24 y/o, 5’5″ long red hair, green eyes. Naturally pretty in a way that irritates her step family. She’s a little thinner than she should be, favors loose, light and bohemian styles of clothing.
Once upon a time Eleanor had a charmed life in the House of Hanrahan. Her father a sorcerer with great talent and a seat at the Parliament of Viels, her mother a witch of an ancient bloodline. Magic could not save her mother from terrible illness and the Lord fell into a great despair.
In slipped the Dame Giselle Delphine, barely giving the man enough time to grieve, she swept in on the pretense of helping him manage his household. As a widow with her own daughter, it appeared innocent enough. Yet a year later they were getting married, and a year after that the poor man’s heart gave out and he too passed away.
Eleanor became a prisoner in her own house – not old enough to inherit what was hers by right, and trapped under the care of the Dame and her spoiled daughter. The estate and all that it entails is meant to be hers come her 25th birthday, but Eleanor is certain her step-mother will find a way around that.
Her education came in the form of private tutors and home schooling, her socialization from the estate staff. Taking the time to learn on her own whenever she had the chance and freedom away from the endless tasks, chores, and errands that her step-family send her through. Inadvertently they’ve taught her how to manage her own estate from the smallest of jobs up to the very top, simply by being too busy to do it themselves. She has a talent for the apothecary, brewing all manner of potions and tinctures, perhaps even with a dash of alchemy involved. What magical talent she has as a witch is a closely guarded secret kept to herself, having no desire to be a target for the Dame before she’s able to escape the woman.
Despite being in an abusive home, Eleanor has grown into a gentle young woman… with the slightest streak of malicious compliance. She has the patience of a saint, will take a great bit of verbal abuse and cruelty with nary a word. Knowing when it’s important to keep her mouth shut and head down. Occasionally she’ll play up being dimwitted to hide little things or to spare others from the Dame’s temper.
When she’s able to be truly herself, she loves being around people. Less the direct socializing and more of soaking in the life and atmosphere. Going out to run errands is her favorite part of the day, as she gets to walk the city streets and be surrounded by people living out their own days. She very much enjoys cooking and gardening – skills that go hand in hand with being an apothecary. Eleanor also enjoys movies, theater, and any other means of sitting and watching a great story unfold.
The Dame Giselle Delphine is a titled Baroness in her own right, that’s had one too many husbands who have passed away. But as most were elderly or died in seemingly normal circumstances, no suspicion has come her way. She truly just seems like a very unlucky woman. The truth being more nefarious, as she has been working her entire life to climb up the ladder of power to obtain her true objective: To shatter the veil between the mortal realm and the magical one. To return the world back to the way it SHOULD be, where people like her got to rule with the power and might of their magic and not be under the thumb of stupid arbitrary rules to protect useless mortals.
While the Dame looks much younger than she actually is, she’s finally hit an age where collecting husbands like trophies has become much harder to achieve. The late Lord Hanrahan was her last successful marriage – luckily it bought her a seat at the Parliament of Veils, where she has been working for the past several years to charm people to her side of thinking.
Knowing her time of marrying herself into powerful families was growing short, the Dame bartered with another powerful family for a betrothal for her daughter before she had even bore such a child. But over the years, even when she did have a daughter, it seemed that family never had a son of their own.
It has been a great surprise to have recently received news that they did in fact have a son, and now wish to fulfill that contract. And a great disappointment as the son in question seems to not be anything more than a powerless mortal. Thus, twisting the loopholes of the contact the Dame Giselle intends to give them her step-daughter. A daughter not by blood, but by legal rights.
Her true daughter Brigitte is a vapid, cruel thing with her own brand of cunning. Unlike her mother, she has no intentions to marry her way into power, she’s going to grasp it by other means – none of which are good. She’d stab her own mother if she thought it’d benefit her. It is her personal goal to be the heir to the Hanrahan Estate.