MOREAUX, rosemary marcheline

[ROSEMARY MARCHELINE MOREAUX]

ROSEMARY MARCHELINE MOREAUX

[/font][/center]

Name: Rosemary Marcheline Moreaux
Nickname: Rose; she considers Rosemary too formal and sweet for her tastes. The only person to get away with calling her by her full name would be Julian, thank you, and even then she only pretends not to care.
Age: 875
Gender: female
Orientation: straight
Occupation: Coven Leader
Species: vampire
Play By: Zoe Saldana
Ability and Talent: n/a

Rosemary bears the features of her mixed race, a testament not only to the African woman that was her mother, but the German man who was her father. Her skin is a medium brown that offers no real evidence of a half-Caucasian lineage, but her wide-set, distinctly-shaped eyes and thin lips against her flat and wide African nose create an interesting picture that would perhaps cause one to consider just how pure-bred she seems. Her face is small, with a longer jaw and shapely chin, all set upon a long and elegant neck and clearly marked collarbone. Combined, there is an symmetry to how she was made, a stroke of genetic luck over eight centuries ago.

Thin brows, often arched skeptically, accent eyes shaped like pregnant almonds, giving her the appearance of always being very alert and awake even if she is feeling particularly tired. A heaviness to her lids rest in the corners from years of stress on her otherwise ageless face, and for a girl turned at 21, her experience has clearly developed the most in her eyes. Rose has thin, almost non-existent lashes that she applies several coats of mascara to in order to prevent them from seeming to disappear altogether against her eyes, blackest black. An element of cunning and danger lies in their color, the perfect description of who they belong to, and the perfect way to express her distaste or anger without saying a word or moving her face.

Beneath a flat nose that nearly blends in with her high and equally planed cheekbones is a mouth shaped like a stretched oval with a tiny curve to lend her some measure of a bow in her upper lip, which protrudes just slightly above the lower and is a bit thinner as well. They hide teeth that are brilliant ivory against her skin and a smile that is rarely, if ever, seen as she feels that such gestures are weak as the leader of creatures such as vampires. Her ears are small and hardly noticeable with one pierced hole that is barely used. Rose prefers simplicity above flourish when it comes to jewelry and clothing –simplicity and elegance.

Her figure is, of course, incredible, as are the bodies of most vampires; lithe and lean with clear muscular definition in her arms, her legs, and abdomen, Rosemary’s form is otherwise something of a mystery as she’s not one to strut about with little clothing on. It is obvious, however, that she has something to work with, and that something can be used to her advantage when necessary although she has chosen to remain celibate since the death of her last companion. Celibacy, of course, doesn’t mean she is completely innocent to the various uses her body offers; Rose knows what sort of effect, if carefully played, her mid-sized, well-rounded breasts and toned booty could have if she were to choose to use them in such a manner. They exist, but are not flaunted. Not right now, anyway.

Rose also has small hands and feet and stands at only 5’5”. She is not particularly tall, but what she lacks in size she makes up in talent. If she didn’t, why on earth would she be the Queen of Julian’s coven? Her clothing of choice? Black, black, black, and turquoise or teal –usually in the form of pencil skirts, fitted tops, high heels, and generally professional attire. In fact, seeing her in anything that looks comfortable is highly, highly unlikely. She’d rather be dressed to kill, thank you.

There are many aspects of Rose’s personality that make her the sort of woman she is, and they all stem from the lack of interaction she had with her parents from day one. As such, her most important trait is a fierce independence, one that keeps her selfish, her own being the central concern of her life. After becoming a member of the coven, she had to reassess this and of course has made various adjustments in that now, the vampires which she charges are like extensions of herself –she is extremely protective of them all, even Lionel, although she remains loyal only to herself and while she won’t admit it, Julian as well.

Another part of her that was developed before she was turned is her hatred of religion. To this day she loathes the idea of God, of organized worship, and in particular she despises the Catholic faith, having never forgotten the nuns that she feels smothered her spiritually for almost the first two decades of her life. The war she waged as a younger vampire against religion is testament to this personal vendetta, but Christianity is not the only sect she hates –no religion is spared her distaste. It is an extremely personal and deeply-set part of her mind, one that has never faltered in nearly 900 years of life. God, she feels, is an entity created by humanity to forgive them for their misdeeds, as are the rest of the deities figments of wild imaginations. She is amused that so many people are foolish enough to think God real, but think vampires fiction –particularly when the truth is practically staring them in the face.

