40

He/Him

Montana State Attorney General

Mark Valley

Richard Mason is Ellen's ex-fiance. They were only together for a total of a year and 3 months - 9 months dating, and 6 months engaged. They were about 6 months out from the wedding when they broke up.

They have not seen nor spoken to each other since they broke up.

Ellen was 28/29 when they first met. Ellen met Richard while working a case; she was giving testimony for the prosecution and he was the defense attorney on the case. When it came time for cross examination he grilled her something fierce, to the point where it discredited her testimony, so she was SUPER pissed. He caught her while they were leaving the courtroom to apologize and ask her out for drinks, which she only said yes to because she wanted him to say something stupid so she could throw her drink in his face.

They had their first date a week later, and they were dating by the end of that month. It was a very fast paced, highly romantic whirlwind of a romance, but it was absolutely perfect and everything a hopeless romantic like Ellen wanted from a relationship. They both wanted the same things, both wanted a family, and Richard seemed like the perfect partner. Less than six months after they started dating she moved in with him, and three months after that he proposed, so they'd only been dating for 9 months. Ellen was head over heels in love with him and immediately said yes, and they set their wedding date for a year later.

A week after Richard proposed, he publicly announced that he would be running for State Attorney General, and their relationship began to change. They used to be comfortable both working odd and long hours, but Richard started to pester Ellen about working less and staying at home more, signed her up for cooking classes, asked her to volunteer for things and take off work to help with his campaign, asking when she planned on retiring and when she wanted to start their family, and really pressuring Ellen to leave the police force and go off her birth control.

They started to argue and fight all the time, because Ellen never had any intention of quitting work to be a housewife, and that wasn't what she agreed to when she agreed to marry him. Gradually all the romance began to die out, like he stopped putting in the effort or maybe even worse, he never loved her to begin with. She started to believe the fast-track romance and the wedding was because he wanted to be married with a baby on the way when he ran for State Attorney General to be seen as more of a family man, and Ellen being a working mother and a cop wouldn't look good on paper. It seemed to Ellen like he wanted a trophy housewife and she wasn't giving him what he wanted.

She held on for about six months after the proposal and four months after things started to fall apart. The last straw came when he point-blank asked her to retire from the police force and offered to help her open a ballet studio after his campaign was over and she said no. He backed off the subject, but later in the week when Ellen went to take her birth control pills she realized Richard had replaced the pills with placebos and thrown the real birth control pills away. He was trying to get her pregnant and force her to take maternity leave so it could eventually be arranged that she wouldn't go back to her job. And Ellen had no idea when or for how long he'd been screwing with her pills.

She broke up with him that night, called off the engagement, packed up all her stuff, and left. She stayed at Jamison's apartment for a week before she was able to find somewhere else to stay. Ellen's been single ever since.

Richard did win State Attorney General, which he has been ever since, and did find himself a wife albeit it was after the election. They have a 2-year-old son named Jack and they currently reside in the home he and Ellen had picked out.