name: nikolai aleksandrovich lantsov
age: late twenties to early thirties (main verse), mid-twenties in shadow and bone timeline.
title: grand duke of udova, major of the twenty second regiment of the first army, prince of ravka, king of ravka, prince consort of ravka
nicknames: kolya, nik, sobachka
aliases: sturmhond, a privateer
species: human
gender: cis-male
orientation: bisexual
zodiac: leo sun, sagittarius moon, leo rising
current residence: os alta, ravka
general appearance: tall, handsome, sculpted face and clean-shaven, disney prince-esque / maintains shoulder-length hair and a beard as sturmhond (ref: harald sigurdsson in vikings valhalla).
faceclaim: leo suter, josha stradowski (younger)
hair: blonde, neatly cut as nikolai lantsov / red and slightly overgrown as sturmhond.
eyes: clear hazel muddy green as sturmhond
family: king aleksandr & tatiana (parents), vasily (elder brother), magnus opjer (biological father)
height: 6’2 / 187 cm
mbti: entp
personality: determined, lighthearted, agreeable, charming, brave, loyal, patriotic, geeky

alternate universes.

○ thieves and beggars, never shall we die.
alternate canon — fjerdan rebel.nikolai is the bastard son of a fjerdan merchant who had discarded him on the shores of djerholm. he grows up without a name of his own and his identity is shaped around realising the injustice of the druskelle army. he gains infamy as being a rebel leader of an army of 'nolniki' which consists of grisha and otkazats'ya working together towards a common goal. he goes by the alias of 'sturmhond'. kind of a robin hood moment, where he steals from the rich and is wanted for crimes against the crown. driving ambition is overthrowing the king of fjerda.○ this blood is not my blood, it is our blood.
alternate canon — tidemaker.born out of wedlock to a fjerdan couple, he is sent off on a ship to kerch right as he was born. he grows up on the streets of the barrel scouring for coin and swindling people with his darling boy charm and hops between gangs. he's eleven years old when he realises he can make the water from his cup dance on his fingers. someone at a club notices him play this trick as entertainment and kidnaps him, later presenting him to a man who introduces himself as the member of the council of tides. he trains under his guidance to eventually take over his place, living like royalty amongst them. from time to time, he takes up the identity of sturmhond, the notorious pirate, who targets the unlawful ships that do not comply with the council's rules.○ i am the monster, the monster is me.
alternate canon — mad king arc.something something the blurring of the monster's consciousness with his own. very self-indulgent verse. much less amiable in this verse, this is mainly to explore the curse overtaking his good judgment. (under construction)○ it is a truth universally acknowledged.
bridgerton verse.
set in regency era london, the prince from a foreign land arrives in the ton much to lady whistledown's delight, stirring up gossip about how he's touched by some sort of madness or a curse — his gloved hands and easy charm remain a mystery to most though a delight still.○ what will become of me once I've lost my novelty?
modern verse.hailing from a famous family talked of in the media too often, he's sent to boarding school at a very young age. grows up unknown in the eyes of social media. attends an ivy league school, majors in physics / engineering. spends most of his time living away from home but eventually has to return and his return becomes a spectacle orchestrated by him, becoming the darling boy of media. he skyrockets to the top through his self-made fame. later, he gets elected the new head of his family's business venture after his father is caught in a scandal and his brother dies in mysterious circumstances.

○ you can get what you want or you can just get old.
old hollywood verse.the second son of lantsovs, founders of the double eagle studios, he'd never thought to spearhead the business. his passion lay in physics and engineering. he'd also enlisted in the army to stand out from his family's name and served until his father was caught in a scandal. cutting his vision short, he'd decided to take the reins which his older brother seemed to be fumbling with. he soon gained fame for being the silver screen's new heartthrob, taking on risky ventures instead of their traditional choice of churning out romcoms. the studios returned from the brink of bankruptcy under his leadership, but his success came at the cost of his privacy, being under tremendous scrutiny at all times. it became especially troublesome to hide the scars of his service, which had manifested in the later years in the form of dark alter egos and psychological distress.○ bad habits they die hard.
sports au — formula one.nikolai lantsov came up through the junior circuits with orion apex racing — a mid-field team that gave him just enough of a car to show everyone he deserved something better. by the time he was in formula two, the internet had already decided his future for him. #PutLantsovInRavka had taken on a life of its own: edits, petitions, the whole thing. ravka grand prix motorsport was his father's team: once genuinely great, lately not so much. but fans wanted him in the seat badly enough to make noise about it. then his brother vasily died, and not long after that his father was removed from the team following sexual assault allegations. what nobody knew that nikolai had a hand in making that happen. tith no obvious successor and the team in freefall, he stepped in as team principal at twenty-four: the youngest in F1 history, though he'd have traded the title for a f1 driver seat without thinking twice. he's good at the job and has always known he'd have to step into it, but he still sims on the weekends to keep sharp.○ stick some iron in your mouth and pull the trigger.
cyberpunk verse.he runs ravka systems international, a russian-esque megacorp that's been quietly falling apart since his father's era: bad infrastructure, worse deals and a board that's either corrupt or checked out. he handles the parts that can't go through official channels under the aluas sturmhond, running covert retrieval jobs and shoring up supply lines in ways that don't appear in any quarterly report. that arrangement was working fine until he got grabbed by a man named morozova, an old loyalist from his father's time who ran something called the grisha program, which was a biotech r&d but actually a weapons operation running on human subjects. nikolai was in one of his facilities for eleven days and came out with a piece of military-grade cyberware installed directly into his neural architecture without his consent: the nichevo'ya protocol, a classified intrusion system designed to take over a host and turn them into something of a corrupt version of themselves with less awareness of the conscious mind and more primal tendencies. it's working on taking over his neural network slowly and the tech people he trusts have told him removal would probably take most of his higher cognition with it. the more immediate issue is the activations: stress, pain, or sometimes nothing at all, and then he loses a window of time and comes back to black scars darkening on his hands, trails of blood down his mouth and whatever else that needs cleaning up. he still runs sturmhond jobs when he can manage it but he shows up to work every morning as the director of the company because ravka systems doesn't fix itself. he's only keeping count of the days that he's still in control and working actively towards finding someone who can help remove the biochip from him.