In these two traits it is evident that when Rosemary does feel, she does not feel halfway. This lends to her two biggest flaws –a roaring and frightening temper and a hapless recklessness. Both are under significant control now that she is older, but as a younger vampire and human she struggled to keep both from causing her undue stress and harm. Her temper is also quick –it takes very little to piss her off, and a helluva lot to please her again. For this reason, once she dislikes you, you have a lot of work ahead in order to reverse the feeling. Lionel found her bad side rather quickly by being unaccepting of her age and power as a female, and has not as a result redeemed himself with any of his continued annoying behavior. She does not yell or rage when she gets angry, either –instead, her voice lowers to a nearly impossible decibel and her skin flushes darkly. Rose is extremely dangerous angry, although none in the coven have actually seen her on this level due to the control she exerts over herself after the time she spent training her emotional responses.

Her recklessness, while harder to control, is the reason she began to buckle down on herself in the first place. When feeling strongly Rosemary has a habit of making quick and rash decisions, which has lead her to tread carefully as coven leader. Upon being given information, she does not let her mind act immediately and instead forces herself to consider the options carefully as Julian often did himself. These two weaknesses are tested often, of course, by Lionel, who seems certain they are the way to break her. Fortunately for Rosemary, she is also stubborn to a fault, which means that while it is a possibility, with her current level of determination it’s highly unlikely.

The most beneficial aspect of her personality? Her cunning and cleverness. In some senses this has made Rosemary an expert on passive aggression, an easy out to her temper and recklessness in many ways. The planning she implements is in many ways impressive and it is her intelligence in strategy and logic that separate her from many vampires. Being privy to the knowledge her companion, Cassius afforded her also gives her an advantage over other vampires –not only has she lived history, she knows it –art, literature, music, and most particularly language, having been trained to read and write now in Latin, French, and English, as well as possessing a general understanding of Spanish and German for laymen’s purposes. She is not afraid to use any of her abilities to gain ground and perhaps this is truly what earned her a place at the top –in her mind, at least, she is better by far than the second choice, and whenever the opportunity arises she is more than happy to remind Lionel why he gave his blood to her and not the other way around.

Regarding her fears, there are few –she is, however, afraid that somehow her careful plans and work on her flaws and in the coven with crack and crumble, leaving her powerless to Lionel and a disappointment to Julian. She also holds a deep-seated worry for Julian himself, one that is born in her respect and affection for him. He and her leadership of the coven are her two most dearly guarded and precious items, and losing either of them would be, she feels, the beginning of her end in Mercy. Without either, there would no longer be a place for her in the strange and quaint little Colorado town.

Rose was born in 1035 a bastard, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Lothair III, King of Germany, and the black mistress he returned from his campaigns in Sicily with. The woman died shortly after the birth, leaving behind a girl child for the half-a-decade old Lothair to choose a fate for. As he already had a daughter, Rose’s half-sister, Gertrude, by his wife, Richenza, he needed her not –his strange affection for her Moor mother, however, prompted him to spare her life. In order to avoid the conflict her existence would likely cause with Richenza, Lothair sent the babe, christened Rosemary Moreaux (surname meaning ‘little dark’), into the south of France, far from his seat in Germany, to be raised by the nursemaids that Gertrude had outgrown. He managed to hide his secret for two years, until his death in 1037, and it wasn’t soon after he was buried that Richenza discovered her late husband’s bastard daughter. While she no longer held power as an empress, she was still an influential Duchess, and it was this influence she used on her maids her money employed to ensure that Rosemary was properly disposed of and would pose no feasible threat to Gertrude should her paternal lineage provide her more power in the future.

Fortunately for Rose, there was a particular maid who had taken a liking to the now two-year-old girl. The young woman left with the child under cover of darkness, and after several years of travelling from small town to small town, settled in a convent near the northern coast of France. It was here that the little Rosemary grew up and spent her teenage years, a student of the nuns and the prevailing Catholic faith. Her personality, however, did not lend to such a lifestyle, and she was the frequent subject of discipline among the younger women in the convent due to an inordinate desire to break the rules. Many times she slipped away in the night to explore the surrounding village, often joining the less-than-admirable sort at the local tavern after dark and using her cunning charms to experiment in sin however she could. After several months she’d collected a reasonable coffer of money from the poor drunken saps that her smooth voice had seduced into vulnerability and she began to make plans to leave for good.

