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One of the rare category of individual that got into politics more out of a desire to actually fix the problems of the country rather than to satisfy a craving for power, Ludwig boasts the kind demeanor and friendly face of your average drill sergeant. You don't come to Ludwig for a smile or a joke: you come because you demand change in the world, and tireless worker that he is, he'll do anything and everything he can to deliver on that promise.

Outwardly, Ludwig doesn't seem like an especially complicated person. He's a workaholic who takes his free time seriously and his job even more seriously, a man who doesn't seem to have a smile to spare for anyone. It's true that Ludwig is an exceptionally hard worker; he doesn't like to remain idle when there are jobs to be done. But work alone doesn't begin to define the whole of his personality. Having gone through many years of rigorous schooling, combined with his love of reading books in his spare time, Ludwig is quite intelligent, at least in matters that can be learned from books. When it comes to actual world-smarts, he's a little bit naive despite his age. All of those classes and a relatively sheltered childhood kept him from building a normal circle of friends, and he's been forced to play catch-up in the precious spare time he gets from his work.

Ludwig does use his free time well, however, because he is forever organized. His apartment and office are both clean, and everything has been filed and stowed accordingly. Ludwig manages his time with the same rigorous organization; he's very strict on himself. That is absolutely nothing new: anyone who knows Ludwig well knows that he's a perfectionist to the point of obsession. Anything worth doing is worth doing both correctly and thoroughly, Ludwig believes, and he routinely works himself into exhaustion by trying to ensure that something is absolutely perfect. He cannot be convinced otherwise, either; for a man in the government, he's remarkably stubborn, and once he's set his mind on something, it is going to take a lot of convincing to get him to change his view.

All of this seriousness isn't in vain: Ludwig is an exceptionally ambitious person. He's got a desperate desire to prove himself successful and wants to fix what he sees as problems in the world. However, Ludwig also has a strong sense of fairness; he'd never back-stab someone in an effort to get ahead, although he'll use all of the cleverness and endurance at his disposal to advance fairly in life. He's proud of what he's accomplished in his work (and a multitude of other things besides just that) and while he isn't a braggart, he doesn't take slights especially lightly.

Ludwig is unfailingly realistic. He thinks with his brain first, his intuition second, and his emotions a very distant third. Everything he sees he views in the realm of the logical and the reasonable, and as a result, he's excellent at staying cool in a crisis and at mediating any kind of conflict. However, his realism has a downside: Ludwig has the ability to see exactly every single way something can (and likely will) go wrong, and as a result has become somewhat of a pessimist. 'Worrier' would be an apt word to describe him. He doesn't trust others to do work he knows he could do better, and due to his lack of faith in people, he doesn't have many close friends.

Those who can call him a good friend, however, know that he's not all unhappiness. Ludwig is actually very kind, and downright protective of certain people. He's got a decent sense of humor and, when in the right company, can be talkative and friendly. Those just aren't aspects of him that are readily visible most of the time; even in the company of his friends, Ludwig is more of a stoic, and tends to keep his emotions to himself. Around strangers, his face is a mask of seriousness, save for the occasional slip into irritation or anger. Also not especially endearing is the fact that Ludwig is completely and utterly frank: he has little patience for small talk or time wasting, and he won't hesitate to let someone know that. While this is an efficient way to talk, it's not an especially warm one, and Ludwig would likely earn himself more friends if he were less cold. He still tends to solve his problems by consulting books, however, while in this case especially, consulting other people would be more helpful.

Baking: Ludwig's job is very stressful, and one of his favorite ways to burn off that stress is by baking cakes. He's very good at it, and because eating an entire cake by himself would make him ill, he's very generous about sharing the products of his cooking sprees.

Beer: Tea or coffee get him by during the day, but undeniably Ludwig's favorite drink is beer. He'd have it with every meal if he could, and frequents London's famous pubs on the weekends.

Books: Ludwig has always loved reading. As a child, he enjoyed fairy tales and mysteries and as an adult, he hasn't honestly changed much, although he reads plenty of nonfiction and educational books as well. It's one of his quieter pastimes, but one he thoroughly enjoys.

Dogs: While Ludwig loves all animals, dogs are his favorites. Dogs are loyal, friendly, and smart, and Ludwig owns three of them.

