James Winthrop

- Gandalf the White, The Return of the King

Birth and Parents

James Erasmus Winthrop was born to Henry James and Margaret Winthrop in December of 2011. Henry James was a struggling Harvard educated public defender at the time; he found his post-graduate path much harder than he reckoned at first due to his public and bitter break with his politically powerful and well-connected family over an idealogical stance. His wife, Margaret Black, was an art historian, an alumnus of Emerson University, with a passionate love for humanitarian ideals. In her life, Margaret was a driving force who, in many ways, pushed the young Henry Winthrop to be a better man. At the time of James' birth, the couple were poor, but in many ways happy. It didn't take long for the idealistic Henry to grow toughened to some of the more painful aspects of public defense, and, nearing the birth of the couple's second child, the young lawyer was given a new path to follow. Henry's charisma both in and out of the courtroom soon overcame the many subtle and overt roadblocks thrown in his way as he eventually joined the Greater Boston District Attorney's office.

In service to the people, Henry was able to maintain many of his (wife's) ideals, fighting for the common man with all the fire of a convert to the cause. He was finding, however, that despite his best efforts, the District Attorney's office was far more political than he was used to.

Death in the Family

Shortly after the birth of their young daughter Abigail, however, tragedy struck. Margaret was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's disease, ushering the family into a brutal two year struggle with the slow degradation of a kind and passionate woman into a confused and irrational shell of her former self. The madness was a creeping hell, and though Abigail was far to young to truly have ever known her mother, the ordeal was a crucible for her husband Henry and her 9 year old son James. In the face of his wife's illness, Henry's converted zeal for the innate goodness of humanity and the worth of the human spirit faltered and, eventually, failed utterly. Finding the situation too difficult to deal with, he basically disengaged from his dying wife and his grief stricken son, plunging himself into his work and, increasingly, his burgeoning political career. James, on the other hand, took on more and more responsibility for the care of both his baby sister and his more and more unstable and mostly bedridden mother. When she passed away, James was a mere 9 years old, but he already understood that the young woman who was supposed to be their au pair was far more engaged with being their father's mistress than she was in caring for the children. Henry contrived to be out of town on business when his wife of twelve years went mad and confused unto death, a sad betrayal that James would not soon forget.

When Margaret Winthrop finally passed away on April 12th, 2021, her funeral was an occasion of some interest for the city of Boston. After all, she was the wife of one of the candidates for city District Attorney. The event drew even Henry's estranged family to the devastated grave side. Though obviously distraught in his own way, the sad occasion did not deter Henry from spending much of the funeral and subsequent gathering meeting with his father, mother, and siblings and generally begging his way back into their good graces. James, meanwhile, was left mostly alone in a house filled with strangers who had pity but no real sympathy for a young boy whose world had basically come to a crashing end.

Enter Roland Black

No one at the funereal, neither the Winthrops or the Blacks truly knew who had invited the old man in the impeccable black suit who made his way through the crowds, expressing his sincere, if distant condolences for the deceased. He claimed to be Margaret's great-uncle Roland Black, and, since her family was vast, there were few that could gainsay him. Though he nodded in all the right places and offered his own wise but strange view on the remembrances of Margaret, he seemed preoccupied and distracted, as if searching for something in a sea of black. He soon found what he was looking for. In a closet beneath the stairs, he discovered young James, hidden from the world and lost in universe of pain. He talked to the boy that day. He virtually made James the center of his world, and drew him out of his grief into a new existence filled with bizarre and funny and scary stories of a world beside our own; a world peopled by terrible monsters and beautiful elves, wicked warlocks and noble wizards. That day passed by in a blur, but there were to be many like in the days ahead.

Roland returned to the family's home on Beacon Hill the next day, and the next, and the weekend thereafter. He charmed and ingratiated himself with Henry, who, distracted with his career, his election, and his mistress, was more than happy to have Margaret's batty old uncle entertaining his son and daughter. James' first true exposure came soon thereafter.

