festiliana: (Default)
Player Name: Kara
Contact: [plurk.com profile] caletara 

CW: Incest, abuse, murder

Character Name: Charissa Aymarine Festiliana Furstána-Festila-mac-Tadhg
Canon: Deryni
Canon Point: Deryni Rising

History:

Charissa was born on May 13th, 1094 to Hogan Gwernach, Duke of Tolan, Titular King of Gwynedd, and Larissa, Heiress de Marluk. She is descended on her on her father's side, the House of Festil, from the incestuous relationship between King Imre I and his sister Ariella. The Festil's overthrew the Haldane's as rulers of the kingdom of Gwynedd, killing almost their entire line, and set up a Deryni dictatorship over which they ruled for hundreds of years, until Imre and Ariella's overthrow. 

In 1105 at the age of 11, her father Hogan, at the instigation of her uncle, Prince Wencit, took an her and army and left for Gwynedd, to challenge the King of Gwynedd, Brion Haldane, for the throne. Charissa supported this move, being absolutely enamored with her father.  Unfortunately, like his ancestors Imre and Ariella, Hogan likewise underestimated the Haldanes. Charissa watched as what was supposed to be a simple arcane duel which Brion Haldane could have never won, ended in her father being stripped of his magical powers and beheaded. Simply they had thought that Brion was untrained, his father having died when he was very young, and had no one else to help him realize his magical heritage. Charissa then realized  that the young Deryni Alaric Morgan, Brion's friend and squire, had assisted him and squashed what should have been an easy victory.

Returning heartbroken to Torenth, she was adopted  by Carolous III, Hereditary Prince and King of Torenth and betrothed  to his son Aldred II. She was married to him at the age of twelve. She was immediately proclaimed Queen of Torenth with Carolous himself as Regent. When she attained her majority a few years later the Regency was dissolved, but being female, she was never girded with the sword of Iób, the ritual that allows the Torenthi King to attain intense magical power. Meanwhile her husband Aldred II never was girded either, being rather magically incompetent. He made up for this with ruthfullness and tyranny however. 

Still plotting revenge against Gwynedd and the Haldanes for killing her father and taking what she viewed as rightfully hers, she plotted with her husband to have her foster father Carolous poisoned with sugared figs she herself offered to him, as he sought reconciliation with Brion Haldane. Aldred, true to his nature and threatened by his wife, had Charissa publicly dragged and brutally beaten, at some points almost to death and killed both her children, the Princess Marcissa at the age of 2, which she gave birth to at the age of thirteen, and the Prince Gejza, who she lost late in pregnancy at sixteen after a particularly bad beating caused her to lose the fetus and become infertile. Aldred, meanwhile, watched and laughed as she was beaten. After losing her son, she left her sickbed to meet with her uncle Wencit, who assisted her in deposing Aldred and having him executed for murder and consorting with other men instead of his wife. With now King Wencit ruling, Charissa renounced her title  as Dowager Queen of Torenth in favor of her hereditary title Duchess of Tolan and made up a will proclaiming Wencit and his children and sister her lawful heirs to the Torenthi monarchy. 

It is unknown what she did between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six, but it is presumed she took the time to gather her own resources and strength, biding her time when it would hurt the most to strike Gwynedd. Rumors of her impending strike had reached multiple kingdoms and ears by the time she had started moving in 1120, with her Uncle Wencit ready to strike Gwynedd a few months later should she fail.

She was warned by the Deryni Camberian Council, a political group who governs the morals, rules and regulations of those with Deryni powers and heritage, against interfering in Gwyneddian politics. She chose to ignore them. She then set out to poison Brion, his son Kelson at his side, and then magically crushed his heart while Kelson watched, avenging her father. Likewise, she had started to take steps to ruin Alaric Morgan's reputation, implicating him in Brion's murder and a number of other murders and nefarious deeds she herself set up.

Repeating the exact same mistakes her father made, she decides that Kelson, a child of thirteen and completely unskilled in magic, would be no challenge whatsoever to defeat. She had hoped that by sullying Morgan's reputation and keeping him occupied against arrest and death threats, he would not have the chance to help Kelson the way he did the boy's father. Unfortunately, she was wrong. After spending days taunting Morgan, she and her army invaded on Kelson's Coronation Day, challenging his right to rule.

