Princess Elodie of the Kingdom of Nova

OOC Information
NAME: Lyndon
AGE: 20
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Formerly Mike Chilton from Motorcity and Gaige from Borderlands 2, none now

IC Information
CHARACTER NAME: Crown Princess Elodie of Nova
AGE: 14
CANON: Long Live the Queen
CANON POINT: Week 28, having become a forceful military ruler nearing a potential civil war (though she doesn't know it yet), and just following re-meeting and sort of crushing on her friend Briony. Specialties in military, history, royal presence, public speaking, sword combat, flattery, and dance.

FAMILY TYPES:
Metal Empire – While not a naturally cold person, Elodie has started making herself that way in order to act effectively as queen. Regardless, though, “take[s] a while to warm up to others” fits her princessing style pretty well.
Dragon's Roar – Being an acting queen means being decisive and making choices and making sure you get your way. Elodie does not do the “sitting on the sidelines” thing very well, even if her choices aren't the best.
Virus Busters – At heart Elodie is good and is trying to do good, she just loses sight of it sometimes given her inexperience. Also the assassins.

APPEARANCE: Elodie is clearly young, small and remarkably thin, with fair white skin and bright blue eyes. Her hair is a light and vibrant pink, in two curling pigtails because y'know. Princess. She can choose from several outfits in the game, each increasing a skill group that she's trained it (A tutu for agility, a beautiful dress for royal demeanor, etc), and the outfit that increases military skills that she would be wearing on arrival is her military uniform – red jacket with gold shoulderpads, jackboots, whit dress shirt and pants, and sheathed sword by her side. Other outfits include lots of red+pink dresses, also a suit and top hat sometimes when she feels like knowing more about the economy, but for now these outfits stay at home.

PERSONALITY: Elodie's personality is tough to pin down, designed as it is to be malleable according to the player's wishes, and is best described first detailing the core unchangeable parts and then moving on to what has changed in her based on the decisions made in the hypothetical playthrough she was almost done with here.

The most important thing to remember about Elodie, and something the game stresses, is that she is far too young for the amount of responsibility thrust upon her in the time leading up to her coronation to be anything approaching reasonable. She's fourteen years old, pulled out of boarding school, and forced to learn the entire princess thing on the fly. As such, she is impulsive and prone to making mistakes without thinking through the consequences, and even in-game her mood shifts often from day to day. She wants more than anything to do what is best for her kingdom, and can only operate on how best she knows to do that – knowledge that depends on what the royal tutors can teach her as she is making those decisions. In this playthrough she is moving down the dictator path – not because she is evil, strictly speaking, but because that is what she has learned and what she has felt thus far to be the best possible way to go about keeping her kingdom safe and staying alive within court. She bears ill will towards practically nobody unless she is forced into doing so either by their actions against her country or the will of the court.

As such, while she maintains whatever public personal of princesshood the player builds for her, the core of her personality and how she acts among friends remains the same no matter what. She is kind at heart, and often scared, and doing what she has learned she needs to do to make her way in a world where she has to survive an assassination attempt basically every few weeks. Being a princess has not given her a fantastic set of applicable skills, I will say, especially not the way the decisions I'm using have led, and that will make transitioning into another world difficult, at least at first. That said, the heart of her motivation remains protecting herself and those she loves in the best ways she knows how, and that will not change no matter what other parts of her do. Maybe at some point that will go beyond “use sword” or “use courtly manners and flattery skillz to get what she wants.”

Elodie's main strengths have been placed into combat, military tactics, history, and various applicable skills to maintaining her position in the court (speech, dance, flattery, etc), and as such in-game the emotions she's been tapping into most have been anger, sadness, and willfullness (which is, in the game's eyes, an emotion). Not taking her mother's death very well at all, Elodie has channeled anger at the events causing her to be queen into a facade of intimidation and manipulation of others. She has taken to wearing a military uniform at all times, and only exposes her inner kindness to those closest to her for fear of enemies within the nobility. Life as a princess requires a steady hand and hard judgment, after all, especially when taking time to purposefully avoid the ever-important duty of ending up in a strategic marriage to the point where she chooses to dance with a controversial lesbian duchess at her debut royal ball instead of any of the potential male suitors (Coincidentally, considering this and how the only marriage she enters into for love and not politics is with a female childhood friend, she's canonically either bisexual or a lesbian). She really wants to make a change and make her mark on history, she just has no idea how to best go about it, but she's very good thus far at drawing attention to herself, for better or for worse. She's surprisingly headstrong when she wants to be, that Elodie.

