I’m working on a new story with an “interesting” hero. He’s a medical doctor in a gold rush town. He is highly skilled but has no bedside manner. He has red hair that sticks up in a halo around his head. His childhood was marked by abandonment – mother died, series of housekeepers, father oblivious to child.
He followed in his father’s footsteps and became a doctor. He and his father lived together in the family home and worked together in the family practice. There were no women in their lives. My hero had been in love once, but she’d walked out on him.
His life seems set on its course and he has given up on feeling lonely. This is just the way it is.
Stuff happens– don’t want to give away the story– and he heads west, ending up in Prospect. He’s the only doctor for miles around so no one argues with his dictates, even though his patients grumble at his high-handed methods.
For some reason, I want to name him Rupert. It’s an odd name, but, in my mind, it suits him.
Here in British Columbia we have a town of Prince Rupert and when the Hudson’s Bay Company sold their holdings to the Dominion of Canada, the area was called Rupert’s Land. Both were named in honour of a cousin of Charles 1, Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
Prince Rupert’s family fled civil unrest when he was a baby. He grew up in exile, then landed at the court of his English royal relatives as an adult, He was a skilled horseman and soldier, fighting for the Royalist cause against the Roundheads. He was also a businessman who became the first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Other Ruperts include
- Rupert Murdoch, media mogul.
- Rupert Brooke, WWI poet
- Rupert Grint, British actor
- Rupert Graves, English actor
The name seems to have been much more popular in Britain than in North America.
So, what do you think? Could you fall in love with a hero named Rupert?
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The Hudson’s Bay Company
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