The sisters, however, were pious but not ignorant and had noticed how tired and unruly Rosemary had been. Upon an investigation, they discovered the hidden money, as well as the girl herself returning early one morning from an escapade into town. A considerable argument ensued during which she stormed out and, in a cliché moment, the rumbling thunder of a coming downpour prevented the nuns from following her much farther than the courtyard. They, of course, assumed she would have to return, if nothing else for the money they now considered part of their offering to the Lord, and then she would receive the due punishment for her actions. They were not counting on the fact that it was on this night Rosemary would meet the man, or, rather, the vampire, that would change her life.

Soaking wet and furious, the young woman had started on a path to nowhere in particular, yelling words she was not permitted to say and kicking stones as hard as she possibly could across the rough path leading away from the town. Rose did not want to return to the tavern where she had just come, but she certainly didn’t want to return to the convent. Her restless trek was halted by a shadow ahead, a distinctly man-shaped shadow, and she stopped. After a brief stand off, her curiosity and recklessness got the best of her and she approached. His name was Leon, and he was from Rome (she would later learn, of course, that his Rome was far older than the one she had heard of), a ‘traveler’ who had stopped to rest in the rain because he hadn’t eaten and was tiring. What she didn’t know was that he was also far from human, an empathic vampire who sensed her anger and had chosen to act on it. With a strange curiosity, he cunningly managed to incense her to relate why she was angry, and as the rain finally began to stop and the wind quieted, she finished by telling him how unhappy she was, how trapped she felt, and how very desperately she wished fire and hell on the nuns that smothered her in their convent and the God that demanded what she viewed a sacrifice of her soul for weakness, prostration, and destitution in an impoverished and lifeless little village.

While he had of course only intended to feed from her and leave her, dead, on the path, her story struck a familiar chord in him, although his own struggles had of course been far different than her own. A hatred of God, of weakness, and a desire for power were something they clearly shared, and so he made her an offer –what if, he conveyed, she could have near immortality, eternal life, power beyond imagining, a way to combat her station, seek revenge on those who treated her ill, and never feel trapped by another ever again? Rosemary was thirsty for anything but the life she had led, and eagerly agreed with a dangerous and helpless curiosity for how this man could give her such great things –it was only after he’d grabbed her and drained her to the point of near death that she realized what a price she was paying. Still, her determination to live to see these promises over-rode her fear and pain and she willingly drank from Leon when he offered. Rosemary fell unconscious shortly after as the change began to snake its way through her body, just long enough for her new sire to take her to the nearest home and cellar (where he bound and hid their inhabitants in an upstairs room for later). In the darkness of the rough, small, and carelessly dug underground store, Rosemary woke to terribly agony, and as the sun was rising, she began to truly change, at the age of 21, into a vampire.

Leon, unimpressed, slept while his new fledgling struggled to survive the havoc wreaked upon her body. In all of her long life, she has known no greater pain and has never forgotten it –the searing fire in her veins and the feeling of her very skin being peeled from her bones. It was the last time she ever cried and the first time she didn’t pray for relief from a pain, because she knew she had forsaken God and it would not be His hand that saved her. Instead, she grit her teeth and screamed through clenched jaws, struggled against the hurt, and fought until she had nothing left, eventually passing out once again from sheer exhaustion. When Leon awoke, darkness having fallen again, her dark color, while still honey, was less golden, and when she opened her eyes, there was a clear difference in their once boring, human expression –she had survived. He was certainly pleased to have a new companion, and one he had thought would be so worthy. The vampire lead Rosemary upstairs to the waiting victims, a family, and took the man to show her what to do; before he was finished, however, her hunger drove her onward, and she killed the woman and drank her first meal of blood. This left a child, a girl no older than Rose had been when she and the nursemaid had fled into the countryside. After only a moment during which her mind, drunk from this new power and reckless from her human beginnings, considered what guilt she might feel, Rosemary took the child as well, leaving Leon impressed and herself with a feeling of freedom she had never known. There was no guilt.

