( bio | general | 1982 ) close enough to start a war

[feyandunholy]

ILDE DECIMA FEATHERSTONEHAUGH

D E S C R I P T I O N
Ilde is 5'3", slim build with probably about a B-cup (don't understimate the power of the push up bra), blue eyes and brunette hair, close to but not quite black. She wears her hair quite long, but routinely will curl and pin it to look shorter than it is, otherwise generally wears it down, owns far too many headbands, tiaras, and absurd looking hats. One tattoo: a black ribbon tied around her upper left thigh, knotted with hanging ribbon at the outside (no bow). Something about Ilde appears indefinably not-quite-right to your average human - a little too real, too vivid, like someone turned up the saturation on her - and recognizably of fey heritage to anyone who does realize what they're looking at. This is particularly apparent when she's in or near fresh water (while essentially a freshwater mermaid, Ilde is...not a mermaid, the ocean doesn't do it), enabling fleeting glimpses of something not quite human. They're easy to dismiss - the pearlescent nature of her skin is hard to get a good look at/sense of and could be put down to the water itself, a trick of the light. Her usual perfume is a Jean Patou, 'Que sais-je?'

H I S T O R Y
Ilde was born in Calais, France on the 6th of December, 1960, the only daughter of a dissolute pianist (Emeric Featherstonehaugh) and an unimpressed socialite (Annegret Marquering), whose brief affair had long since already ended. Independent, strong-willed and being supported by a divorcée mother who wired money monthly, Anne maintained primary custody of her daughter for the next five years, permitting Emery regular visitation while she relocated from Calais to Paris, introducing François Sauvageon as Ilde's stepfather. When Anne's health began to decline with the onset of chronic illness, she and Emery discussed a renegotiation of custody, and in 1966 he took her with him to a residence in Florence, Italy that he'd only recently relocated to himself (from London). It was a choice based in pragmatism of various stripes; Anne was increasingly unable to be Ilde's primary caretaker, François was fond of his stepdaughter but unprepared to abruptly become the primary caretaker to a willful five year old, and the social complications of an illegitimate child were significantly easier on Emery than they were on Anne.

As an artist, Emery walked the knife edge of 'acceptably eccentric' and Ilde reaped the benefits and suffered the consequences of this in equal measure; their family was old money, but they were the established family scandal, never veering so far out of what was 'done' to be shunned, but essentially a social novelty not to be taken very seriously. His closest friends tended toward those of a similar nature - the Beauchamp siblings, whom he'd been at school with and who were engaged in cold war with their parents, Prisca Fitzroy, who was best known for having openly declared her intention to live in sin with a man of the cloth (as soon as she found one suitable) - and this was the village that Ilde was raised by. A curious assortment of people with their own privately played out melodramas, the early months of living with her father involved a lot of being passed around like a little doll to be dressed up and trotted out, following him to his concerts, to the Beauchamps' church (Catholic; Ilde later came to believe he had her baptised in this faith expressly to impress Decima Beauchamp, their names being no accident), to sit on the laps of his friends while they argued the merits of things she was too young to understand until she had to go to bed.

In late 1967, Emery's carefully managed (where 'managed' primarily meant 'concealed', a taboo that would've been a step too far out of acceptable) mental illness twisted him into a downward spiral. Already suffering from an untreated tendency to clinical depression, Emery's unhealthy on-again-off-again relationship with Decima (by this point married, and not to Emery) provided the triggers for a failed suicide attempt. Ilde was nearly seven years old; she didn't witness the attempt itself, but it was almost impossible to shield her from the ensuing fallout.

Finding a discreet sanatorium away from both Emery's favoured Italy and regularly visited England, Septimus Beauchamp spread the rumour that his friend had run afoul of some woman's husband and found it prudent to absent himself from their social set while the affair blew over - and relocated temporarily with him, taking responsibility for Ilde while her father recuperated over the course of several years.

