Backstory

Here's the backgrounded, shaded sheet of expressions for Thane. (I didn't really want to deal with horse expressions...)

So, I need a brief backstory for my characters. I guess you do deserve an explanation of how a stuck-up ladies-man and his horse ended up as butlers. Sigh.

Thane was born in England in the late nineteenth century to an aristocratic family. They were very successful in the glass industry, sitting in their drafty ancestral castley-mansion thing while their factories made them money. The family's nearly effortless affluence resulted in young Thane (an Old English name meaning 'noble') being brought up to believe he and his family were better than everyone else, a concept which he took to immediately and with much enthusiasm. As a young man with a generous weekly allowance and no need (or desire whatsoever) to work, Thane spent his days on his hobby of horse-racing and his nights drinking and partying with his equally-snobby friends in the local taverns. He also loved to gamble. One summer night, while very drunk, he made a foolish wager with his friend the wine merchant's son over a card game and lost his prize racehorse, Helios to him. Thane, being a mulishly stubborn and petulant drunk, made a second foolish wager to try to win back both his horse and his pride. No one remembers precisely what the terms of the bet were, or the exact events of that night, but the end result was that both horse and man belonged to the wine merchant the next morning, honor-bound to serve him as butlers until further notice. Predictably, the drudgery of serving dinner and waiting on his [former] friend seriously chafes Thane's ego, and he rebels against it by dressing sloppily and being incredibly attitudinal. Helios, being a racing horse by nature, hates carrying dinner on his back and so copies Thane's atitude.

They'll pour your wine for you, but they won't like it and they sure as hell won't be careful about it.