Even her sire had to admit that she had been born to be a vampire. This first act of ruthless behavior was to be a precedent for much of how she would live her immortal life. He taught her the majority of what she knows, or, at least, the basis of her vampiric knowledge. His and her greatest challenge was her continual reckless behavior and the already inhuman temper she possessed. Rose was continuously foregoing his advice and instead charging forward of her own accord and doing what she pleased, a habit that forced him to clean up many messes and nearly killed them several times. After a few years of bearing each other, they parted –in Leon’s case, because he could no longer stand her lack of respect for him, and in Rose’s case, because she was sick of following what she thought were stupid and useless rules. Needless to say, their parting was not friendly, and Rosemary still harbors a grudge nearly 900 years later.

When they did separate, the year was 1159, and they were in Rome to wreak havoc during the election of the new pope having heard that Hadrian IV had died not far from the city. Rose was sorely tempted by this holy city and kill far more than she needed, causing her first danger in which she was forced to save herself from certain death. After weeks of hiding and being hunted as a demon by the members of the church, she escaped the city but not without learning how very different life would be for her now that she was no longer under the wing of her sire. No sooner had she learned this lesson than she was forced to endure more nights of hiding and running, as her path out of Italy led her straight through Crema in 1160, which was being punished by Emperor Barbarossa for resistance. She spent one particular night wading through the bodies of child hostages that had been thrown by catapult against the city walls, and, convinced that the man responsible was just as ruthless as she, set out on a mission of pride to kill him and drink his blood. It was, in her mind, a bounty –a prize to be won and proof of successful independence from Leon.

Her attempt at the life of Barbarossa came at his camp the evening before he was preparing to depart for Milan to quiet the dissent in that city. She thought she’d planned it well –she did not, of course, expect the man himself to be awake and plotting his next courses of action with his generals when she slipped into his tent. Her presence, while surprising, seemed no threat –in fact, the Emperor at first thought her to be a gift from the leaders of Crema in a gesture of loyalty. This was his first mistake. The moment he sent his company away, the clever Rosemary knew what he thought her intentions were, and not yet interested in using her body as a vampire like she had as a human to get her way, she was instead far too offended and incensed to take the lead and run with it. Instead, she made a mistake that would teach her once again about the dangers of life on her own, baring her teeth and making a dive for the man. He, of course, called out for his guards, and a furious Rosemary was lucky to escape the camp with her life, the victim of a close call once again.

This situation gave Rose much to think about as she moved alone and nomadically throughout Europe for the next forty or so years. Her pride stayed impressively under wraps as she forced herself to re-evaluate all that she had learned and re-train in many ways, practicing some measure of self-control after convincing herself that perhaps her rash decisions were not the wisest way to avoid getting killed when she still had so much left to do on this earth. As she travelled, she considered new and creative ways of killing and persuasion, beginning to practice on commoners and smaller charges of the feudal Holy Roman Empire as well as the beginnings of France. After some time and thought, she found herself tempted to use the knowledge she’d gained of herself as not only a vampire, but a woman, to see if it could get her not simply the money she’d stolen as a human but power through manipulation. Beginning with the younger, less important boys of houses and moving up to Dukes and land-holders, she experimented with the control she could exert over the mind of a man with her body alone and eventually found most of the results to be pleasing, particularly with her ability to make their wives disappear from their minds and sometimes lives altogether and the willingness they had to listen to everything she whispered into their ears.

Eventually, she set her sights on a higher authority after crossing into England in 1208–the mind of King John. Her greatest victory, of course, would be to manipulate the man to harm the church in some way, and while beguiling him from his bed she also managed to convince him that Pope Innocent III’s nomination for the new archbishop of Canterbury was a terrible one, causing the Pope to put an interdict on England that forbid countless followers of the Catholic faith from sacraments and caused quite a conflict in the nation. She was immensely pleased with this circumstance, pushing the situation to the point of John’s excommunication in 1209 before growing tired of how promiscuous he was with other women and the potential danger this placed on her power over him as well as her life if one of them were to act on jealousy or suspicion. Rosemary fled the English court to travel the countryside once again and was needless to say disappointed when all of her efforts to break the country from the church were ruined with John’s submission to papal law in 1213.

