App
Your name: Zai.
Your personal LJ: eudaimon
Who do you currently play at Tabula Rasa?: Lily Strombeck, Charlie Andrews, Karen, Adam Carter, Eden Sinclair and John Amsterdam
Please list the dates of your participation requirement threads or posts for each pup for the two
previous calendar months:
Lily: August: 12th, 18th, 20th | September: 5th, 5th, 17th
Charlie: August: 12th, 15th, 15th | September: 3rd, 8th, 8th
Karen: August: 17th | September: 5th
Adam: August: 14th, 15th, 16th | September: 3rd, 6th, 9th
Eden: August: 8th, 15th, 16th | September: 2nd
John: August: 20th | September: 4th
Eostre: August: 9th, 16th, 19th | September: 18th
Emmy: September: 10th, 17th, 25th
Have you dropped any pup since your last application?
Yes; Javert and Eostre.
If so, why did you feel the need to drop them?
Javert: Javert's voice never clicked for me the way I hoped it would. I enjoyed him while I had him, but keeping him around for longer wouldn't have been fair to me or anybody else.
Eostre: Is slightly more complicated than that. She's been around for two years and has, on and off, been difficult for me for six months or so. Recently, the struggle became MUCH harder and I finally gave myself permission to let her go back to her war. The feeling of relief that I got having talked to the muns of her nearest and dearest leads me to believe that this was TOTALLY the right decision.
What month and year is this application for?:
October, 2008.
Your character's name: Guenever ("Jenny")
Your character's canon: The Once and Future King" by T.H.White.
What type of canon is it (Book series, film, etc.): Book.
Your character's LJ: withoutasea
Is your character living or dead at their time of entry?: She's alive.
Does your character have any pre-existing disabilities of a medical, physical, or psychiatric nature?: She's barren. She doesn't know this for certain, and it might be cathartic for her to have it confirmed on the island, but, after eight years of marriage and not even a whisper of children, she does suspect.
Tell us about your character's background:
There is a story that her hair was yellow, but it was not. Guenever was born the dark haired, blue eyed daughter of Leodegrance, king of Cameliard in the region of Gwent. She grew up quick and strong and wild, until at the age of sixteen, she rode a white horse to Camelot, to marry Arthur, the King of all England. In Camelot, as Queen, she learned to be less wild, though she remained strong.
Jenny was there for the idea that became the round table; the table itself was a gift from her own father. She watched as the knights came riding into Camelot, and she was there when Lancelot arrived. At first, the Queen and the Knight who wished to be first in Arthur's heart clashed; Lance saw her as a challenge for the King's love, and nothing more. Neither of them could have known that Merlin had prophesied that they would betray Arthur before he'd even set eyes on pretty Jenny. Mindful of Merlin's warning, Arthur took Lancelot with him to war in France. It was a year until they returned, on Jenny's birthday. Lancelot sent his prisoners to kneel at Jenny's feet and he finally saw past the Queen to the real woman, pretty Jenny with her wild heart.
They were doomed. They were doomed from that moment.
They had one perfect year together, a still year in each other's arms while Arthur was away at yet another war and, when the King returned, Lancelot took himself away on a quest; he couldn't risk being around Jenny while Arthur was there. In his absence, Jenny loved her husband dearly, and tried not to want for passion. Lancelot came and went, but there was always the three of them; Arthur, Lancelot and Jenny.
Later, it became clear that Jenny was not the only woman that Lancelot had loved. A woman named Elaine came to Camelot, with her baby in her arms. Perhaps Jenny could have withstood Elaine without the baby in her arms, but she was reminded that there would never be any sons for her and, despite initially offering her five thousand welcomes, Jenny banished Elaine, and, with her, Lancelot, from court. Left alone, with the reality of her choice, Jenny broke down.
It is from this point that she arrives on the island.
Your character's personality:
It would be easy to write-off Jenny as merely mean or purely wicked, to have callously made the decision to cheat on the husband that loved her with his best friend. There are words for women that do things like that, but, certainly they don't apply to Jenny, or they do, but do little to describe the actual woman.
She was little more than a child when she left her home and married a man she had never set eyes on before, and eight years older than her, too. Having grown up in wild, wet Gwent, Jenny has a little of the wind and the storm in her, but she grew civilised in Camelot. She grew into a Queen, and she loved her husband. It would be wrong to say that she didn't love Arthur. The problem is that she loved Lancelot, too. From the moment she set eyes on him. For her sins, she loved them both.
