OC October Day 4 - Christabella Fox
Oct. 4th, 2015 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeDay 4: Christabella Fox
I didn't mean to turn this into a flashback fest, but while I was looking for Spike and Chloe I found this, and now I have no idea what to do with it. Write more in it?
Much of the character biography is within the writing itself, as with the last two. Unlike the last two this wasn't originally intended to be a character biography, it's just something I wrote and posted on my writing journal with no larger world that she appears in at least as far as I know. It feels like something along the lines of the Italian city states, though that might just be the sheer amount of DaVinci's Demons and the Borgias I've been watching.
I get the feeling this piece, it's not exactly a story, it's written from not just the one unreliable narrator (the last three paragraphs?) but the rest of it might be cobbled from sensationalist newspapers. If I do end up writing more of this character I'm going to have to write down two separate lists, one for all the rumors and one for the actual facts about what she did. Three lists, one for what she believes she did, what she believes is happening, because what she believes and what is don't seem to exactly be going together anymore.
Anyway. Below the cut, Madame Christabella Fox. I have no idea from whence she came, but here she is.
Madame Fox is not legally insane according to the code of conduct, but she might as well be. The life sentence imposed upon her for the murder of her husband, on a prayer of proof and largely on the public opinion, was to be carried out in the top of a very lush tower. The only parts of her imprisonment that might reasonably be called punishment were her one hour of outside freedom permitted to her and the fact that her sitting room was full of pictures of her alleged victims. Alleged, because they had only ever come close to proving the one.
Madame Fox is a figure much feared by the populace, but that fear is fading since her sentence was imposed. Once upon a time she was the woman no child wanted to be fostered to, despite her power and position. Despite the fact that a life with her nearly guaranteed a life of luxury I'll send you to Madam Fox to foster was always a threat and never a well-wishing for mothers in the City proper. There were rumors about what she served along with tea and cakes, candies and brandy, fine cigars.
Madame Fox is still a beautiful woman, despite being seventy-six years old. She always took great care not only to maintain her appearance but also her body, her grace, and her manners. She learned very young that beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder but also in the attitude of the beheld. Youth was never the exclusive province of beauty, to her. As she grew older she adopted a multitude of practices designed to make the most of what she had at the time; in her imprisonment, that has not changed. A visitor would be greeted with tea and cakes (brought up from the prison kitchens), a winning smile (only lightly adorned by cosmetics) and a pleasant, cheerful voice.
Her trial was a three-ring circus that swallowed the City, and several neighboring states. So many people had lost a loved one to her either directly or by her machinations. Ten times that number thought they had, and carried on as though her death would make all the difference in their lives. The life sentence came as something of an anti-climax, all that energy of the trial dissipating into confusion and grumbles. Throughout the whole thing she remained serene, unsmiling.
Madame Fox is on friendly though not intimate terms with her eight guards. Two at her door at all times in six hour shifts, and several more at the base of the tower. She is not their only prisoner, though she is the most famous. And while the guards may wonder how her reputation got to be so fearsome and so wretched, they do not wonder whether or not she committed the crimes attributed to her. Imprisoned and now past hope of release, they hear her seeking redemption in the midst of her madness every day.
Christabella Fox has not heard her name on anyone's lips, and certainly not so lovingly as he used to say it. Really, it wasn't so bad, being married to Lionel. It hadn't been the worst thing in the world, certainly not like the last two husbands, both of whom had attempted to dominate her into a chastised, mouse-like existence. The previous husband had been far too irritatingly mouse-like himself, and before that she hardly remembered. And she didn't think it mattered too much by now, anyway. All of his family were as dead as most of hers, if not for the same reasons.
Christabella Fox was once the beauty and the terror of the town, but in a nice way. Her coming-out party was the biggest of the season and without the money of half the girls' families, too. She simply was best friends with everyone, and she had the presence of mind to invite them all equally to her party, friends and enemies, letting them all fret and fuss over their dresses while she chose something simple but flattering, left her hair down and forgot about it. Being carefree and genuinely happy was such a novel approach that she came away with no less than five marriage proposals. Many of her former friends cried themselves to sleep that night.
Christabella Fox hasn't heard her own name in fifteen years, not since her husband died and the ashes of his memory faded in the firestorm of her trial. She thinks, most of the time, that they wouldn't have remembered his name if she hadn't made it famous by killing him. She did him a favor, really, granting him immortality if only by adding his name to her list of victims. She tells him so, often.
Christabella Fox talks to her victims in their portraits, commissioned at one time or another by her family, by their families. The judge had nothing to do with it, she wanted their faces around her. Reminding her of what she had done because they deserved to have the chance to remind her of it, even if they were dead and buried.
"I know," she says in an impatient tone. "But you shouldn't look at me like that. It's your own fault, Lionel. You left me no choice, you know that as well as I."
In truth, she knows very little at all, but she can pretend confidence to portraits as long as they stay on their walls and don't look at her like that. Accusing. Sad. She feels guilty, and she hates like poison to feel guilty.
Poison. Her weapon of choice. Some have accused her of making poison the infamous woman's weapon. She scoffs at them too.
"It wasn't my fault," she points at Stephen's picture. "You shouldn't have raised your voice to me. You knew better than to treat a lady like that."
They won't stop looking at her, no matter that she raises her own voice and stomps her tiny foot. She's locked inside her own head, inside her tower, alone with her portraits and her crimes and only the vaguest memory of her own name, and only because they repeat it over and over again, in accusatory whispers.
