Nealan of Queenscove

Nealan of Queenscove, nickname Neal, is a page, squire, and later, knight from the "Protector of the Small" quartet. He becomes the page sponsor to "Keladry of Mindelan" (Kel), the main character of the series. He is five years older than her, even though he is in the same training year as her, because he dropped out of the university, where he was training as a healer, to pursue the knighthood. This greatly disappointed his father, also a healer. He trains for some things with the squires, who are his age group, because he is older than the other pages, too much older in Wyldon the training master's opinion, despite Neal's protests that he can name three who started older.

Neal's character is said to be "world-weary" according to the books, very intelligent and observant. He is more liberal than most of the characters met, and is quick to see things from other people's points of view, which is why he befriends Kel. He is also a romantic, falling deeply in love for weeks at a time with the elegant, beautiful ladies at court, including nobles and "Veralidaine Sarrasri", and spends much of his time creating badly written poetry about them (although he never actually shows these poems to them, he subjects Kel and his friends to having to listen to all of them).

He is said to have a willful face, with brown hair swept back from a widow's peak and green eyes. His voice has the tendency to drawl, probably from the constant listing of uninteresting things (example, authors of books, people in history) which he is prone to. At the same time, Neal provides much of the comic relief throughout the quartet, always finding funny, and often inappropriate, things to say, which may or may not get him in trouble, depending on who he is talking to. Two characters in the books are related to him. One is his father, Duke Baird, and the other is his cousin, Sergeant Domitan of Masbolle, Dom, from the King's Own, who possesses some of his cousin's frank humour, although he is more able to keep his mouth shut when necessary.

All the information above was taken directly from the Protector of the Small books