Exercise: Barring grievous bodily injury, Ludwig always sets a little time aside each day to exercise. Usually, he goes for a run with his dogs in the morning before work, and he's not above doing push-ups in his office. He's in excellent shape as a result.

German Food: Ludwig doesn't hate British food, but he thinks it lacks the richness that German food has. His favorite type of food are the many varieties of wurst, although he also likes sauerbraten, strudel, and anything with potatoes in it.

Order: When everything is tidy and clean and nothing is going wrong, Ludwig is in a calm state of mind. A well organized room is the sign of a well organized mind, after all.

Cloudy Weather: With as fair a complexion as he has, Ludwig sunburns easily, and prefers overcast weather. In London, this hardly ever becomes an issue; it's cloudy ninety percent of the year.

Soccer: Ludwig likes watching soccer games on TV, and if he can, he'll even join in a casual match if he's got the opportunity. Playing soccer is one of the few ways he can meet people without work or his other responsibilities weighing on his mind.

Being Taken for Granted: Ludwig isn't the kind of person who demands recognition for what he does, but it's always nice to get a little gratitude once in a while. On the other hand, people who dismiss his hard work for nothing quickly get on his black list. He may not do much of importance, but Ludwig does something, and that's at least worth a "thank you".

Bullies: Using cruelty to exert power over someone is a dirty trick, and Ludwig despises it, especially when the victim is weaker somehow. He won't hesitate to intervene if he sees someone being harassed unjustly.

Cleaning: Ludwig doesn't actually like cleaning. But he does it because it has to be done, and because other people keep making messes. Someone has to be the responsible one, and that job falls to Ludwig more often than not.

Cowards: Cowardice is something Ludwig just can't understand. Why anyone would hide or run from problems as opposed to facing them makes no logical sense to him, especially because of his own strong sense of pride. Ludwig can't bring himself to hate cowards: he holds a combination of dislike and pity for them, and they are among the small minority that would have to beg him for help.

Discord: Dirt, clutter, mess, chaos - Ludwig hates it all. If it were up to him, the world would be so clean it sparkled, and everything would be alphabetized or arranged by date. He's almost compulsive in his need to keep things tidy, and could put even the most industrious maid out of business.

Humiliation: Ludwig does not deal well with being embarrassed. It's bad enough that he blushes at the drop of a hat, but his reflexive reaction to being teased or goaded is to get irritated and shout at the harasser until they back off, which just makes things all the more awkward in the end. Better to just not risk any sort of humiliation in the first place.

Laziness: Even when he has free time, Ludwig is usually doing something: reading, walking his dogs, cooking, et cetera. He dislikes sitting around doing absolutely nothing, and dislikes seeing it in other people; time is too precious a thing to waste.

Rule Breakers: As arbitrary or pointless as they may be, rules exist for a reason, and Ludwig is a stickler for them. He'd as easily report someone for walking across the street at a red light as he would for someone robbing a bank. Rules are rules.

Advancement: Ludwig is undeniably ambitious, and just a little bit power-hungry, but he also desires to climb the career ladder of his because in a higher position, he'd be able to wield more influence and further fix what he believes is broken in the government and in the country.  A more visible and powerful position, as stressful as that might be for him, is therefore something he wants.

Friendship: Outside of work and work-related gatherings, Ludwig has only the merest sliver of a social life. As relatively young as he is, he feels like he's missing out: he wants to meet people, make friends, go on trips and just do things. While he's conflicted as to how he'd fit all this in alongside his job, he's determined to achieve it somehow.

Romance: Before he pulled himself away from his own destructive family, Ludwig never would have dreamt of getting romantically involved with someone: it just seemed like asking for disaster. But now that he's gotten more evidence of the good aspects as well, he's realized that he'd like to meet someone nice to spend time with, and maybe even start a family if the circumstances end up being just right. It's a distant dream, but not an impossible one.

Failure: By far Ludwig's biggest fear, the man is so terrified of disappointing everyone that he pushes himself to extraordinary and desperate lengths to avoid defeat should it ever loom on the horizon. If for some reason he does fail at something he wanted to achieve, he's in a miserable funk for weeks, and often apologizes multiple times to the people involved; his worry in this is less about himself but more about the people he believes he lets down.