After her own champion and lover was defeated by Morgan in a dual(and after her champion sought to win by treachery), she herself duals Kelson in a magical dual to the death. But, like Imre, Ariella, their son Marek, and her father Hogan, she is defeated. Charissa and with her the House of Festil, dies after being magically engulfed and burning to death by flames so intense there is nothing left. 

Personality: 

Charissa, like the rest of the House of Festil, is utterly consumed with the idea of power and vengeance. In fact, her heritage and ties to Imre and Ariella after two hundred years were so far removed that to anyone else it would have been completely meaningless. However, to her father and to Charissa itself, it mattered greatly. It became her entire reason for life, which was cemented in her mind when she was forced to watch, as a child,  as Brion Haldane murdered her father.  Vengeance then became a way of life, for her father, for the House of Festil, she would reclaim what was rightfully hers, what the Haldane's had taken from her. 

Charissa utterly adored her father. As a child she completely supported his wish for the throne of Gwynedd, in fact, she would have supported anything he wanted. As an adult of twenty six, she still holds this idea and image of her father up to the light, but it only holds up to scrutiny if she doesn't look too closely at it. It's not a nice, happy memory, her memories of her father are all tied up in vengeance and blood and his murder.

She is wholly selfish. She doesn't care about anyone but herself, and her only interest in men is using them to get what she wants, whether it's power or sex. She knows she's beautiful, and capitalizes on her appearance and body in order to seduce and manipulate.  She is completely blind to anything but what focuses her at that moment, usually power or vengeance. It's what keeps her going. She wants what is rightfully hers, she wants the throne, preferably both Torenth and Gwynedd but to her, Gwynedd is more important. And she wants to utterly destroy, physically and emotionally, everyone who got in her and her family's way. Unlike her father and her descendants Imre, Ariella and Marek, Charissa prefers to defeat her enemies from afar. After everything she's been through, she doesn't believe in a 'fair' fight. She wants to win, plain and simple, although part of this is because she also fears her own demise. She opts to poison Brion and murder him from afar, and attempts to kill Kelson once by magical means, also from afar, and again when she thinks he is completely helpless. It's as much cowardice as it is strategy. 

Charissa is extremely narcissistic, and becomes even more arrogant and selfish when something does not go her way. She is cruel and violent and kills anyone who gets in her way or whom she has no use for anymore. These traits are as much her power as they are her fault and undoing, as they are with the rest of the House of Festil. Like any other narcissist, she is completely unable to sympathize with anyone's plight but her own. She throws away people like a child would toys, disposing of them when no longer they hold interest. The exception to this is family, her father and her uncle Wencit are everything, as well as the memory of Imre and Ariella. Everything she does is self serving, and throws those loyal to her to the metaphorical wolves whenever needed, or when she no longer cares. Charissa thinks she's a political genius, and that all her machinations are perfect and simply cannot go wrong. Her manipulations and seductive behavior have her mirroring her ancestor, Ariella I. Undoubtedly, given the chance, Charissa would have been as blatantly cruel and sadistic as Ariella's reign had been. And like her ancestors, she is utterly convinced in her right to rule Gwynedd. That being said, many in Torenth undoubtedly view her as a heroine for her actions. Good and evil are ultimately open to individual interpretation.

Ultimately, Charissa is angry. She's angry at Imre and Ariella's overthrow, her father's murder, she's angry at the death of her children and she's angry at her abuse at the hands of Aldred, as well as Torenthi misogyny and her lack of ability to rule Torenth on her own as Queen. She's a twelve year old throwing a tantrum, trapped in a woman's body, and has never emotionally grown up. She's been described as beautiful, but so 'intense' that most men wouldn't willingly want to go there, without some....incentive. After the loss of her son and her infertility, most likely forced to give up the throne of Torenth (a throne which as a woman she was never given any power over anyway), in exchange by Wencit for his assistance in Aldred's execution, Charissa has nothing more to lose. She throws herself into vengeance against Gwynedd. Previously she might have been content to bide her time, produce more children for the House of Festil and wait until her power base was stronger, so if she lost her children would succeed after her. But Aldred put a stop to those plans, and indeed, the House of Festil itself. What more did she have to lose being the last of her line?

Like her ancestors, she is cursed to repeat their doomed actions, with her adoration and possible incestuous relationship with her father, to her obsession with power, vengeance and demise at the hands of the Haldanes.

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Charissa Aymarine Festiliana Furstána-Festila

May 2019

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