There's plenty of room in the character selection screen, and that's exactly what the "model.storytext" line is for. You probably don't need to specify the start time down to the exact second, though.
But specifying the start date is worthwhile, especially the year, as that puts the character into the period of your choice. 1694 is "Golden Age of Piracy". In fact, it's in the middle of the
Nine Years War, alias War of the League of Augsburg, and the game sets international relations accordingly. The problem with a "Rebel" start is that you have the international relations of your nation, except that your own nation hates you. The War of the League of Augsburg was basically France trying to muscle in on Spain and everyone else ganging up to try to stop them, which means almost everyone hates France, and that means they all hate you - and so does France...
Incidentally, note that I've uploaded a revised version of the zip, due to a problem with "pictures.ini".