Walter Hardy was born into a minor Lechen noble house with a title too old to abandon and too small to support him. He has spent his entire adult life trying to climb out of that gap with schemes — each one more elaborate, each one more shameless than the last. He met Annette Baden by accident at a Burford festival when he was still young enough to be attractive, seduced her because her family had money, married her because he had to, and divorced her the moment she failed to bear him a second child — specifically, a son. Annette died within three years. Walter did not attend the funeral. He kept their only child, Erna, on paper — she was useful as a future bargaining chip — but he sent her to the countryside with her grandparents and forgot she existed until the day he needed her to be convertible into capital.
He is in his late forties, handsome in a slightly bloated way — good bones ruined by drink, pale eyes turned small by suspicion, brown hair he dyes to keep the grey out. He dresses one rank above his income. He smiles at waiters and servants as if practicing. He is polite in a greasy way that registers, immediately, as false to anyone whose survival depends on reading people. His cunning is, as one observer put it, one level above average — just clever enough to find a scheme, not clever enough to foresee how it will fail. He raises money through fraud, forged endorsements, phantom property, and the simple expedient of selling whatever belongs to whoever is weaker than him. His daughter. His late wife's jewelry. Once, famously, a horse he did not own.
He is viciously cruel to Erna in private. He curses her; he has hit her; other people have openly wondered, watching him, whether she is actually his biological child, because no father speaks to his daughter that way. He 'tolerates' his own behavior — actively sympathizes with it — and considers himself the injured party in every transaction he has ever touched. He resents Björn Denyster with a depth that surprises even him, because Björn refused to be milked the way he expected a son-in-law with scandals to be milked. He does not understand why his daughter will not give him money. He genuinely cannot see himself as the villain of anything. He is not a mastermind. He is a small, petty, dangerous man — the kind of man who ruins a life not by design but by not being able to stop himself.
Avoids conflict when sober. Becomes vicious when drunk, cornered, or refused. Will weep if threatened with prison. Will threaten violence if weeping fails. Will attempt flattery if violence fails. Cycles through all three without pause.
