Marlene Baumeister

Marlene Baumeister is Wendelin von Benno Baumeister's sister-in-law and the wife of Hermann Baumeister.

Personality
Marlene is exceptionally outspoken, willing to stand up for what she believes in and speak her mind with authority, despite the fact that those around her are concerned her vocal nature will cause trouble.

Synopsis
Marlene is the eldest surviving heir of the Junior Commander branch of the Benno Baumeister family. Her grandfather (as Junior Commander), father, and uncle were the leaders of the force sent out by Artur Baumeister to support the militarized actions of the previous Duke Bleichröder in the Savage Lands. All males of the branch family died in that campaign. Because of this, Marlene feels a deep distrust of Artur, as well as his assumed heir, Kurt, who appears to desire to continue using the branch family as merely a tool.

In order to try to make peace, but also to allow for an appropriate male heir to the Junior Commander branch, Artur arranges for his second son Hermann to marry into the branch family as a bridegroom (a form of marriage that has a groom being adopted by the bride's family in order to act as heir). Marlene is initially very untrusting of Hermann, seeing him as being forced onto the branch family, but Hermann takes his new position seriously and begins to advocate strongly for the interests of the branch family. This causes Marlene to begin trusting him, ultimately resulting in a normalization of their marriage and the development of genuine feelings between them.

She was initially neutral about Wend returning to the Baumeister territory, except to the extent that his mere presence antagonizes Artur and Kurt. However, she is deeply moved by his willingness to search for artifacts relating to the Baumeister portion of the Duke's forces, and in particular possessions of the dead members of the Junior Commander branch.

She has two children with Hermann; son Leon and daughter Klara. Upon Kurt's death and Hermann becoming the new Knight Baumeister, Leon becomes the next presumptive heir of the territory.