe in guidance. Only presence.

Jessalyn left after the Breaking. For a brief time, she was gone—pushed back toward the margins she came from, stripped of whatever fragile certainty she had once mistaken for independence. Some believed that was the end of her story.

It was not.

She returned only after the ultimate betrayals had already taken place. Not because she wished to. Not because anything had improved. She came back because Beaverton had broken her thoroughly enough that resistance no longer felt possible. Leaving required effort. Staying required nothing.

In the end, Jessalyn did not choose Beaverton. Beaverton chose for her.

In the records, she became Jessalyn, the Backward Pawn—a structural weakness, unable to advance without being taken, trapped by the board that shaped her. Among the courtiers, she was called Slumthumb, a name spoken casually, without consequence, and without correction.

How she became a permanent fixture despite the litany of betrayals that fell upon her—and how Bucker stood close enough to stop it, yet did not—is a story yet to be told. What is known is this: when she returned, she was no longer temporary. She was no longer passing through.

She had become a consequence of the system itself.