Angela has long, thick hair, too thick to get into a single braid even once she starts wearing bangs, time-consuming to brush and re-plait every morning.  It is impractical for a warrior, questionable signaling for a celibate, an indulgence that ever so slightly slows her down, ever so slightly impairs her vision or distracts her with a tickling wisp in her eyes.

Angela's hair was her mother's pride and joy.  Mother's own hair wouldn't get any farther than her shoulders, and it bothered her, always; she put it in scarves and headdresses even in the hottest weather and made it look like she had more generous amounts of it.  She'd sit with Angela every morning getting it all dolled up, and often a couple additional times during the day when Angela went out to play with her brothers and got it untied and full of dirt.  All of the Jornet family are raised to be paladins - or, not to be paladins, that's not something you can raise someone to be.  It's in the Goddess's hands.  But raised to be ready to take up the mantle, or pass on the readiness to the next generation.  There's a little aasimar sorcery in the family, too; Angela looks less like an angel than her mother does, with the prized hair brown and not shining silver, her eyes brown and not glowing gold, but she does get a spell.

Mother reads a lot into which spells a sorcerer in the family gets.  They're omens, she says, not about the future but about your heart; if you get Acid Splash you've got a bad temper to master and if you get Light you're a simple honest soul...

Angela gets Detect Fiendish Presence first, when she's eleven, and Mother is immediately certain that her daughter is going to be a paladin, for real, no two ways about it.  Which was always the plan, or at least planned for.  They have copies of all the books she'll need, commentaries on the Acts and treatises on Law and tomes packed full of every perspective on Good from all of Avistan.  Angela's too young to be fitted for armor, but they set aside money for it - it'll be a touch steeper than her brothers', if she's going to be casting sorcerer spells in it - and they get her more time with the swordsmanship tutor, more riding lessons.  All teasing about marrying her off to the baronet up the river comes to an immediate halt.

And Angela says she should really cut her hair.  And her mother says: no.

Her mother says: "Angela, paladins are all Lawful Good.  But there are other ways paladins are, that don't come only of being Lawful Good, or only of being honest and brave.  Paladins surrounded by other paladins and doing the work of paladins and taking on the burden of paladins - they wind up different from ordinary people.  Look at my sewing."

Mother sews, though they have servants; she likes it and it centers her and there's always plenty else to occupy the servants.  She shows Angela a seam in a tunic.

"I've left a quarter-inch here," she says.  "It's extra.  I'll have to sew it down later so it doesn't fray.  It took a little extra fabric; I could have cut smaller if I wasn't leaving this allowance.  Why do you suppose I did that?"

Angela knows only the basics of sewing, but she knows the answer to this one.  "If you sewed right up at the very very edge, then one thread could slide off and then the stitches would have nothing to hold to."

"Right.  So I waste a little fabric but it's not wasted at all; it's necessary to make a whole tunic that stays together right.  And paladins... well, they don't usually go right up to the very edge.  But they don't leave a quarter-inch.  They leave just a few threads, and they trust the Goddess to tell them if they cut it so close that their stitching will all pop right off, because that is what's special about paladins over every other Lawful Good honest brave warrior.  They know they will be told right away if they've cut it too close, if they've turned themselves into someone who cannot do what they've committed to do.  And so they cut it closer than anyone else.  And I think they shouldn't."

Angela nods, but she's not sure what the point is.

"Don't cut your hair," says her mother.  "- there are probably a thousand ways you could leave yourself more seam allowance.  But I am your mother and I love my little girl and I will love my strong heroic paladin and I want you to use this one.  If you don't have time to take care of your hair, you are too close."

Mother doesn't ask for a promise.  She knows paladins can't go around promising things like never to cut their hair.  If she were going to ask, it'd be something like "promise me that if you ever chop it off you will be able to explain to me why".  But she doesn't.  Instead she says: "Do you understand?"

"I understand," says Angela.

Angela is a paladin and a swordmage.  Her hair is bound up in a scarf every day not because there's not enough of it but because there's actually quite a lot; she brushes it out and braids it during prayers, morning after morning, with the going-away present of an inlaid comb her mother gave her.  It's like being advised to have fun once a month, but it's - vanity, or family, or indulgence, or something, instead of fun, and it's every day.  She serves at the Worldwound, for a while, once she's old enough, to grind circles; and when the Glorious Reclamation starts stepping up its recruitment she signs on there, back in Molthune scarcely a stone's throw from home, waiting to be ready to take Cheliax back from Hell.

She doesn't actually think it will be very glorious.  There will be glorious individual devil-slayings, but... the devils are not personally stuffing the people of Cheliax into bags of holding and whisking them bodily to Hell, and there aren't enough Maledictions to go around.  No, they're just raising the people of Cheliax to be devils the same way Angela was raised to be a paladin.  It would be pretty hard to get Angela to renounce her Goddess and stop being a paladin.  It will probably also be pretty hard to get every soul in Cheliax to renounce their God and stop being fiends-in-waiting.  And not in a glorious way, where courage and a sharp sword carry the day.  It will be the long miserable slog of parenting without the part where you love your specific children, and mostly on people who are old enough to resent it and wicked enough to go straight to Hell if you make any misstep and sometimes if you don't.  She would've preferred it just be called the Reclamation.  It is going to take bloody miserable years without a speck of glory.

If you're going to do something for bloody miserable years, you need to be able to take care of your hair.