The trauma of the incident was only worsened by the secrecy of it; when they returned to Florence, Ilde went away to boarding school on the understanding that this was not something they were ever going to speak about again. With a profound lack of faith in her authority figures (such as they were), Ilde became very independent very early, choosing more often than not to sink into the background and fix her attention on understanding the dynamics of people around her. It was becoming clear to her, by this point, that she didn't think quite the same way as they tended to - and a combination of her terror at the idea of declining the way her father did (who suffered life-long damage that involved a difficulty forming new memories) and the accepted idea that mental illness was inherently unacceptable, she devoted herself to appearing as unremarkably normal as she could humanly be.

At this point several things need to be elaborated on.

Emeric Featherstonehaugh was himself born the illegitimate son of sixteen year old de Lacey heiress Allegra and eighteen year old carpentry apprentice Edmund Seward, in 1935. The above probably speaks for itself in why his grandparents made the decision to quietly have the infant (named Charles de Lacey III by his mother, after her older brother, Charles de Lacey II) adopted out. They were loosely acquainted with the Featherstonehaughs - Tristram and Annis - who were having dificulty conceiving at the time, so they killed two birds with one baby, and went their separate ways.

The de Lacey family has a history of mental illness, notably cropping up in the 1880s with Camilla de Lacey, whose untreated bipolar and frustration with her social position led to suicide by drowning - but also traced back to the 1880s is the origin of their fey heritage. Camilla was involved with a Nix by the name of Ælfræd, whose son she passed off as her husband's (after forcing Ælfræd to give his oath to leave them be), and subsequent generations of the family have carried that blood and the touch of fey with them. They aren't all the way to faerie, but they're also palpably not entirely human - and there's a fey callousness in the ability to be unconcerned by the potential consequences of giving up a child of their bloodline to humans. They were privileged humans, good enough, right? Well, not quite.

Suffering from periods of depression, terror of her own mind and related issues arising from her 'interesting' upbringing, Ilde grew into a somewhat withdrawn woman; she attached herself to other people's social circles more than developing her own, engaging enough to justify being there without being properly engaged. After getting out of her (British...and Catholic) school, Ilde skipped going home to Florence full time and instead prevailed on Septimus ('Seven') to put her up in his London townhouse, because exactly what every self-destructive teenage girl in the '70s needs is ready access to the London scene and minimal, distracted supervision.

At age twenty-one, having been raised what she describes as 'habitually English', Ilde is finishing an undergraduate at Guildhall (cello; she tried for a joint principal study with cello and singing, but was declined) that she's occasionally struggled to keep up with, and is beginning to quietly submit her poetry to local writing journals. Music runs in the family, but Emery has yet to persuade his daughter that what she really wants to do is start jointly performing with him in his charity fundraisers.

T A L E N T S
Ilde is a trained cellist, writes a lot of poetry, and makes a pretty good cup of tea. She speaks native English, fluent Italian (Florence is home), and more-than-conversational Russian (through extended family). She spoke French as a child, but deliberately neglected it as an adult.

P O W E R S
Ilde does have (some of) the associated abilities and weaknesses of a fae naiad, but unfortunately for her, she has no real awareness or control over any of them.

S T R E N G T H S:

1. Influence: Through voice and music, Ilde is capable of influencing the people around her - but it's relatively specific, and functions more as persuasion (or a summoning) than any kind of ability to plant suggestions. She's capable of a subtle kind of compelling (easily avoided by the strong-willed) when she speaks, a stronger variation if she's singing or playing an instrument, and it's stronger again if she does this in the water. None of this is impossible to resist, and her unconscious use of it typically influences a person into wanting to be near her. It is not an inherently sexual coercion!
2. Charisma: ...because the fae are pretty magnetic, in general, and Ilde is no exception. 'Charisma' is, however, intensely subjective and in Ilde this magic edge presents subtly enough that maybe she's just nice to be around, who knows. Still; one on one, she's present, engaging, and there is a pull to her that's perceptible to the magically sensitive. Again, this is nothing irresistible, and may simply not register with some people for whatever relevant reason.
3. Glamour: While a fully fae member of Ilde's bloodline would be capable of shapeshifting, Ilde herself is only capable (in theory) of the illusion of it. Her glamours don't extend beyond herself; she can use illusion to extensively alter her appearance (if she wanted to impersonate a vampire, she could probably do it, including hiding her own pulse), but it is not a physical alteration. This is not something she's ever explored.


