Dalenar Maren

Early life

Dalenar Maren was the bastard son of Lord Tareth Maren, a nobleman of Mayene, and a common-born merchant woman named Lyssa. Though Lord Maren never acknowledged the boy as his own, he ensured Dalenar received education and income enough to live comfortably as a quiet debt to the woman who had loved him once, and whose silence protected his reputation.

Dalenar was raised among the docks and market stalls of Mayene, where his mother traded spices, ship fittings, and fabrics. He grew up with salt in his hair and the sea in his heart, always dreaming of sailing beyond the horizon. His mother, practical and proud, kept him grounded in business, but Dalenar’s restless spirit was drawn to the open water, to the unknown.

Even as a boy, people trusted him. Too easily. Merchants seemed to soften in his presence. Rivals who had long undercut his mother’s prices suddenly found their trade failing. Her shop flourished while others faltered, and soon even the most cynical traders whispered that Lyssa’s boy had a charm beyond reason.

The Captain and the Gift

When his mother died, Dalenar sold her business and bought a small coastal vessel. At just eighteen, he captained The Silver Gull, a trade ship running routes between Mayene, Illian, and Tear. What began as a modest enterprise grew rapidly. Wherever he docked, people welcomed him, trusted his crew, and wanted to deal with them, but his charm was not merely the smile and quick wit of a born sailor.

Unbeknownst to most, Dalenar could see faint, shimmering threads that connected people: cords of loyalty, desire, love, and even hatred. With focus, he could pluck them, ever so gently, and shift the feelings of those around him. Loyal buyers became a devoted partners; a rival captain found himself filled with mistrust for his own crew. By the time he was twenty-four, Dalenar was a maritime power.

The Battle of Tar Valon

Wealth brought him to Tar Valon, where he deposited his fortune with the city’s famed banking houses. But the calm did not last. When war swept over the Tower and the harbor fell into chaos, the city was locked down. Dalenar tried to use his ship to smuggle refugees and merchants downriver, but his vessel was attacked, burned, and abandoned amidst the fighting that ensued.

Homeless and trapped in a city at war, he began using his gift not for survival. He calmed mobs full of anger for one another, soothed soldiers with hearts broken in grief, and when he turned his gifts upon the banking house that held his fortune, the Tower Guards were summoned. That was when he had been noticed; was arrested for suspicion of for anything from manipulation to being a dark friend and brought before an Aes Sedai for questioning. He didn’t learn the name of the Aes Sedai who met him, but he surmised by the secrecy in which she shrouded herself that she must be powerful, or at least, interesting. It was Corele Taravin, the Keeper of the Chronicles, and she saw potential when others might have destroyed him. During interrogation, Dalenar tried to use his strange talent to charm her, soften her heart, or at least distract her with a sudden passion for his jailors.

It failed. Or so he thought.

The Dagger

Days later, instead of facing the Chair of Remorse, he was quietly released, and approached again. The Tower had use for men who could twist hearts without touching the One Power, apparently.

Under Corele’s covert guidance, Dalenar became one of her “Daggers,” agents who operated beyond the Tower’s sight. His orders were simple: go where the Tower cannot, and shape what must be shaped.

For a few years, he worked in the shadows among the courts of Cairhien and Andor to merchant councils in Illian and Tear sowing affection where it served the Light and enmity where it did not. He arranged alliances, ruined marriages, ended wars before they began, and sometimes sparked them when the Tower willed it. His gift became his weapon, and his conscience dulled beneath the weight of purpose.

Loss and exile

Suddenly, one day his orders stopped arriving. The Tower no longer sent messages. The instructions that had always appeared with each new mission never came again. For the first time in years, Dalenar was free. And he hated it. He returned briefly to the boats, but found the water (and love) hollow without purpose. Rumors say he was captured in Seanchan-controlled lands, and that he escaped only by turning his guards’ passions upon each other in a frenzy of love-making. Whatever the truth, he eventually surfaced in Lugard.

Other lives

1st Age:

3rd Age: Dale

4th Age: Kai

6th Age: Eros (“Cupid”)