Luckily, before all this can come back to get her, she lands in a different world! Yay! Now she's going to have to figure out how to deal with being basically a regular person and having all the history and military tactics she's spent her time studying mean effectively nothing! Maybe she'll be able to go back to that “making friends” thing she did at boarding school a little? Maybe even do the romance thing and not have it be a controversial political statement? The possibilities are endless!

As far as the important people in her life go, a few are notable enough to be mentioned here. Her mother, now dead, was very close to her (much moreso than her father in some ways), and the pain of losing her drove Elodie into the paranoid and antagonistic view of royal life she's come to. But hey, at least she's still alive, right? Her father, Joclyn, has been somewhat distanced from her by recent events but their relationship is far from antagonistic – a pretty standard father-daughter relationship all things considered. He is, at least, one of the people Elodie is closest to, and has been an invaluable help in guiding her towards her coronation. She also has her one close friend ever, Briony, who she thinks in the back of her mind she might have a crush on??? They haven't gone through the life-changing forest field trip that solidifies that just yet, but there you go. To say she lacks experience making friends would be an understatement.

HISTORY: A week-by-week display of in-game events and brief character bios are available at the wiki here: http://longlivethequeen.wikia.com/wiki/Long_Live_the_Queen_Wiki. The kingdom of Nova and its history are detailed here: http://longlivethequeen.wikia.com/wiki/Nova and Elodie herself is detailed here: http://longlivethequeen.wikia.com/wiki/Elodie. Story is not the main point of the game so much as is the effects of the decisions Elodie makes, and so far here she's been ordering executions and in all doing very poorly at keeping the commoners in line.

DETAILED WEEK-BY-WEEK CHOICES

WEEK 1 - no decisions
WEEK 2 - Chose to let her aunt, magic user and suspected by her father of playing a role in her mother's death, stay on the grounds that she's family and whatnot, showing willfulness and learning from her aunt that she might even be able to use magic if she can find her mother's magic stone.
WEEK 3 - A failed assassination attempt via venomous snake results in her cousin being bitten right by her. This is distressing, and basically Elodie's fault because she didn't have the composure to avoid looking down before it could be stabbed.
WEEK 4 - no decisions
WEEK 5 - Received a necklace from the Duke of Sedna. Wore it, because pretty, without realizing it could be taken as accepting a marriage proposal from him. Oops.
WEEK 6 - no decisions
WEEK 7 - Avoided confrontation with maid. No decisions.
WEEK 8 - Not smart enough to realize that a printing press might be a cool idea for the kingdom. Decided not to find its invention.
WEEK 9 - The Duke of Maree asks for aid, Elodie decided to try to negotiate instead of go to battle. The Duke was not pleased, then got angry at her for wearing the necklace. Elodie feigned ignorance and said she just likes jewelry, which got him to drop the subject.
WEEK 10- The diplomat came to try to negotiate. Failing to find an option he had for her that worked in the best interest of her people, Elodie panicked and ordered him executed, prompting a battle the next week and losing some favor with her people.
WEEK 11- A battle occurred. A moderate number of Novan troops were lost.
WEEK 12- Sedna arrived and asked if the necklace meant she had accepted the marriage proposal. Elodie again maintained that it didn't because why would she want to get married yet I mean really now.
WEEK 13- A woman was found guilty of attempted murder and brought before Elodie for judgement. Elodie, not quite ready to order another execution, ordered her imprisoned. Instead, she attacked Elodie and was killed by guards. Her body was put on display as a warning to other would-be assassins.
WEEK 14- no decisions
WEEK 15- no decisions
WEEK 16- Chose not to attend the parade for fear of assassination. Missed chance to actually garner some goodwill among her people.
WEEK 17- Grand ball, Elodie decided to be scandalous and dance with Brin, Duchess of Hellas, instead of any of the "suitable" people there. Did not manage to sweep her off her feet with her dancing, but was passable, and versed well enough in the manners of the court to mollify the other nobles afterwards.
WEEK 18- Accepted flowers of romantic intent from Brin because yay flowers! Gotta know a LOT about court manners to understand the significance of those, and Elodie wasn't quite there yet.
WEEK 19- Had to figure out what to do about taxes. Decided to keep them the same, because how do those things even work there's so much more important stuff to be done!
WEEK 20- A man who killed his wife is brought in for judgement. Not willing to let someone like that live, Elodie decided to have him executed with more conviction this time. At least ordering people killed was starting to get easier!
WEEK 21- That guy from last week escaped, killing some guards in the process. Man, the commoners were starting to say some nasty things about her at this point.
WEEK 22- An Earl passes away. Not entirely sure of the implications, Elodie ordered the heir sent to live with his grandfather. The Duchess Arisse was not pleased by this, which would have made the civil war harder if Elodie had still been in her kingdom when it happened.
WEEK 23- no decisions of note
WEEK 24- no decisions of note
WEEK 25- no decisions of note
WEEK 26- The heir sent to live with his grandfather was assassinated! Elodie blamed the foreign nation of Talasse and sent troops near there, and delayed a decision on who to name as the new heir, much to the chagrin of the potential new heirs.
WEEK 27- Those troops she moved fought off a foreign incursion! What a good choice! Elodie was also invited to her friend Gwenelle's birthday party and accepted, determined not to let another chance to leave the castle slip by her after missing the parade. After all, it wasn't like any huge conflicts were brewing in the kingdom or anything...
WEEK 28- Went to the party! Narrowly avoided being hit by an arrow on the way over in an unsuccessful bandit raid, settled a conflict between the hosts of the party with her mastery of flattery, and met her good friend Briony again. She offered to help Briony in her upcoming quest, but on her way home ended up going to the digital world instead. Oops!




