Birthday: Vortas 13, 2700
Age: 19
FC: N/A
Current Location: Brunnhold
Occupation: Student
Player Name: Cap O’Rushes
Cerise is a ball of spitfire packed into the body of a young woman. She stands a little above average at 5’5”, and seems to have grown up to be all angles and edges. Dark-haired and pale, she would say she looks nothing like her somewhat estranged father, but that might be wishful thinking. Indeed, she does at first glance take more strongly after her mother Maria, but only at first glance. There is a similarity between Cerise and her father not just in their grey eyes but in the narrow line of their jaws and the sneering hook of their smiles.
She’s torn between acting out and acting the part, and her wardrobe often reflects this. As a student, she spends most of her time in uniform and usually the rest of her appearance is low-fuss and only reasonably tidy. She keeps her hair pinned back in a possibly futile effort to bring it to some sort of containment and order; it seems to have a mind of its own on that matter. She can clean up nicely if she tries.
Cerise is stubborn and independent, with a quick temper and a sharp tongue. It isn’t often that she means to be cruel, but her mind and her mouth often move at different speeds and she can have poor impulse control. Her inquisitive nature and quick mind gets her into trouble more than it gets her out of it. Being left to do as she pleased for so long has made it difficult for her to take lead from others; she wants to do things her own way and doesn’t take advice particularly well. She is the first to admit when she has done something wrong, but she will usually insist on doing it wrong first rather than rely on the wisdom of others.
Cerise has trouble making friends and relating to others in general. This extends to her family as well. She doesn’t, in particular, resent or dislike Diana Vauquelin, but she is not in any way a mother in Cerise’s mind. She is fond of her younger half-sister Eleanor, but isn’t close with her either. Cerise has the distinct feeling Eleanor finds her intimidating, and isn’t emotionally adept enough to navigate that territory at all. If anything, she makes it worse any time she tries. Her feelings about her father could likely fill several books.
If Anatole was a staunch traditionalist before his “stroke”, these attitudes aren’t particularly reflected in his oldest daughter. It’s unclear if her “liberal” views on race relations and the political state of Anaxas are truth or merely an attempt to irritate her father, even to herself. She is still young and her experience is limited, so while she does her best she can be prone to falling back on some of the more subtle of the attitudes she was raised with.
Cerise is the oldest daughter of Incumbent Anatole Vauquelin and his first wife, Maria. While it is not the way of galdori parents to be especially close to their children, Cerise loved her parents in a general sort of way and was reasonably close to her father. That is, until Maria died and her father became an incumbent. Coupled with the start of Cerise’s schooling, she found herself unmoored and unruddered. Anatole had never been a particularly involved father, but his political career made his presence more looming while the man himself far more absent. It felt a little like she found herself quite suddenly without any parents at all.
This was hard for a young Cerise, and this emotional turmoil at all the change in her life manifested itself as behavior problems at school. As a young child her quick mind, poor impulse control and lack of any particular respect for authority figures made her the terror of many a governess. This only got worse when governesses became teachers and tutors. She never did quite get along with the other children, and even some adults found it hard to truly discipline an incumbent’s daughter. Mostly she was left to her own devices. She told herself this suited her just fine, and crawled into whatever happened to catch her interest at the time.
As Cerise grew older, she also found herself growing angrier, more destructively unruly. At some point, it was suggested that she might find the school's Dueling League a more… productive way to channel her energies. This gentle suggestion was backed with an unspoken threat of disciplinary action; Cerise went, expecting very little. To her surprise, she took to it like a fish to water. Dueling helped her find a direction, a focus for her studies and a more acceptable place to work out her aggression. It certainly didn’t completely curb her behavior, but it gave her a reason to keep it just this side of permissible and actually bother to show up to her classes (much to everyone’s great relief).
Not much for making friends among her own peers, in recent years Cerise has spent more and more time in the Stacks. There she found increased opportunity for new experiences and trouble--and eventually both together, in the form of a passionate (if brief) affair with a young wick. How serious the relationship was or where it would have led proved to be moot questions; word got out and the fledgling relationship crumbled under the weight of the scandal. In some ways she holds this as her father’s fault and resents him for it, but this is likely just because she has been kept away from him since the stroke and has nowhere better to direct that energy. Whatever concern she felt for her father’s health has fizzled to irritation at feeling like she is being deliberately kept in the dark about something.
Good
Average
Average
Short-Term:
- Graduate
- Find out what she feels is being hidden from her about her father’s health
- Become a professional duelist