Rosemary spent the next 200 years or so of her life working to repay the church for the struggle she felt as a smothered young woman in the small convent in France, already bored with relying on the actions of weak humans despite her growing skills as a manipulator. She travelled Europe killing at leisure, targeting in particular the builders of cathedrals, clergymen and women, and anyone she found that was overtly pious in mannerism. Her presence went unknown and therefore became a legend among the feudal people –a demon that haunted the night and killed the servants of God. Rose herself was of course very pleased by this development, one she became aware of after a priest managed a first to ‘exercise’ her from his presence using a well-played crucifix. She returned, predictably, and merely approached him from a different angle so the artifact would not be so effective, but the idea of being so legendary not only fueled her ego but made her work harder to become worthy of such status. She was, after all, still a young vampire by most standards. It would take time to develop to the extent that Leon had, and still more time to be better. Rosemary was more than willing to put in the work if it meant more power and respect in the long run.

In 1431, while travelling through France, Rose became aware that a woman who claimed to speak directly to God himself was on trial by the church for being a witch. It seemed, much to Rosemary’s surprise, that the faith was beginning to persecute itself. She remained in the area long enough to hear of the execution of a woman named Joan of Arc, hoping perhaps to see a young girl like herself ages ago, one worn and tired by faith and angry at God for forsaking her. Instead, she only heard stories of how the stupid girl had asked for a cross to be held before her eyes, speculation that her last word was Jesus, and curiosity about her truly being a sort of ‘witch’. Rose was surprisingly bitter. Loneliness had began to eat away at her –perhaps she had hoped, somewhere, that this Joan could be a companion, but having clearly been wrong and too frustrated to care, she took her anger out on a few stupid children playing in the dark and once again set out journeying, a solitary creature in the night.

The rise of the Renaissance in Italy and subsequently the rest of Europe was a welcome breath of air for Rosemary, who had worked so hard to smother God in the nearly 400 years she had lived. The people themselves were finally forgetting to place him centrally on a pedestal and instead focusing on things previously though to be sinful –selfishly made art, literature, theatre, and music. While this movement did quell her frustrations for quite some time, it did not quell her loneliness, and in 1440 this problem was temporarily solved by her meeting of another vampire. Italian and a former member of the clergy, Cassius was only a few years younger than she and possessed skills she was hungry to learn, primarily knowledge of Latin in written and spoken form she had only learned little of in the convent as well as a general social awareness of the artistic movements taking place in Florence, Milan, and Rome. Cassius himself was much less dangerous than she, considerably more of a scholar who had been created a vampire by a selfish sire who stayed with him for an even shorter amount of time than Rose had stayed with Leon. As such, they conducted a trade of ‘wares’, so to speak –Rosemary helped him develop better skills as a hunter, fighter, and manipulator, while he educated her in art, literature, language, and other pursuits he’d worked so hard toward mastering. While neither were experts, they were both quite good in their respective fields and it is due to him that Rose became a more well-rounded vampire, one who knew of Michelangelo as well as possessed the ability to kill easily and quickly.

Cassius would also become Rose’s first and last vampire lover. She grew to care deeply for him –too deeply, she later decided –and they spent the next three centuries travelling together. Impressively, she never truly grew tired of his company, and although they had many disagreements, for the most part their personalities were only complimentary and lent to living side-by-side. They eventually decided to leave Europe, bored with the country they’d spent so much time in, and hid themselves on a ship bound for New Orleans from the shores of France in 1735, a full 600 years after Rosemary’s birth. It was a difficult journey during which they very nearly were caught, but after some clever maneuvering on Rose’s part the witness to their place on the ship was killed, drank dry, and tossed overboard the same night he discovered them. When they arrived, there were a significant amount of men who had disappeared from the ship, presumably fallen overboard from a mysterious ailment, but none were wiser to the true method of their demise. Under cover of night the two companions alighted in the French city they had been hearing about, blending into the community as a white man and his ‘slave’ easily enough that they were even able to purchase a small house on the outskirts of the city (with money stolen from their victims, of course).

