Post by Janice Viscreed on Nov 13, 2009 0:35:21 GMT -5
God, Grant me the serenity to accept what can not be changed and the strength to endure what will. Lead me in your ways so that I emerge a work fashioned by thy hands, pleasing and unyielding in good things. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be ever turned toward thee. - Amen
Name
Janice Olivia deBrabant
name by 1st marriage {abandoned/dissolved}
name by 2nd marriage: monroe {secreted}
supposed familial name: viscreed
true familial name: vittergaust[/i]
hebrew name: Miriam bat Joheved
Date of Birth
June 1312
15th of the month
Age
21
Height
5'3
Hair
blonde
half of life brown, still semi-brown places
lightened with age
Eyes
blue-hazel
Skin
pale-peach
commiserate on season
Marks
'x' mark scars
blood letting/poison draining-1329
leech teeth marks
prominent on left thigh, inner right elbow -1329
sword cuts
4-6 inch swipe, left side -1333
2 inch swipe, right side -1333
small dart graze
missed dart shot-1329
Build
willow-esque with a woman's lines
Origins
Avignon
Provence, France
outer village on way towards the holy see
birthplace
Marseilles
convent, Order: Sisters of St. Claire, Poor Claires {Franciscan}
age 13-17, various partial year residency ages 0-12
London
Canterbury
Kent
England
additional places of residence
Origins II - Nationality[/color]
anglo-french
Anglo/French/Russian/Italian/Jew
Family[/color]
Danielle de Barbarac {mother, deceased}
also known as Joheved bat Sarah Imenu
Elusha Vittergaust {father, deceased}
Jacob Vittergaust {uncle, step-father, deceased}
Sister Eunice Gabriele {aunt, living, in her late 40's}
Order of St. Clare - Marseilles
Abess - Handmaids of St. Claire on Behalf of Christ
Bant Chan Ser, Torrin, Isle of Skye, Scotland
once paramour of jacob vittergaust
Order of Ebony Hall {members, living,}
esp: masters,masters' spouses, masters progency and apprentices
Languages
French
main
English
main
Polyglot
ability to exhibit proficiency to read/write/speak several languages
fluency: european languages, berber language {tifinagh,arabic}, holy languages {aramaic/hebrew/greek} elevated language {latin}
Religion[/color]
Catholic
raised as, baptized in record {June 18th 1312}, baptized in choice secret {1333}
Jew
born of convert mother and natural father, given hebrew name
Occupation
Lady Of Letters
translations, archives, antiquity, curios[/i]
trained: Marseilles and Turas Lan
use: messenger, archivist, and informant for Ebony Hall
Master Of the King's Archives
librarian, historian[/i]
Merchant
bound books, scrolls, illuminated text, translations, restoration
Traits[/color]
loyal
steadfast
devout
shy
angelic
loquacious
when nervous or excited
intelligent
humerous
engaging
simplisic seeming
mysterious at intervals
strong
constant
loving
meticulous
awkward
in some social situations
educated
well-spoken
well-written
upright
high values
Talents[/color]
polyglot
multi-lingual fluency
translation
text restoration
historian
writer
memorization
via oral and written tradition
business management
household management
court protocol
poisons & medicinal herbs
Likes & Dislikes[/color]
watching the beginning or end of day
night-terrors[/size]
fruit, imparticular melons
cabbage[/size]
cordial people
unmannered/mean/cruel people[/size]
charity and good works
greed
the colors peach, light blue, orange, and yellow
gray/maudlin tones reminiscent of the mourning/old life[/size]
flowers & herbs
unweeded gardens[/size]
good conversation
being berated and made fun of
kept promises
broken promises & lost dreams[/size]
being a good person
being displeasing[/size]
sweetness
overly-harsh things[/size]
life
giving death[/size]
faith
abused faith[/size]
Attachments
Sir Marius deBrabant
austria, 3rd son of Brabant Barony, abandoned/dissolved union - winter/spring 1333
Julian Monroe
scotland, chieftain's son of clan munro, apprentice to de Aquitaine, present/secreted union - summer 1333
History
"The future contrives to draw me in its wake"
Born June 15th 1312 outside of Avignon, France in the area of Provence, her early years are shrouded in a shadow within the mind. The Grandmaster's writings place his daughter as traveling the first portions of her life between France and England. She was a fixture in the court of King Edward II and the company of Canterbury's Earl. Those who were then in her father and mother's company, Sorschal and St. Laurence, say that she was a bright, happy child from the onset. Vittergaust kept his beloved wife Danielle ignorant of his alterior profession for many years until the last few years of his life, which subsequently were as his daughter aged from infant to small girl of no more than six or seven. The eldest Vittergaust brother, Elusha, was murdered in Venice by his first apprentice-succesor Gottschalk. He went to the death knowing that it would give his remaining pair of Sorschal and St. Laurence time to unravel Gottschalk enough. What happened would bind the remaining people over distantce for always. Sorchal and St. Laurence seperated after the traumatic, dark experience for several years. The 'Children' of Gottschalk became subterranean killers trying to fashion themselves in desperate copies of their 'father's' greatness. Danielle deBarbarac would go on to remain a Vittergaust; she married his brother Jacob, during Elusha's absence as if in preperation for his inevitable death. A great mental wound had scattered her daughters memories, making it easy to enact the greatest deception: saying her uncle was her father.