May 30th, 2021 would prove to be an important day in the young man's life. His "Uncle" Roland took he and his sister to Forest Hills Cemetery to visit his mother's grave, and afterward, the trio embarked on an expedition to Franklin Park Zoo. While taking a rest on a bench after delightedly exploring the exotic animal enclosures, Roland espoused a strange story of family of little people who lived in the zoo, eagerly cleaning up the stray cotton candy, dropped popcorn, and lost pennies left behind after the park closed. Sniffing importantly at James' professed disbelief in little people who live in zoos, Roland spoke a addressed a nearby hedge in a strange language with an authoritative ring. In the blink of an eye, the incredulous James discovered he was face to tiny face with 4 inch tall man sporting a green mop of hair and bushy, twig studded beard who harangued the old man in the same language before scampering back into invisibility. James' journey into the supernatural had begun.

Tilden Hall

James had always been a superlative student, excelling at reading, mathematics, and the natural sciences. The prolonged illness of his mother saw a steady decline in his grades. "The Event" of May 30th changed everything. James desire to know more about this hidden world was voracious. He hungered to understand the rules of this strange world beside ours, and he inundated Roland with questions and demands. If left to his own desires, the young boy would probably have abandoned mundane school then and there in favor of becoming a scholar of the realm fantastic. His uncle Roland would hear none of it, though, and made a pact with the boy. Excel at school and he would become his tutor in matters magical. Let his balanced life lie fallow and he would never hear another word about magic from Roland's lips. James took up the challenge, roaring back into his schoolwork with a passion. In time, his sister began to challenge even his gifted studies, though she seemed baffled and dubious about the magical skills being taught to him by his uncle Roland.

Three years passed, and though his uncle never uttered the word "wizardry", it soon became apparent that that is what James was being instructed in. Through it all, his father was kept deliberately in the dark about his son's (quickly) burgeoning skills with the arcane arts, focused as he was on his new responsibilities as the city's District Attorney. Meanwhile, his daughter was already excelling at mathematics and natural sciences, and pursuing with zeal her prodigious talent for the violin.

For the most part, the family had reached a new equilibrium. Henry was the intensely disinterested father who, nonetheless, unhesitatingly used his children as props to further his political career while pursuing his other devotion; young, attractive co-eds. Young James, now 12, balanced a heavy multi-faceted burden; by day excelling at coursework three grades above him at Groton, by night learning the basics of alchemy and arcane arts, and in the meanwhile serving as protector and mentor to his younger sister.

The next great upheaval to rock the family came when James' fickle father Henry grew jealous of the growing hold his wife's uncle had over his young son who, he imagined, would follow proudly in his father's footsteps, first to Roxbury Latin School, and later, into Harvard Law School. The confrontations over the equally strong willed Winthrops soon began escalating into fits and fights, and more than once young James was tempted to tap into his growing magical talents to shut his father up. The brewing war between father and son was deftly ended with an elegant solution proposed by Roland Black. James would leave home to attend the prestigious (and secretive) Tilden Hall, a private dormitory academy for boys in the Berkshires where he would be molded (so his father believed) into a future captain of the American ship of state. In reality, Tilden Hall was unknown because it was a centuries old reclusive wizard's academy, and there, in addition to mundane studies, James would be finally truly immersed in the magical studies that his skill demanded.

James' final departure from home was bittersweet. On the one hand, he would finally be getting away from the father he had grown to despise and heading to a school where he would be immersed in magic full time. On the other hand, he would be leaving behind his precocious sister Abigail. Ultimately, on a brisk fall day in 2024, Uncle Roland drove James out of Boston in "Elizabeth", his pristine silver-gray 1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner, on the long road into the Berkshire Hills.

In many ways, the Tilden Hall Academy for Boys was exactly what he pictured; a Jacobean revival style mansion rebuilt after a devastating fire at the turn of the 20th century, tucked into a dead end valley and surrounded by the picturesque village of Tilden. Whatever reception he expected at the school, however, he couldn't have predicted what he got. He was roundly ignored and disdained in the halls of Tilden, and that was on good days, and there were few good days. For the most part, he was criticized and mocked at every turn.

Apparently, to be born of two non-magical parents turned him into some sort of bizarre freak, more than worthy of derision. His father's name counted for nothing here in his new home away from home, and his mother's name actively worked against him. The Blacks, he was informed, were a clan of sometime wizards, most of the time warlocks, with an ignoble history of megalomania, rebellion, and madness. His uncle's name was not a name to conjure respect with, as Roland was considered by most of the students to be one more Black halfway to the nuthouse, a powerful but eccentric loner with only a passing respect for the "old ways".