I didn't mean to turn this into a flashback fest, but while I was looking for Spike and Chloe I found this, and now I have no idea what to do with it. Write more in it?
Much of the character biography is within the writing itself, as with the last two. Unlike the last two this wasn't originally intended to be a character biography, it's just something I wrote and posted on my writing journal with no larger world that she appears in at least as far as I know. It feels like something along the lines of the Italian city states, though that might just be the sheer amount of DaVinci's Demons and the Borgias I've been watching.
I get the feeling this piece, it's not exactly a story, it's written from not just the one unreliable narrator (the last three paragraphs?) but the rest of it might be cobbled from sensationalist newspapers. If I do end up writing more of this character I'm going to have to write down two separate lists, one for all the rumors and one for the actual facts about what she did. Three lists, one for what she believes she did, what she believes is happening, because what she believes and what is don't seem to exactly be going together anymore.
Anyway. Below the cut, Madame Christabella Fox. I have no idea from whence she came, but here she is.
Madame Fox is not legally insane according to the code of conduct, but she might as well be. The life sentence imposed upon her for the murder of her husband, on a prayer of proof and largely on the public opinion, was to be carried out in the top of a very lush tower. The only parts of her imprisonment that might reasonably be called punishment were her one hour of outside freedom permitted to her and the fact that her sitting room was full of pictures of her alleged victims. Alleged, because they had only ever come close to proving the one.
Madame Fox is a figure much feared by the populace, but that fear is fading since her sentence was imposed. Once upon a time she was the woman no child wanted to be fostered to, despite her power and position. Despite the fact that a life with her nearly guaranteed a life of luxury I'll send you to Madam Fox to foster was always a threat and never a well-wishing for mothers in the City proper. There were rumors about what she served along with tea and cakes, candies and brandy, fine cigars.
Madame Fox is still a beautiful woman, despite being seventy-six years old. She always took great care not only to maintain her appearance but also her body, her grace, and her manners. She learned very young that beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder but also in the attitude of the beheld. Youth was never the exclusive province of beauty, to her. As she grew older she adopted a multitude of practices designed to make the most of what she had at the time; in her imprisonment, that has not changed. A visitor would be greeted with tea and cakes (brought up from the prison kitchens), a winning smile (only lightly adorned by cosmetics) and a pleasant, cheerful voice.
Her trial was a three-ring circus that swallowed the City, and several neighboring states. So many people had lost a loved one to her either directly or by her machinations. Ten times that number thought they had, and carried on as though her death would make all the difference in their lives. The life sentence came as something of an anti-climax, all that energy of the trial dissipating into confusion and grumbles. Throughout the whole thing she remained serene, unsmiling.
Madame Fox is on friendly though not intimate terms with her eight guards. Two at her door at all times in six hour shifts, and several more at the base of the tower. She is not their only prisoner, though she is the most famous. And while the guards may wonder how her reputation got to be so fearsome and so wretched, they do not wonder whether or not she committed the crimes attributed to her. Imprisoned and now past hope of release, they hear her seeking redemption in the midst of her madness every day.
Christabella Fox has not heard her name on anyone's lips, and certainly not so lovingly as he used to say it. Really, it wasn't so bad, being married to Lionel. It hadn't been the worst thing in the world, certainly not like the last two husbands, both of whom had attempted to dominate her into a chastised, mouse-like existence. The previous husband had been far too irritatingly mouse-like himself, and before that she hardly remembered. And she didn't think it mattered too much by now, anyway. All of his family were as dead as most of hers, if not for the same reasons.
Christabella Fox was once the beauty and the terror of the town, but in a nice way. Her coming-out party was the biggest of the season and without the money of half the girls' families, too. She simply was best friends with everyone, and she had the presence of mind to invite them all equally to her party, friends and enemies, letting them all fret and fuss over their dresses while she chose something simple but flattering, left her hair down and forgot about it. Being carefree and genuinely happy was such a novel approach that she came away with no less than five marriage proposals. Many of her former friends cried themselves to sleep that night.
Christabella Fox hasn't heard her own name in fifteen years, not since her husband died and the ashes of his memory faded in the firestorm of her trial. She thinks, most of the time, that they wouldn't have remembered his name if she hadn't made it famous by killing him. She did him a favor, really, granting him immortality if only by adding his name to her list of victims. She tells him so, often.
Christabella Fox talks to her victims in their portraits, commissioned at one time or another by her family, by their families. The judge had nothing to do with it, she wanted their faces around her. Reminding her of what she had done because they deserved to have the chance to remind her of it, even if they were dead and buried.
"I know," she says in an impatient tone. "But you shouldn't look at me like that. It's your own fault, Lionel. You left me no choice, you know that as well as I."
In truth, she knows very little at all, but she can pretend confidence to portraits as long as they stay on their walls and don't look at her like that. Accusing. Sad. She feels guilty, and she hates like poison to feel guilty.
Poison. Her weapon of choice. Some have accused her of making poison the infamous woman's weapon. She scoffs at them too.
"It wasn't my fault," she points at Stephen's picture. "You shouldn't have raised your voice to me. You knew better than to treat a lady like that."
They won't stop looking at her, no matter that she raises her own voice and stomps her tiny foot. She's locked inside her own head, inside her tower, alone with her portraits and her crimes and only the vaguest memory of her own name, and only because they repeat it over and over again, in accusatory whispers.