Aran

Aran is the prince of the Jirri, a people who are not quite human (but close enough that you can barely tell the difference anymore) and were once one of God's chosen races. They were cast out of the heavens for asking God for something (and getting it)...and then several generations later, deliberately trying to reverse what He had given them. Specifically, they asked to be made less magical, thus taking away their ability for couples of the same sex to have children together, and then later performed a huge magic to give to a male the ability to give birth. This angered and confused God, so He cast them out of the heavens, and placed a curse on what were once His favored people, causing them to always be led by a boy chosen by the magic, and the magic alone. So every now and then one Jirri boy in his late teens/early twenties will have the life-giving magic activate on him, causing him to become able to bear children (with other guys of course), and that boy is then made the prince of the entire Jirri people.

This happened to Aran when he was sixteen years old, despite the fact that his father is human, not Jirri, and he and his family had been living away from Jirri since before he was born. He had not even been aware that it was a possibility for him, so when he woke up with a strange magical symbol glowing on his stomach one morning, he was more than a little confused. When he told his mother about it (reluctantly, since it was more than a little embarrassing) and she immediately sent off to Jirri to tell them that they had a new prince, he just got more confused, until they dragged him off to Jirri and finally explained everything. Then he stopped being confused for the most part, and started being quite bitter, angry, and resentful, especially of the changes that started happening in his body.

Aran is quite fond of drawing. He has always had a slight obsession with beautiful things of all sorts, and this continued after the magic awoke. For that reason, he still appreciates the female body, but not in a sexual way. His favorite subjects for drawings and paintings are people who he finds beautiful, and he has done countless paintings of the people he loves. He can find beauty in almost anything, and when he sees something that he finds particularly beautiful, he feels the need to capture it on paper as a sketch immediately, so as to remember the sight well enough to later paint it. He has actually caused much confusion at state events because of this, but the majority of the Jirri people do not mind this particular quirk of their young prince.

He has five lovers...and all but one of these are actually required of the Jirri Prince. The first three are his "chosen" lovers, who were technically supposed to be chosen for him by God. In practice, these three lovers are supposed to be good, skilled men who the soldiers of Jirri pick to be the fathers of the Prince's children. In Aran's case, all three were chosen by the Prince himself, out of love. The fourth one is a servant who has been changed by magic to resemble Aran almost perfectly. He acts as the Prince's double when security calls for it...and the Prince is encouraged to take him as a lover if he ever feels the need to be the top in the relationship.

As for the fifth...he is Zael, the son of one of the major lords of the Rajhi, the traditional enemies of both humankind and the Jirri. Zael's father is perhaps the most evil person ever known, and one of the ones responsible for the expulsion of the immortal Rajhi from the Heavens. Despite having this creature for a father, Zael is mostly a decent guy, thought his midnight black hair shows (in the way of the Rajhi) that he has had quite a damning past of his own. He met Aran when fleeing the Rajhi lands with the broken half human son of the Rajhi, and he and Aran ended up getting together...making him the father of Aran's fourth child.

Despite having five lovers, and four children by four different men, Aran is not in any way a "slut," nor is he considered one by anyone who actually understands the nature of the Jirri Prince, and the magic that makes him what he is. Of course, there are quite a few people outside of the land of Jirri who only know that the Prince likes other men, and thus call him a pervert, or a horribly twisted person. These rumors hurt Aran quite a bit, and not just because he used to believe them himself. At first when he became the Prince, he thought that what he was becoming was dirty and unnatural, and it took him quite a bit of persuading to accept what he was to become.