4. Water: It is physically impossible to drown her. Fresh water lends her strength, speeds her healing process and grounds her in herself; everything is better when she has steady access to a fresh water source, preferably a waterfall or a river, but a lake will do.
5. Music: As a result of her nature, the fact that Ilde is studying music is the laziest thing on earth; she can't not be good at this. Struggling to keep up with her course is a result of depressive episodes, stress and a dubious work ethic (she underestimated how much she can't coast on talent, good job), because it is simply her nature to be good at this - it's otherworldly, and her father's success as a musician has a lot to do with the intense experience that is witnessing him play. Ilde doesn't intend to go on as a performer; she chose to go into something that she knows she's good at because trying and potentially failing at something more challenging is a frightening possibility.
6. Sensitivity: Sensitivity to magic / other faeries / etc; this is largely useless as long as she doesn't understand or consciously register what it is that she's feeling or picking up on. The presence of other fae tends to react with her - drawing her own nature closer to the surface - and the 'too vivid' aspect of her appearance tends to be more noticeable there.
7. Faerie magic: Ilde is theoretically capable of making use of this - hers is extremely elemental in its nature - but that remains, at present, a theoretical possibility.

      W E A K N E S S E S:

1. Iron: Being part-human, Ilde is not as susceptible to this as the true fae - but she can be bound with iron, which is a) incredibly painful and b) liable to scar if left against her skin! Wounds inflicted by an iron weapon heal sluggishly and invariably scar, and are more likely to kill her.


2. Cold: Ilde's body temperature is slightly lower than a human's should be; she can superficially warm up with exposure to heat, but generally tends to be noticeably a little cooler. The reason this is listed as a weakness is because she spent an amount of time in and out of doctors' offices as a child being tested for circulatory disorders - Emery eventually decided that since it had never hurt him and it didn't seem to be hurting her, fuck it, and let her be.
3. Water: The lack of it literally saps her will to live. If kept away from a fresh water source for a prolonged period, Ilde will become melancholic and listless, uninterested in the world around her and mentally checking out. It won't actually kill her, but her mental state will get worse and not better until the situation is righted; she will typically find herself drawn to water sources of her own accord, and it tends to be a matter of how difficult it is to get there.
4. Vampires: The fae are delicious - specifically, they are an intoxicant. A full-blood fairy would be roughly the equivalent of trying and failing to drink Kai under the table; Ilde's blood would get a vampire comfortably drunk.
5. Alcohol: So, speaking of: human alcohol hits the fae significantly harder - Ilde's tolerance is questionable, and does not progressively improve with more drinking over time, she will always be a bit of a cheap date. She gets tipsy fast, and if she paces herself she can stay that way for quite some time! It's not as bad, again, as it would be if she weren't part-human, but she's a talkative drunk and a sudden loquacious willingness to be forthcoming is generally a good indicator sobriety has excused itself.
6. Ignorance: Ilde doesn't know or understand what she is; this makes it potentially very easy to use against her.

P E R S O N A L I T Y
Ilde, like all fey and their kin, doesn't think quite the same way a human would - unfortunately, knowing very little but a human world, this is a source of more than a little bit of concern for her. She is constantly in a private argument with herself - the back and forth pull of what her instinct to do is and what she knows is the more acceptable thing. Often, this results in some Olympic level justifications being dredged up to make the most insane spur of the moment decisions sound like sound, pragmatic choices. (As long as you don't look too closely at what she's actually doing.) She presents herself as being very pragmatic, and in some ways this is true - but her driving force is often curiosity and a lack of self-preservation instinct (to the point of being, from time to time, passively suicidal), which is more than a little at odds with the practical nature she tries to project having. Her ability to justify to herself decisions that are objectively bad should be legendary, and frequently involves 'but I could be doing [even worse thing], and I'm not, ergo I am totally in the right right now'. Aware that decisions are, in theory, supposed to be made based on logic and not on 'I want', she spends a lot of time twisting logic 'til it screams so that what she wants is the logical answer. Somehow.

