Bao Yijun
RL- Zeng Keni
Born in 2001 in the Province of Baoshan she is the youngest of a family of eight children. She has five brother and two sisters. Her father is a Banner-Man
[1] for an area known as Luocun. Like with all Lijiangian noble families she was educated at home until the age of 11 by a tutor who visited the family and along with ten other girls from Luocun. After the age of 11 she was contracted to marry the son of another Banner-Man when she reached 14. A bride price was set for her. Having finished what was expected to be her formal education, which for girls consisted of mainly music, dancing and domestic management and skills, she wished to develop more and with her father's blessing would walk two miles each way to perform duties at the areas largest Temple. While there she stood out for her singing and dancing and as a result the Temple's Priestesses took the young girl under their wing and continued her education. By the age of 14 she was able to read and write well enough to write letters on behalf of the Temple thanking those who gave gifts and asked for blessings.
In 2015 she was expecting to marry however her betrothed grooms family had fallen on hard times and had failed to raise the bride price thus the contract was nullified. Yijun was not to worried by this as she had never meet the man she was due to marry. With the marriage contract formally terminated her father began looking for another match for her. By now she had begun to earn admiring glances for her beauty and was also a regular performer at Temple rituals. As a well educated young woman of reputed great beauty and elegance her father was approached by a large number of would be suitors. In 2016 her father settled on her marrying the son of a Lord from the North of the country. The pair had been in deep negotiations for several months and an agreement made. On the 16th June 2016 Yijun travelled to the coast to marry, however upon arrival it seemed the Lord had overplayed his holdings and wealth and was actually unwilling to pay the high bride price they had agreed. Hoping that Yijun's father would be happy to have his daughter marry a Lord and having travelled so far during the conflicts that wracked the Empire at that time the Lord tried to negotiate a new lower price. As a man of principle Yijun's father refused and the family returned home.
Since then it has been hard for Yijun's father to find a willing husband as two failed marriage contracts gave people the impression of his family be awkward to deal with. This did not concern Yijun who used her time to further embed herself as an aide at the local Temple. She began contemplating asking her father to let her train as a Priestess.
In 2021 however Yijun's father made the decision to send her to the Golden Enclave when Dragon-Empress Jing announced that the Imperial Family were looking for eligible noble girls to be future mothers for the Imperial Family. She was encouraged by her father but not forced and upon arrival gained much attention at court. Being tall for a female from Lijiang and with her dancing teaching her grace and elegance of movement she had several noble families enquire with the Dragon-Empress about marriages if she was unsuccessful. Out of the girls who were part of the process she was the only one that Jing believed was suitable to be part of the Imperial Family however with the other girls now being found roles in the Enclave or having marriages arranged by the Imperial Family her fate is yet to be decided.
She has a guilty pleasure that even her parents do not know about. She has over the years collected a scrap book of pictures of places on Mundus that she wants to visit, little does she realise though that many of the images she has collected are some forty or so years out of date having come from a collection of magazines brought by Christian missionaries to Lijiang in the 1970's and left in the attic of a building that later was taken over by the local temple. Yijun would climb into the attic as a young girl and being unable to read the words of the foreign language would just look at the pictures. Her scrap book is kept in a secret hidden spot at her family home.