Personal Life / Personality

Those born under the Ursa constellation between Cancer and Leo tend to have an aura of fearlessness. They have the compassion of a Cancer and the confidence of a Leo. This leads them to take risks and responsibilities early on in their lives. Their caretakers may find them hard to control, at first, but they take on so much responsibility that, over time, they end up basically parenting themselves. In a large family, Ursa children often effectively parent their own sisters and brothers, especially when their parents aren’t stepping up to do so.

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It’s almost instinctual for them to take charge and initiative when a situation demands it. This is why they appear so fearless, brave, and bold; they don’t bother taking the time to feel fear, since they’re so busy dealing with it head-on. They must be careful not to become too reactionary, thereby stressing themselves out, burning out, or making reckless decisions. 

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That being said, they need to be given the freedom to take risks, make mistakes, and learn things for themselves. Restraining them would only make them restless and ultimately rebellious. They’re just too robust and stubborn. If they believe it is right, they will dare to do it.

Interpersonal Life / Relationships

Like the other Summer signs of the North, Ursas are deeply motivated to connect with others. Their compassion leads them to care deeply for others, and their confidence leads them to protect and commit to those relationships in the long term, though they must be careful not to sacrifice themselves for that end.

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They’re ferociously loyal, honest, generous, supportive, and helpful toward their own. This makes them invaluable members of any team. They even have a good nose for abuse, especially when against those they care about, and thereby feel responsible for. However, this can also make them powerful abusers, if they become overprotective or vengeful. 

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Their charisma inspires those around them, but may also overwhelm less charismatic types, who might think them overbearing or repressive. Their honesty can come across as insensitive. And their reactionary nature at times can make them appear fickle. If they can learn to modulate carefully between their heart and ego, they may become dynamic bastions of hope and security for all who encounter them.

Social Life / Society

• Optimistic, dignified, proud, orderly, resolute, communal, cooperative, hardworking, 

• Inflexible, critical, overconfident, tactless, uncompromising, authoritative, conformist, workaholic, 

Archetypal Story of Ursa

Bowen is a knight of the ‘Old Code’ which hearkens from the heroic times of King Arthur. He mentors the young prince Einon in the hopes that he won’t turn out to be a tyrant like his father, and this goal seems to be within reach until a very unsurprising peasant uprising results in the death of the not-so-noble king accelerates the training timeline and fast tracks Einon to the throne. This might not have been a big problem except that Einon managed to be fatally wounded during the revolt, prompting his mother to call in a favor from an old family friend to try to save his life. This ally is a dragon, who upon insistence that the prince has been dutifully trained to be a righteous king gives a piece of his own heart to fill in where the dying boy was stabbed. Unfortunately either the training didn’t stick, or power corrupts, because within short order he had turned around and abused his newfound authority to be even worse than his dad.

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Knight Bowen is utterly destroyed by this betrayal of the values he thought he had instilled and declares a personal war against all dragons mistakenly thinking it is the heart implant that turned his otherwise virtuous prodigy into a monster. He roams the countryside as a bounty hunter, killing every dragon he can collect payment for, eventually managing to push the species to the brink of extinction. The last of his kind of course turns out to be the dragon that started this whole vengeance arc to begin with, and meeting him forces Bowen to confront the possibility that Einon was actually just evil and his teachings couldn’t fix that. Unable to best him or pronounce his name, he calls him Draco, after the constellation, and the two form a pact to milk the dragonslayers reputation and get rich from performing staged fights between them as there are no dragons left to hunt.

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Their scheme is revealed by the same peasant who wounded Einon in the first place, who demands that they return to the kingdom and set things right. The quest hits a snag when Bowen finally comes to understand the connection between Draco and the rotten king; because they share a heart they also share each other's pain, and killing one will kill the other. Unwilling to kill the last dragon (nevermind all the others he killed he has a conscience about it now) the knight delays the inevitable and opens the door for shenanigans. Knowledge of his immortality via this dragon bond is ironically not what drove Einon to tyranny, but you can bet that finding out sets him fully over the edge. He captures Draco, planning to hold him, hostage, eternally and take over the world as an immortal raid boss, becoming so comically evil that even his mom tries to kill Draco to end him. He catches her, commits matricide, and it takes all this for Bowen to say enough is enough, and send the dragon to his final rest among the stars. 

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The knight’s rigidity and self-righteousness cloud his judgment, and he makes many assumptions rather than facing the facts. Because he demonstrates this so bombastically it only encourages those around him to withhold the truth from him, and prevents him from getting authentically close until it is too late. His constant attempts to control the situation and oppose things that don’t fit his narrative are in the end potentially what sows the seeds of Einon’s corruption. Though the male figures in the prince’s life fancied themselves to be drastically different, they were both overbearing, strict, and controlling, feeding his urge to rebel but then ultimately leaving him with no other notion of how to be in the world but oppressive himself. Bowen feels that his version is much better because it is based on ‘virtue’, but has a crisis of conscience when he is just repeating a script from the past without truly embodying those values himself, and finds them to be quite fragile in the face of reality. In Draco he finds Solace, learning how to be protective from afar rather than smothering, and that the empty words of his knightly oath can only take on their power through the exercise of restraint. As he exhausted himself through tryharding, he set a terrible example for the prince. Who would want to run in circles just to stay in place, when others can so naturally be themselves as they are? 

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Draco believed that the strength of his heart would have a healing effect on the boy, knowing he was evil. He thought it would be a chance to redeem the alliance which had decayed between men and dragons, but his wishful thinking was no different than Bowens and both they and the entire kingdom paid dearly for their lofty idealism. Kara, the stabber, represents the grounding presence of the real world which had come to odds with the castle in the sky these men and beasts had built in their heads, and Bowen survives to take the lesson forward into the future as they rebuild the real kingdom.