Regent Hrolf Wend

Hrolf Wend was named regent of House Wend when his nephew was four months old and the senior generation died in one bad winter: boiler fire, lung-rot, a foundry cave-in, in that order. He held the seat in trust. The boy, at sixteen, took the same lung-rot that had killed his grandmother, and did not recover. The charter has no provision for an heir who dies before the regency ends. It still does not.

Hrolf has been technically regent for thirty years, technically waiting on an heir who is technically still expected, technically not the head of the house. The Held In Trust is fought the way a regent fights: conservatively, endurance over aggression, volleys timed to keep the crew and the hull rather than to force the kill. He fights well and never decisively. Protocol officers have told him for two decades that he could simply take the chair. He has not. He will wait until he dies, because that is what regents do. The next regent is already named.