The combination of a baseline impulsive nature, a tendency to justify doing whatever she wants to do and a great deal of unhappiness she doesn't want to deal with results in a slight tendency to be a bit of a tiny hedonist.

Bitter about her upbringing and simultaneously guilty for her bitterness (aware of the fact that as a spoiled heiress she has the luxury of wallowing in her own self-pity), Ilde thinks she's more cynical than she is - believes herself to be more worldly, less innocent, registers the fact she's spoiled but not the fact she's been incredibly sheltered from a lot of the world. A hereditary risk of alcoholism obviously means she's qualified for the jaded air that she likes to adopt, preferring to psychoanalyze the people around her. Ilde is pretty self-aware, but not nearly as much as she thinks she is, which is not really unusual for someone her emotional age (probably closer to 18ish than her chronological age of 21).

Ilde has an undiagnosed and untreated depressive disorder that she attempts to BOOTSTRAPS! her way through, uncomfortable with her own internalized hatred and mistrust of mental illness; this is not something she seeks help for, this is something she's ashamed of and will strive to conceal, occasionally at the expense of her close relationships. Her self-worth suffers as a result of this - she frequently thinks of herself in terms of 'a problem' that other people are forced to deal with. She can seem (and ... be) irrational, lashing out when she feels backed into a corner and then turning on a dime as her mood shifts - she experiences emotions more intensely than the human baseline norm and finds this difficult to contend with when living in a human environment where it's noticeably abnormal.

On the positive side of things, having her around is a lot like keeping a temperamental cat; she's tactile, inquisitive, affectionate, and inclined to think that the people she's closest to are mobile furniture. (She also enjoys napping in the sun and attempting to cute her way out of it when she's just done something she knows she probably shouldn't have.) She can be both manipulative and mercenary, but as a general rule her attempts to manage the people around her are at least well-intentioned, and she's invested in people-pleasing. (Which is debatably positive, depending on how out of hand it gets.) Her sense of humour tends toward the bleak, morbid and sometimes inappropriate, but she responds readily to other people's lighter moods - on a good day she laughs a lot, likes to be playful, will feign brattiness for a laugh. (...not always feigned; Ilde is bratty.)

Secretive and mistrustful - a lack of anyone in her life she finds genuinely reliable has meant a tendency to perceive people in general as unreliable - Ilde finds it difficult to discuss her own feelings in any coherent way, and as a rule she's unwilling to try. Most of the time, she puts off inquiries (or straightforwardly lies), and will typically do her level best to wriggle out of having to do it before anyone manages to pin her down. When she does recognize the necessity, she hates it, and will change the subject or distract the other person with a mood shift as soon as she thinks she's told them 'enough', sometimes justifying a little with the fact that she hardly ever does this at all. Clearly, they should accept this far and no further, and let her talk about something else. Anything else. (The closest she gets to willingly going into things tends to be dropping bite-sized portions of awful into conversation in a self-mocking, easy-to-play-off kind of a way - though she has much less of a filter when she's drunk.)

One of her personal goals is to have her own family, and in theory, fuck it up less.

S E X U A L I T Y
Ilde is more or less heterosexual; she's never experienced a same sex attraction, but I will rule nothing out there. She's been sexually active since she was fifteen, and has an unfortunate habit of getting involved with older men, frequently resulting in an imbalanced power dynamic. Physical strength appeals to her as an unconsciously perceived indicator of someone who is more stable than she is, who can be relied on, and ... this has ended badly for her in the past, surprise, surprise. On the other hand, she's very comfortable with her own sexuality and her own body - nudity is not a huge deal to her, she has little in the way of body-shame or self-consciousness about promiscuity (which she is occasionally prone to, when she feels like it).

In more romantic relationships, however, she's very conscious of being "difficult" as a partner and tends to accept treatment she probably shouldn't in return for someone "tolerating" the things she finds more problematic in her own personality and temperament.