"Your brother was very handsome, wasn't he?"
"Not handsome. Beautiful. Did I mention that Ashley was the beauty of the Raventons?" Arkady pressed his lips to the top of the ivory cranium before continuing. "His hair was the color of burgundy, and he wore it long down his back, and it sparkled when he walked in the rain."
In regards to canon, I usually play Ashley from before Arkady leaves for Paris, or else an AU in which it is Ashley who lives, and Arkady who is nothing but a skull in a box. I'm always very happy to AU him into almost any scenario, and his canon very easily can be set almost anywhere between 1600-present in either Europe or Louisiana.
*** Trigger warnings for mentions of suicide, implied incest, death, depression, mental instability, neglect (I often play Ashley from a canon point where he has recently lost his brother and the servants that he had all his life, so he has fairly little concept of basic self-care like feeding himself), this list probably to expand as things occur to me.
Ashley comes from a vampire canon, has lots of vampire imagery, and can easily come in vampire flavor, but unless otherwise specified, he is human.