After this they remained in France, with mother and daughter traveling between Avignon to the convent of Clares in Mariselle. It was here Janice found the beauty of God in the poverty in which the women professed to live because through charity recieved and given, there were never a happier sort of people. Piety was the bread on which they sustained themselves. Janice had an aunt in the Sister Eunice, whom her mother claimed was a childhood friend. The visits were three-fold: to repair the damages of early life, for Danielle to hold fast to what family she had left as Eunice was in truth her sister, and to instill a deep and abiding love of God in the girl that wouldn't see her called a heretic, killed, or both. “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. (Ephesians 6:18)” Eunice said this to her niece before bedtime, and it still continues to be among her favorite quotations.
Avignon found the Vittergaust family keeping an established cottage with two large levels, a garden, some animals to suppliment food materials, and Jacob's shop, with the same pattern replicated in the subsequent villages in England where the family would occasional emigrate towards for certain lengths of time. Jacob loved Janice as if she had always been his. Danielle loved her daughter yet feared the blood in her veins would be corruptive, detrimental in the body of a girl. Extremism was adopted in their public Christian lives. It was Danielle's intent to fashion Janice in her maiden faith in hopes to give her to a religious household in marriage, or to a religious enclave. She was hardly let out of the house beyond necessity sake. A saint's day festivity, a community marriage or death, a need in market. In all things Danielle was the child's stern shadow. Jacob saw early the precocious intelligence. With little to do of it for even she couldn't deny the girl, Danielle taught her daughter to read and write with the intention of it being enough to run a formal household. Jacob took the measures one step further by teaching his daughter math. It was supposed to be for the same reason of management. To Danielle's horror, Jacob took the girl often in to his shop. As she cleaned his bottles or arranged his shelves, she learned of the properties of plants. In return Danielle gave her a garden. In an almost dance of loving scorn each parent seeking to suppress or extend the best of a trait ended up working in harmony. Danielle made the girl dutiful, obidient, pious, and skeptical of the outside while Jacob encouraged her intelligence, humor, natural good nature and inquisitive thought process. What it did was make a girl bred for the reciprocation of the secrets each tried so hard to conceal. Church for Christian Sabbath, suppers for Friday Evenings with ritual she watched her mother perform. To light the candles of Shabbat only to place them in some distant window, never on the supper table. She never knew it was Shabbat, or that her mother still practiced the faith she'd converted to for her first husband with her second, who was also a Jew. It is hard to change your soul, whom you are and what you believe. Imagine then trying to visit the consequences of choice on innocence while trying to live through it at the same time. The tight reigns Danielle kept were accompanied by an intense love of the girl who represented herself and Elusha made flesh. She held her, laughed with her, taught her of womanly things as only a mother could. Father showed her glimpses of a world beyond the cottage with stories of his youth, his collection of rare books earned as payment from old clients, and his love. All was well until in one book he witnessed her see his dark secret of record human anatomy from dissections, a prohibited enterprise of the Church.
What Jacob didn't realize was that his first witness to this event was indeed her third reading of the text; before the digestive system of a man put itself frozen in her mind as the definitive image, there were also things such as cancers of the breast and throat. Tumors blooming like flesh flowers. Corpses that died of various sickness at various ages. Worried that her mind would indeed turn he put his daughter in the convent with intention to not draw her out again until she was to be married. If she had no design to marry, she must take nun's vows. It was hard for her to understand just what she had done wrong, worried she had broken the commandment of honoring one's parents. Was it possible that she would ever be able to honor herself?
The rhythm of cloister life is one marked by prayers, mass, chores, and sisterhood. As much as she looked over the walls to the world beyond she could be comfortable in the world that was. No one tried to caution her against anything here. Danielle's love transfered easily on to Sister Eunice, who in turn endeared the girl to the Reverend Mother. Janice maintained the garden, helped in the kitchen, did needle work for altar clothes with the sisters could sell for upkeep. Among all these things the Reverend Mother and Sister Eunice were changed with a promise by each parent. Danielle begged of her sister to mend the Girl's mind, and Jacob told the Abbess, the Reverend Mother to feed it.
Otherwise, among an order of poor clerics, how else could the child benefit from the books in the Abess' cell? The first step was religious philosophy to shape Eve's daughter, the next came the bible. As there were no printer's press' or translations in common national languages, she expanded her knowledge of Greek and Latin in biblical study. After this, there came saint's writings. Then works considered 'pagan' in nature but no less interesting. The Abess was caught in a spell; the mind was so hungry, so open! She fed it the languages of the antiquity only to see it be absorbed, taught her the languages of Europe only to see each a mountain climbed. In addition to this, Sister Eunice schooled Janice in the properties of plants, with the assistance of her father's letters or the occasional visit. You can not shield yet unshield at the same time.
The hard part of this duality is that the old life caught up with Jacob. For trying to carry on his brother's work, he bled over his London works uttering Hebrew prayers. His wife's illness took her to the grave in the hands of hospital attendants that should have helped her live in France. And their daughter? Janice was pulled from the cloister after nearly four years that had done what was hoped for: cut her away from the remainder of the outside world. On prospect of obtaining a match of good standing in Scotland, she was turned over toward the keeping of a mysterious benefactor.
The story is easy to tell there after in part. Janice went from akward woman-child to woman under the eyes of those who knew her Father best, as well as those who befriended his sucessors. Her life was in constant danger. To be kept under watch, lock, key, and obdience was no different than the cloister yet she tasted life with the same timid love she lived. Slowly but surely she came to accept the rhythm of life in Turas Lan. She learned to dance, to speak elegant, to bow. To dress, to arrange, to obey. She would make distinct memories in the times she'd nearly die, when she would give of her virginity for the sake of their salvation, and in a variety of life mistakes amidst elevating triumph. Her talents have become her excellence, her incomplete ability to embrace a full life without worry of being abandoned her down fall.