Character Information
Basics:
Name: Lady Isabella Thornton
Nicknames: Her family often called her Bella, but it's inadvisable for anyone else to try it.
Age and DoB: 29; birthday is November 3, 1164
Gender: female
Relationship: unhappily married; hasn't cheated yet out of fear of repercussions but that doesn't mean she won't
Occupation/Rank/Title: Lady; she is by birth a member of the lesser nobility.
Contact Information: pm preferred!
Appearance:
Height: 5'4"
Eye Color: blue
Hair: brown, long, loose curls
Distinguishing features: Sharp features, on the pretty side, but nothing unusual
Played by: Lara Pulver
Style: One of Isabella's few indulgences is clothing. Her husband likes her looking pretty, so she's got money to spend on fine fabrics, yards of costly trimming, and plenty of jewelry.
Personality:
Isabella has been deeply marked by the 16 years she has spent in an abusive marriage. She was married at age 13, and barely remembers what she was like before. Isabella is smart, charismatic, and good at understanding what makes people tick. These are the things that have kept her alive for the past 16 years, and she's going to keep relying on them as she tries to make her way in the world. Isabella isn't callous by nature, but learned to put herself first both during her marriage and the years before, when she and Guy were alone and had barely enough to eat. She has no friends and is wary of being vulnerable, but at the same time part of her still craves the affection she's long been denied. Her choice to flee to her brother's protection isn't only because she thinks he can help her leave her marriage, but before she renews her relationship with him she wants to ask him why he married her off to a man who would make her life a living hell.
Isabella doesn't have ideals. She eventually lost her faith in God, or at least in that he answered prayers. She has no political allegiances but, with a husband who still has a legal right to her, she has an eye out for whoever who can help her, whether that's her brother, Robin Hood, or Prince John himself. Things like the Crusades are too far out of her daily experience to have much impact, except for the fervant wish that her husband would decide to go and never come back. Robin Hood's struggle with the Sheriff interests her only to the extent that it affects Guy's political standing, but if she sees a way to use it to strengthen her precarious position, she won't hesitate. Eventually Isabella would like to find a place for herself in the world where she doesn't have to answer to anyone--where she doesn't have to be afraid any more. She's not really sure a place like that exists, though, and if playing the political game is her best bet, then so be it.
Background:
Hometown: Isabella spent her early years in England, then moved to France at age 9, and finally settled in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, with her husband.
Family: Her parents are Roger and Ghislaine, both deceased; her brother is Guy of Gisborne. She also has a half-brother, Archer, whom she doesn't know about. Isabella never had much extended family to begin with, and they either stopped talking to the family as they slid into ignominy, or lost contact when they moved to France. Isabella has no children by her own design; her husband thinks she's barren and she's never disabused him of the idea.
History: Isabella's early years were happy, but unfortunately she doesn't remember much of them. She barely knew her father, who left home when she was too young to remember and died shortly after he returned. However, she adored her mother, whom she remembers as being beautiful, kind, and gentle, and her big brother--that is, until their father died and he had to grow up fast. Isabella never learned the particulars of the situation, but when their parents died the Gisborne children were driven off their land. They learned to hunt and steal and beg for their food as they made their way to the tiny holding in Anjou that had been Ghislaine's dowry.
The estate produced far less than it was capable of, but the children were hardly able to run or improve it themselves, and also had to deal with liars and cheats who would have swindled them of the little they had left. They became jaded at far too young an age, but the experience did not bring them together. Guy was obsessed with finding a way to regain their former status, while Isabella had to learn what it was to become a woman all alone.
Isabella's education was patchy because of their financial situation, though she had good enough looks and quick enough wits to make up for it. Unfortunately, it was those same things that caught the eye of Thornton, a mercenary who had taken up residence in the house of a local noble. Isabella had long ago learned that she was good at flattery, but at thirteen hadn't yet learned to use her skill wisely. Thornton's gifts were not altruistic; he quickly became obsessed. Isabella was uneasy about marrying him but Guy insisted it would be a good match. Economically it was true: Thornton would get a noble wife, and Isabella would have the security of a rich husband. There was never really any question, and before she knew it, she was married.
For the first few months, everything was well. Yet as the newness wore off, so did her husband's polish. It wasn't a year before he revealed himself to be the monster that he truly was. By that time, though, he had moved her to Shrewsbury and she had lost track of Guy, who had become a squire to a knight. She had no way out, and for years she submitted to Thornton's iron rule.
Yet Isabella had developed tenacity and the will to survive during those years in France. When Thornton had almost ground her down to nothing, she found reserves of strength she hadn't known she'd possessed. She began to rebel against her abuse in small ways at first, and then larger. Eventually she decided she had had enough. She knew that her brother was now working for the Sheriff of Nottingham, and decided to throw herself on his mercy--and perhaps come to understand why he had condemned her to so many years of misery. Isabella drugged her husband, tied him up, then gathered her jewelry and all of the coin in the house, and fled.
Once in Nottingham, Isabella began to tentatively make friends and rediscover herself. However, her freedom didn't last long--after only a month, Thornton found her. Terrified of returning to Shrewsbury with him, Isabella convinced her ambitious husband that things were happening in Nottingham--things that he could benefit from. He decided to appease her, so they are currently renting a house in the city, and Isabella is always on alert for reasons for them to say--or ways that she might be free of him forever.
Writing Sample:
from "Highest Under Heaven's Dome" (set just before the end of 3x09)
Isabella stood at the top of the highest castle tower, watching the cart carrying her husband's body trundle along the winding road out of the city. She had told them to take it away and bury it, she didn't care where, as long as it was in unhallowed ground. Isabella had ignored the astonishment in the guard's grey eyes, had ignored that twinge of Christian compassion deep within herself. She was amazed, frankly, that any such thing still existed in her towards Thornton, and then she had crushed it. She had reason enough to deny him paradise. Anyways, if God would still allow a man like her husband to achieve eternal happiness, then He was not a God she wanted to serve.
Isabella hardened herself to the prick of fear at her blasphemy. It had taken seventeen years for her prayers to be answered, and it had been done by her own hands. God had never listened to her.
The cart disappeared into Sherwood Forest, and her eyes swept up over the rolling green hills, which were just beginning to show autumn colors of gold and orange-red. She wondered if the forest was where her brother and that girl had taken cover. A search of the city had turned up nothing, though she knew they could still be within its walls. But if he were smart--and he could be, sometimes--he would have fled the city and left that silly girl behind. Let him flee like a dog, let him be defenceless and hungry and scared. It was no better than he deserved.
profile updated 11 March 2011