Loneliness: At times, Ludwig desires solitude, and he doesn't believe this is odd. What weighs on his mind, however, is that he'll be relegated to living the rest of his life alone. While he's desperately looking for ways to squeeze each second of free time out of his busy schedule in order to live a fuller life, he's forever concerned that he'll never manage to even the balance between work and play out until he's far too old for it to matter.

Loss: Ludwig is an isolated person; almost his entire life revolves around work and the consequences of his work. As such, he has few good friends, and he's not especially close to his parents or his extended family. He fears losing those people he does hold dear because not only would their loss devastate him, but he knows with certainty that he'd never, ever be able to replace them: their absence would haunt him forever.

Ludwig is not especially talkative about his past, not out of grief or lack of knowledge or even humiliation: there simply isn't all that much to say. He honestly wishes things had been different, so he could have more pleasant stories to tell about the time he spent with his family, but that simply isn't the case, and Ludwig is not fond of lying.

The second and youngest child of the Beilschmidt family, Ludwig proved to be so vastly different in appearance from his older sibling that questions of infidelity were raised. While his mother, a British ex-pat socialite and homemaker, put those issues to rest as quickly as she could, the tension in the family lingered. She and Ludwig's German father, a well-regarded university professor, remained married but drifted apart, to the point that they might as well have been divorced.

The anger amongst the family members affected Ludwig's personality as well. Ludwig's mother, frustrated that her second son had nearly broken up her marriage, gave him precious little attention and time, and while Ludwig had been born a happy and healthy baby, he grew into a serious, quiet, and withdrawn child, shying away from attention and his peers. Ludwig's scholarly father encouraged this behavior by providing the boy with plenty of books to read and tried to nurture his inborn curiosity. Ludwig spent hours engrossed in Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Atlas of the World, and the Childrens' Encyclopaedia. But, determined that his second child shouldn't develop the attitude problems that his first one had, Herr Beilschmidt began cracking down on Ludwig when he reached the enrollment age for primary school. Only top grades and correct assignments earned Ludwig praise; any rule breaking or sass was punished so severely that Ludwig quickly acquired a deep fear and respect of any authority, no matter how arbitrary.

Nonetheless, Ludwig did well in school. Despite being a bit of an outcast among his classmates, he worked hard to understand everything taught to him, and often placed in or at the top of his grade. He acquired an unusually keen knowledge of physics and mechanics, learned a little French, improved his English to near native levels, and learned poems by heart. He continued to read voraciously, and when the school nurse dubbed him scrawny and recommended to his parents that he get outside more, he chose to start playing soccer out of the options his father gave him. He grew strong quickly, and quickly drove off whatever bullies that had been taunting him about being a teacher's pet.

His rigid upbringing, however, caused the rift between his parents to grow larger; Ludwig's mother, seeing how bright he'd become, decided now would be the time to exercise proper concern for his welfare. The disagreements in the Beilschmidt household often escalated to fights, and Ludwig frequently escaped out-of-doors regardless of activity to avoid the shouting matches. Often, he'd climb tall trees with a book and a flashlight, and stay up out of reach long after the voices had died down.

When he entered secondary school (at a selective Gymnasium), Ludwig did his best just to avoid his family altogether. He spent late hours working at the school, and even took on a part time job in an effort to avoid spending time in the same house as his disagreeable parents. He treated them, and soon everyone else, with a cautious yet firmly polite demeanor, and tuned out as best he could his father's vocalizations as to what he should study in university. In time, Ludwig had emotionally severed himself from his family and their problems, playing the role of a good son when he had to but holding none of the connections, none of the worries or cares or love that made up a genuinely happy family. Withdrawing in this method, Ludwig graduated school at the top of his class, served his mandatory half-year in military service, then applied to (and was accepted) at the university at which his father taught.

University, however interesting it was, hardly proved to be an escape. Still under an enormous amount of pressure to succeed and realizing just how isolated from his peers he'd become, Ludwig decided to take matters firmly into his own hands for the first time in his life and turned to an unlikely source of freedom: his mother's British nationality. He promptly transferred to Cambridge in England and essentially relocated, living, working, and studying in the UK. While he was there at school, he rekindled his interest in mechanics, both of machines and of people. With this in mind, Ludwig wavered between engineering and government before he finally obtained a law degree; during the time he studied there, Ludwig also emerged somewhat from his antisocial shell, unintentionally made a name for himself due to his industrious nature and rather serious attitude.