The Battle of New Orleans in 1815 would officially put an end to this relatively peaceful chapter of Rosemary’s previously nomadic and restless life. Hungry and restless, Rose ventured into the streets on the evening following the battle to finish off the wounded and was noticed by a few of the victorious men who had been lead by Andrew Jackson in defeating the British while they worked to retrieve the bodies. She was quickly surrounded by eight or so men with weaponry and despite her undeniable skill in physical combat was struck with the butt of a weapon and nearly knocked unconscious. The men were both curious as to what demonic creature she could be and enraged that she had silenced a number of their fallen friends before being caught. Having heard stories of the creatures of the night that haunted Europe and parts of the Americas, the men tied their half-conscious vampire to a nearby beam of wood to see if the legends were true –if the sun would kill it. It didn’t take long, of course, for Rosemary to awaken fully and free herself, and the men were too busy with their previous tasks to notice –but instead of fleeing, as she should have, the reckless vampire alighted after them, killing two mercilessly before one managed to knick her side with a misaimed pistol shot and take her momentarily off her game.

Cassius had grown weary of her long absence and gone to find her when he came upon the scene and quickly came to her aid. His affection for her, however, cost him his life –in an attempt to bring her back with him after knocking the few men left to the ground, he turned his head for a moment and became the victim of a shot gun shell to the chest. Rosemary, horrified, attempted to drag him to safety but was forced to save her own life as morning was coming, the guns were being reloaded, and her wounds, physical and mental, were too taxing for her to manage another outnumbered and out-weaponed fight in the streets. Bitter, anxious, and sorrowful, she used what strength she had left to run and left the scene behind. Rose hardened her heart that evening to the pain that rested there, numb to defeat and loss and determined not to suffer that weakness again. After treating her wound, she fell into a fitful sleep to what might have been the sound of Cassius screaming in agony as the sunrise finished what the men had started.

This episode in her life ended the only period in which she let slide her ruthless and cunning behavior. Rosemary, angered by the defeat and unable to live in the house that she had shared with her beloved Cassius, left New Orleans behind the next evening, determined to do several things –first, to train until a group of what she deemed worthless militia men could not take her again, second, to kill as many soldiers as she could find if only to ease her own spirit, and third, to never be weak enough to love again in order to avoid such feeling of loss. As for her instinctual urge for sex, she would use it merely to entice her food and gain ground, having decided that if she could control this aspect of her being as well as the others, problems like Cassius would never arise again. Her life became about careful calculation, a chess game –it was her recklessness that had cost a fellow vampire his life and almost taken hers several times before now, and she was determined to prevent it from happening anymore. Rose’s temperament, as well, posed a problem, and so she worked not only on her physical technique but also in channeling her anger into ability rather than rash decisions. While she still suffers from both flaws, the time she spent while travelling the new nation on focus and the effort she afforded her new goals paid off, creating an improved, experienced, and truly formidable creature. For the first time since realizing that she was becoming legendary, Rose was truly prideful, but this –this was for a just reason. After over 700 years, she was finally a real, aged, well-balanced threat among her kind, and she knew it.

This last nomadic period brought her to Mercy in 1860. She was quick to realize the strange forces at work in the town, meeting civilly for the first time Elementals and Lycans. Her instinct was to fight the latter, having been in various one-on-one skirmishes with them through the past one hundred years or so in particular after working her way through the mostly unsettled mid-west, but it was obvious that this town was not ordinary in the ways it functioned. A few days after arriving, she met Julius, and at first was both caught off-guard and defensive simply because he bore such a striking resemblance to Leon. He gained her trust, however, proved he was an entirely different being, and after some discussion Rosemary gave up her solitary life once more and gave him a blood offering to join his then small coven. She’d often heard of these groupings of vampires and thus far avoided them, preferring her own rules after the battle she’d had with her sire so long ago –Julian was very persuasive, however, and Rose was hard-pressed to find a reason not to join the settlement after hearing the range of benefits.