Jenny is quick witted, clever; Arthur brings the idea for the round table to her first, discusses it with her, feels out the edges of the dream. She can be capricious, petty and cruel in the way of young women. She was only fifteen when she married Arthur, and barely twenty four by the time she sends Lancelot away. She is generous of spirit, and free with the giving of her heart. She loves her two men deeply, but in different ways. She's a good wife to Arthur, but her passion is for Lancelot. It can be difficult to love a jealous woman, and Jenny is so jealous. She sees the proper way that she should act, and she tries, but, in the end, she gives in to her screaming heart. As a woman of her time, Jenny spends a lot of her time waiting. Her men are always riding off to war, to quest, and leaving her behind. She spent eight years waiting to bear Arthur's baby. A Queen who can not bear heirs is of little use to a King, and, despite the fact that Arthur loves her anyway, Jenny found comfort in Lancelot's arms, where she could be nothing more than pretty Jenny, where her barren womb was a veiled blessing, not a curse. Elaine came to court , and perhaps, Jenny could have accepted her if she had just been Lancelot's wife, but she was the mother of his child as well, and that was more than Jenny could bear.
She always gives into her heart, and it ruins her, in the end.
Why do you want to play this character?:
Writing a PhD, in part, on myth, I do a lot of reading, and, time and time again, I come back to Guenever as one of my favourites mythical women. It's easy, I think, to dismiss her, as a cheating wife...merely a wicked woman. That can't be true, though. There must be something special about her, for those two remarkable men to fall so deeply in love with her. In many versions, it's with Jenny that Arthur first discusses the idea of the round table. She's clever, and her husband knows it.
The Arthurian myth is constantly retold, so maybe Jenny has to be a little bit like every version of her in every retelling. Yes, she's a little bit fickle, a little bit wicked, but she's also beautiful, and clever, and very deeply loved.
In TOAFK, White takes pains to describe Jenny as a "real person". She isn't perfect. She couldn't be; she's only human. He doesn't make allowances for her, but he does create a framework in which she can be understood, rather than condemned. She's a woman, in love with two men, both for different reasons and, in seeing them together, you can come to understand how maybe it was possible for her to love both and not care if it was a sin. The book itself is so lyrical, so beautiful, that I fell utterly in love with this version of a woman that I felt I'd always known. I want to bring her to the island to play with White's language but to also continue to flesh her out as a "real" person, now that she'd be without either of the rosebuds that she gathered. It'll be interesting to put Jenny into a place where Arthur has already been and gone. Since she was fifteen years old, her world has been defined by her husband. On the island, she'll be coming into contact with people who knew him (including another wife of his) and, for the first time in her life, she'll be able to react as a WOMAN, instead of being bound to certain responses as the Queen of England and the lady of Camelot. For the first time in her life, she'll be really FREE, and that'll open all sorts of possibilities for me as a mun.
Your character's initial personal inventory:
1 x red wool dress with gold embroidery
1 x linen tunic
1 x corset
1 x linen head scarf
1 x gold circlet
1 x gold torc necklace
1 pair of red woolen shoes with leather soles.
1 white linen handkerchief
1 x red velvet padded seat.
Your character's entrance post:
And then it was done. She'd sent her heart away from him, and driven him mad in doing it. She'd stripped him of his miracles and sent him into the wilderness like an animal with the woman whose only sin had been to bear his child. She wasn't wicked or cruel, necessarily, but, at that moment, she felt both of those things.
Life is sometimes hard on real people.
She sat down heavily on one of the red velvet cushions that she had so passionately hated sewing. The tattered handkerchief which Lancelot had once worn for her in the lists fluttered down to her lap and Jenny felt something inside of her utterly break. She buried her face in her trembling hands as she began to sob. She could no more have been Guenever, Queen of Camelot then than fly in the air. She was pretty Jenny, wicked Jenny, and her heart was breaking.
Her head was spinning, and so was the world, far beyond her control. She took a deep breath. She could be capricious and jealous, yes, but Arthur's Guenever was never a weak woman. She drew herself together and lifted her head.
The world was spinning because she found herself, seat and all, on a wooden platform on sandy ground, gently turning. Overhead, the trees were tall and the sky was a particular shade of blue that Jenny had never seen before.
She clutched the handkerchief in her hand and stood up, looking down at the ground as it slipped by without even the faintest idea of how to get off the apparatus on which she found herself.
"This is not Camelot," she said out loud.
Something had happened. She had pushed against her life so hard that she had shattered it, quite utterly. That much was clear.
And the world was ever spinning.
1. Why does TR only cast characters with a confirmed canon presence? Because TR is a PanFANDOM game, and, otherwise the character is essentially an O.C with a canon name.
2. How long can a current player have a character on reserve at TR? The next calendar months, only.
3. What is a "mun"? A "mundane". A player.