Having never had any especially solid dreams of his own, Ludwig was unsure of what to do with himself post-graduation, but encouraged by some of his more partisan professors, Ludwig began to explore politics as a career. While he was at first leery of running for any kind of elected office and took up mainly clerical work, it didn't take long for people to raise their voices in support of Ludwig: he was young, serious, and dedicated (not to mention easy on the eyes). His lack of an elitist attitude and easy willingness to help with even the smallest of problems endeared him further, and his immigrant background meant some support from Britain's foreign community, whose voices he was certainly happy to listen to.

Eventually, Ludwig ran for a seat in Parliament under the banner of the Labour Party, and despite a truly nasty campaign in which his half-German heritage was dragged through the dirt a number of times, he emerged victorious. While his lack of open charm can be noticeable, Ludwig has earned himself respect by being the go-to guy when work needs to be done, and he's becoming a better public speaker, not to mention a decent mediator of debates. He always finds time to make himself available to the public as well. This lifestyle certainly isn't what Ludwig expected of himself (especially the part where he's in the public eye constantly), and he misses the country he grew up in at times, but he's decided London isn't bad at all, at least for now.

Religion gave many people comfort, and for many different reasons. Some took solace in knowing that if they attended regularly and followed the advice of the scriptures, they'd spend an eternity in heaven following death. Some liked the sense of community a shared belief created. Still others took joy from spreading the words of God through speech or song. Ludwig could understand those reasons, but he wasn't seated in a pew at Saint Paul's for any of them. He could feel his reason spot him every so often, when a random pair of bored eyes went searching around the church and settled on him in recognition. Drawing a long, slow breath, Ludwig kept his eyes focused on the priest at the front.

While his family had not been especially religious, Ludwig had still been brought to church regularly as a child. He remembered disliking it, for the most part: he had to wear uncomfortably fancy clothes, and the sermons always lasted far too long -- although as far as he could tell, the latter still held true. It had been at least fifteen minutes since any part of today's service had registered in his mind. The temptation to let his eyes wander, to examine more closely the beautiful decorations and sculptures and paintings surrounding him was absolutely terrible. Ludwig, however, had a certain public image to uphold, and that image involved attending church regularly and not looking bored to tears.

Always unwilling to simply sit still and not do anything, the politician had found a solution. Even during services, churches could be some of the quietest and most peaceful buildings on Earth, and offered Ludwig a unique opportunity for him to shut out everyone else and simply think. He had too much on his mind most days, and never enough time to parse through his thoughts the way he wanted to. There was an education measure someone had asked him to reword, for one. Ludwig didn't want the measure passed, so he'd need to rewrite it, but in a less obsequious way that didn't hide how terrible it actually was. And a recent nasty traffic accident had a lot of people angry about the lenient punishments for law-breakers. That would have to be brought to discussion.

The only downside to using a church service as time for reflection was that it tended to make Ludwig look rather dazed. Only God could read his thoughts, though, and God would understand how busy Ludwig could be.

A rustle through the attending patrons drew Ludwig out of his own mind: a woman had stood up to sing. The words meant little to him, but the singer had a lovely voice, and Ludwig let himself enjoy the music while it lasted. Once she had finished, the woman returned to her seat and Ludwig returned to the inside of his own head, rising and murmuring responses with the rest of the congregation without a second thought. When at last it was over, Ludwig straightened his suit jacket and let out a quiet sigh of relief.

As he made his way to the doors, he got waylaid by people here and there, men and women wanting to praise him for his work or lecture him about what he was doing wrong or complain about the state of the economy or the minimum wage or kids these days. Ludwig did his best to reply and answer and console; this part of political life was never something he'd been especially proficient at. But miraculously, just as he was wishing he could make his way outside for some fresh air, the inside pocket of his jacket started buzzing loudly. With a half-smile, he excused himself from the crowd of people and pulled out his phone as he was waving his goodbyes.

Ludwig immediately frowned: the phone's screen displayed 'Unknown Caller' as opposed to the name of a coworker or a friend. Still, it was an excuse not to shake hands and be chummy, so he answered the call and held the phone to his ear, "Hello, Beilschmidt speaking."