By the time he chose to leave, she had become along with Lionel his right hand in the coven. Rosemary, of course, had worked hard to make it as such and always managed to stay one step ahead of her competition, having a strong dislike for Lionel but battling her greatest challenge yet in keeping her temper at bay and leaving him and their conflict at merely quiet, sharp, and sparse words. Julian’s departure had an interesting effect on her in many ways, primarily in that she had developed a deep respect for him as well as an affection she will not admit to. He possessed nobility she strived for herself and a prowess she lusted after, but managed to avoid revealing the latter and still does. As the leader of the coven at Mercy she not only keeps the uneasy peace between her brood and the Lycans, but serves as the representative to the council (which she finds a useful but occasionally stupid invention on the part of vampires). Her hand as a Queen is considered at times ruthless and heavy, but it has not only kept the coven in line and successful but also forced Lionel to think twice about usurpation and given Julian something more to see in her capabilities, which he already admired enough to place her in charge of the coven he founded.

Her flaws, however, are still present. She suffered some bouts of recklessness during the war during the 1960s and killed perhaps more Lycans that she should, which perhaps has created a personal problem that neither party can address after the treaty in 1992. Rose’s temper, while typically under control, has also risen lately with Lionel’s attempts at her power and her jealousy regarding the relationship Roxanne shares with her sire. These critical issues all provide stepping stones toward a blow that would reveal just what sort of weaknesses she suffers –and thus far, Rosemary’s greatest goal as coven leader is to keep this door, Lionel’s door, locked away. In her mind, she cannot lose –that is, if things continue to go as she manipulates.

Your Name: Kayla
Age: 21
How Did you Find us: Rae and Jeanna are my CG homies!
A little bit about you: um…I’m bubbly and I usually start in your toes and work my way up. :]

In the near year since she had last seen Prince Aidan Seraphin, Lady Rosalia Istatio had experienced quite an upheaval that had resulted in a significant change in the young, imaginative woman she had been before. First, of course, was the marriage of her brother to Beatriz Mendoza, a woman who Rosalia frankly felt belonged in a nunnery and caused her much grief in worry for the first several months of their union as a family. The girl often found herself asking for forgiveness, as she had regularly resisted the urge to slap the new lady of the manor; impressively, she had not, and these feelings were beginning to fade even if the two still tended to irritate one another. No –the new Duchess Istatio was not too terribly unbearable, and was in fact, becoming much more amiable and less snobbish. The second change which had prompted Rosalia to grow as an individual was the birth of her beautiful and blessed niece, now a healthy and happy four months old. Little Evita was a brilliant addition to the family, and although she had spoken to Lysander soon after he realized he couldn’t be her father and he expressed some concern, all was now right. Her ever honorable brother treated Evie as his own, and of course they were all thankful that she was indeed a girl child and not therefore an illegitimate male heir. Rosalia had taken to her so well that it was rare for them to require the full services of a governess at all; the new aunt quite enjoyed carrying her baby niece in her arms on tours of her home, the gardens, and even Bello had grown beyond his jealousy to enjoy snuggling the infant whilst she and Rosalia sat upon the floor and played together. It was in the lady’s opinion that Evita was not to blame for her mother’s past indiscretions, and with proper raising and copious love, the little girl would grow to be a fine and upstanding young woman (much like her aunt, of course). There was nothing better than running a soft brush through her downy, dark curls and tickling her toes, the latter of which Lysander himself had become professional at.

These two changes had brought, perhaps, the biggest change of all to the household, and that was reluctant realization of her brother Lysander that he could no longer keep and protect his sister from the world, as she was nearly twenty-three and well past the age of which she could marry. Rosalia, of course, always knew that was her duty to one day be a wife, but she mostly ignored it on account of her brother’s insistence that they should remain together forever. God would provide in time, she thought, and besides –what would become of her under the thumb of another if her husband were a tyrant? That simply wouldn’t do. She would march straight into Revillo herself before leaving her home without her dog, her books, and her dignity. It was an indignation stemming from fear in knowing that such arrangement for her betrothal and subsequent marriage were more and more inevitable the longer her brother worked at such things. Frankly, she didn’t wish to remain here as a burden to him while his family grew, as much as she loved caring for Evita –and while the girl in her dreamed of fairytales and weddings and children of her own, the intelligent woman she had become was quick to keep her feet on the ground. Still, what option did she have if she didn’t wish to stay at Islana but marriage? Rosalia often pondered this late into the night, scribbling away in her little leather-bound journals fantastic escape plans among snippets of poetry, novels, plays, and thoughts. Her mind was developing in an interesting manner, one that had in fact dictated the subject of the specific play she would be opening this very weekend at the Rose Theatre –Foolish Practicalities.

