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====== Githwin the Bard ======

Githwin, later Lord Bollingbroke, is best remembered as “Githwin the Bard.” We know only a little of his childhood. He was born to parents of some means in Tuyton, the capital of Anivere, during the first few years of the sixth millennium. He was trained in the law, but given that he followed in his father’s footsteps as a minstrel, much of his interest appears to have been devoted to music. His mother was an educated woman who may have encouraged him toward the scholarship that marked his later life.

King Alten’s crusade against Angar the Undying in 5027 was a turning point in Githwin's life. Drafted into the King’s service, he was one of the small number to survive the crushing defeat at the Battle of the Plateau. His role in the subsequent retreat led to the grant of a modest lordship, and there were persistent rumors he was the paramour of the Dowager Duchess of Camber. This relationship—for the rumors most certainly were true—would bring about the rapid reversal of his fortunes. King Alten II eyed marriage with the Duchess, and after some scandal, in 5031 the King banished Githwin from Anivere for five years.

Though undoubtedly a difficult period in his life, necessity drove Githwin to travel. In the ensuing half-a-decade he visited much of the known world, from secret elven glades dappled in leafy shadow to the sun-baked mud-brick cities of Nyssia. He recorded his observations in contemporaneous writings which offer a wealth of information in and of themselves. More importantly, the travels ignited a passion to tell the stories of these far-off places in his native tongue. Over the next thirty years he wrote numerous essays, putting many to song, and in this way he earned his historic appellation.

Githwin the Bard is thought to have died in 5063. He is buried in the town of Skegness in a small ancestral cemetery of the Hylton family. The setting is picturesque: pale headstones clustered around a mausoleum on a bright green sward high up on a rocky cliff overlooking the restless ocean.  A visitor might be forgiven if their eyes were drawn to the vaulted monument. Therein is buried Aimee Hylton Chalmers, the Duchess of Camber. In an adjacent grave lies Githwin. His epitaph reads:

  * //I walked a world lifeless and grey,//
  * //Till fate hath put her in my way.//
  * //I sang of love to last till death,//
  * //Beside her was I till my last breath.//