SAMPLES
FIRST PERSON:
[Elodie clears her throat before she speaks, clearly practiced at the art of making speeches like this. She's a bit less composed than usual, though, clearly trying very hard to bury excitement about something.]

I have come to understand that I hold no power here, and that my royal heritage means little to nothing in a world of monsters and others all pulled from their worlds just as I was, and often in even higher positions of power than my own. It has taken some time to accept, but accept it I have. It is not my place to give commands or expect more of anyone than I would expect myself to give. That said, there are still things I am sure I can offer you from my experience as a princess that would be helpful to the people here at large.

I do not entirely yet have the funding for it, but in light of recent tragedies I propose a ball. I know not what a Digimon would be expected to wear, and tailoring suits for all of them seems like a remarkable expense, but such an event would go far in improving morale and bringing us closer as things grow darker around us. I admit I have not thought further than the idea, but it is one that I am willing to see through, little time though I have had for such events in the past. Knowledge in grand military tactics and world history, it seems, are much less useful in another world without a royal court or standing army under my command, but in this I feel I could be more useful to you all.

[PRIVATE to FEMALE CHARACTER AROUND HER AGE SHE LIKES]
[Elodie gulps and clears her throat again before speaking. Gosh, it's like she's nervous about whatever kind of thing she might ask of someone she's romantically interested in with a ball coming up and her currently without a date OH WAIT]

I uh. I would like to speak with you. In person, if possible. There's, uh... something I want to ask you.

THIRD PERSON:
Learning the history and politics of a whole second world was not particularly difficult after all the time spent learning her own. Accepting that she was here and that Digimon were as well was also not particularly tricky. Princess Elodie of Nova refused to be known for being too headstrong to properly adapt to a new battlefield. What was difficult, though, and she still could not quite pin down exactly why, was going back to a life outside of the court and all the signifiers of royalty. Not in an egotistical or snotty way, no, but rather in the sense that all her efforts to survive from day to day in her time as princess no longer mattered. There would be no assassins here, no threats of poisoned food or suffocation by magical chains. She was for lack of a word that better encapsulated her feelings on the matter, “free.”

She was able to just stand alone in the middle of the street and... well, do nothing. It was something she hadn't been able to do since boarding school, which seemed so far away now – especially considering her kingdom was a whole world away now as well. This world was fascinating and different, but it still was not home.

Her stomach let out a growl of contention. The time had come, she supposed, to figure out how to feed herself here. There had to be a store around somewhere to get something from, she assumed, given the breadth of the city she had seen so far. She turned towards her new Digimon, who she still had no idea what to feel about, and raised an eyebrow. She had to be commanding, had to make it clear she was in the position of power here. Confidence, poise, and... time to talk. “So, where do humans go to eat here?”

“Eat?” the digimon frowned, “I mean, there's all sorts of places. We should probably find where we're supposed to sleep first though, shouldn’t we?”

“I don't really plan to sleep right now, do you?” Elodie frowned deeper. It was important to stand her ground – this world didn't know that she did just yet, “But I do intend to eat. Immediately, if possible.”

“Eh, just ask the others. You haven't introduced yourself to them yet, yeah?”

“The others?” Elodie looked around. The street looked deserted...

The Digimon pointed to the contraption in her hand, “Use that thing to ask around! You still haven't done anything with it other than look up weird history stuff.”

Oh. Right, of course. This not-magic technology business. “You'll do well to not belittle the study of history around-” Grumblerumble. Damn. Food was more of a priority here, she had to admit. Sighing, she held the device up to her face and hit record.