It had been Aidan himself who had first inspired her idea for the work, one that could surely cause quite a stir among those more closed-minded. Her stomach had been absolutely full of butterflies since she’d turned the script in to be published for the theatre, not simply because she was excited (although she was, quite so, in fact), but because new ideas unless from the King himself were dangerous business. What she had written was a satire of shameless proportions in which all of the follies of court were exposed at laughable expense, namely the hypocrisy caused by wealth, power, and religion. The latter had become a particular interest to Rosalia the longer she wrote the play, and thus she had continued her musings on it in various notes she intended to perhaps piece together in the future. God knew her to be devout and faithful, but her heart was discontent in how the church was used against the very people it was meant to protect. Much of this was scattered throughout her work and it caused her some anxiety to see what sort of reaction such ideas would receive; too much negative reviews would end her career as a playwright and perhaps as an author period. She had spent many nights nibbling nervously on the end of her various quills between penning her various considerations on the subject. In the end, she had decided it was worth the risk. It was a blessing to be in her position, a woman who was published regularly (even though no one knew that William Denning was, in fact, a woman). Even her brother remained unaware –she trusted no one but herself with her little secret.

She had been pondering all this and fidgeting with the elegant lace trim of her thin, muted blue cloak when Aidan had arrived to escort her to the play that afternoon. Lysander had made her more aware than usual the consequences of being seen in public on the arm of a gentleman, and on top of that a Seraphin prince. She had insisted quite adamantly that it meant little to nothing and even showed him the curt letter in return from said prince to prove it, but her brother remained convinced that this could and would appear as a step at courtship to the eyes of the public, and that thought alone made Rosalia pale in anxiety. She found Aidan to be attractive, certainly, but moreso was she attracted to his company and conversation –his manners, while not traditional, were fascinating, and his wit spoke for itself. He was an intelligent man worth speaking to, and one who clearly did not just want to play and toy with women as Rosalia was under the impression many others at court tended to do. Aidan was truly a different sort of man than many, and while her practical mind had never once assumed that she could marry him, her brother’s worries had her mind working tirelessly. ‘Stand up straight, Rosalia, watch your manners and mind your tongue, be pleasant company, blah blah…’ She’d eventually chased him back into the house and not a moment too soon, for the sight of the carriage coming up the driveway had caused all of his hard work to be forgotten for a moment. Rosalia had to keep herself from spinning in glee. They were going to Sundri to see a play –her very own. How could she possibly keep her joy a secret?

It had been difficult, but she certainly had. Of course Aidan couldn’t know of her authorship! She couldn’t even imagine what he would think, and that was the truth of it –part of her wondered if he’d approve, but it wasn’t worth the risk of upsetting him. He had been quite gracious to agree to join her, seeing as her brother was busy at home, and so she didn’t want to risk her company’s regret. Still, she couldn’t keep a smile from her face as they travelled the rather short distance between Islana and the capital, making the usual appropriate small talk of how his journey had been and thanking him for coming all the while. They were both otherwise seemingly content to sit in silence for the majority of the ride, and it remained as such when the vehicle stopped at the gates to the Rose and the footman helped Rosalia down. She found it impressive that she didn’t trip over her heavy skirts in excitement, the dark violet contrasting her pale skin and blue cloak quite nicely but also a death trap for a clumsy girl due to the heavy, folded trim that created such an elegant line at her feet. Thanking the servant kindly for his assistance, she looked up to see Aidan offering an arm (and looking amusingly uncomfortable in doing so –had they not been in public, she was certain he would have just expected her to follow him without such a gesture). Raising a brow pleasantly at him, she settled her hand daintily on the inside of his forearm and set off into the beautiful space in which they had first met under such funny circumstances, immediately heading to the boxes reserved for the nobility. The sight of the simple set was enough to make Rosalia was to leap with excitement but she merely opened the fan on her wrist instead and waved it over her flushed face to calm herself. As she and her company settled into their seats, she slowed the pace of her wrist and smirked slightly, glancing at Aidan. “Do you still wonder at Denning’s abilities as a playwright based on your dislike of poetry?”

[BLACK PAraeDE]