Name: Jeanne Marie D'Arshan (pronounced Zhan). She never legally married her partner, Leoric Godwine, but considered him her husband until they broke up recently.
Age [appearance]: 22
Age [actual]: 1419
Gender: Female
Species: Vampire
Sire: Lucius Cato (deceased)
Fledglings: Leoric Godwine (sired 1497, 30yrs), Taylor Campbell (co-sired 1995, 18yrs)
Member of: Sacramentum Et Res
Hair: Short, silky brunette but she enjoys wearing wigs and getting extensions so that her hair changes colour and style frequently. The actual cut of her hair is quite boyish but this enhances her regal features; falling from a cowlick in the centre of her forehead, her hair sweeps down and back to a level equal to the tops of her ears - a stylish bowl cut, more or less. The back section of her hair is also short but has more texture cut into it. It reaches the back of her neck, falling just below the level of her earlobes. Despite this sounding like very little hair to work with, the texture is thick and wavy so there is a great volume of it upon her head. The front generally falls to frame her round forehead, the tips of her hair curling prettily towards her eyes (and sometimes into them) so she has a habit of combing her fingers through it and flicking it all to one side or the other, or tucking it behind her ears (where it really isn't long enough to stay and generally falls forward to point to her large eyes again in moments). She is known to pin her framing fringe back with sparkly clips or headbands more often than not, for she is not the type to fuss with her hair outside her bedchamber and enjoys it always looking prettily styled and feminine.
Eyes: Dark, twinkling blue, surrounded by long, thick eyelashes that have not diminished with age but which have curled dramatically. Her eyes are quite large in her face, round and heavily lidded so that she achieves a natural bedroom quality without poses - especially when coupled with the natural flair of her lips. Were her eyes one iota more prominent, they would be declared 'googly' but she gracefully remains on the good side of such defamatory labelling.
Face: Jeanne has a countenance that can most accurately be described as 'regal'. It has nothing to do with the French accent with which she speaks - though that helps - and everything to do with her small, perfectly straight nose, arched eyebrows, high cheekbones and wide, full mouth. Her round forehead is quite high, her strong jawline leading to an almost square chin gives her face the overall shape of a heart and her lips are sensual. Her lower lip is fuller than her upper - which is only slightly bowed, lacking pronounced arches pointing towards her nostrils - and the outer corners are slightly downturned meaning she can look pouty with ease but when she smiles, her eyes crinkle happily and a dimple appears in each cheek as if by magic.
Frame: 165cm tall, thin to athletic with some musculature evident in her abdomen and quite well toned arms - indicating that she worked hard before she became immortal, and was strong for a woman even when she was alive. She has smallish, upturned breasts - she often wears no bra - that fit comfortably in the palm of a man's hand. Her collar bone is spectacularly prominent and her legs are shapely and long beneath a slightly shortened torso.
Personality: Resolute, caring, protective, vigorous, loyal, decisive, harsh, vindictive, charming. Jeanne has a strong, almost domineering personality that is generally well hidden beneath her maternal fussings and breezy, optimistic attitude. She is the type of person who sails airily through life, apparently taking nothing too seriously and revelling in the beauty to be found around her, loving nothing more than having someone wonderful by her side to share it with and a family to love and cosset to her heart's content. That is, until something does not go according to her plan, whereupon she will power up, walk headstrong into the eye of the storm and rip it apart with her bare hands if she has to. Her beauty is deceptive and she uses this to her advantage, greeting people with beguiling, milk and honey smiles, charming the unsuspecting and always focussing on the positive - until she is forced to reveal her steely core and bend her environment (and those in it) to her will and purposes. She is someone who is generally found where beautiful things are, with her arm wrapped about someone else's arm, treating them as if they are her closest and dearest consort, even if she only met them five minutes ago, because she can't help but be exuberant about what she sees. She has her introspective and quiet times but prefers being with those she loves, over being alone, and would attend even the most chaotic social event rather than be left out and ignored. The only time her personality changes dramatically is in the bedroom, but only her lover knows this, it is a secret she keeps well hidden from the rest of the clan. She thrives on action and attention.
Awareness of Supernaturals: Vampires, angels, werewolves. She senses something awry with Shifters (as she does with all unidentified supernatural species she encounters by chance) and has encountered one who could alter the shape of their face but doesn't know that there are variants to this species, nor what their full abilities are.
Occupation/Job: Creative arts director, creative arts acquisitions and social director for the Sacramentum clan. Owner/operator of The Y.D.M. Creative Arts Centre in the heart of the city.
Interesting Facts / Quirks: Jeanne is a confident, dominant and very 'together' woman that none but Charon and her estranged 'son', Taylor are willing to cross - in public.
In private, she enjoyed a secret, sadistic role reversal with her husband, playing the submissive to his domineering aggressor where no eyes - or even minds - could observe them (until their relationship shattered over her relationship with their son). Everyone believed Leoric (or Leo, as he was generally called) was a browbeaten wimp who did everything his woman told him to do, and in public it was true. Behind closed doors, their roles were gladly reversed and if Leo had any slight grudge against Jeanne for the way she'd treated him on the outside, he revelled in taking it out on her in a variety of ways that were not always sexual and frequently involved instruments of corporal punishment or torture. The harsher Jeanne was to Leo in public, the more she knew she would be punished later - and the sadistic side of her goaded Leo deliberately, on occasion, wanting him to do terrible things to break her once they were alone. Alas, she is now generally lonely and always alone, though she has hope she will find another as well suited to her desires as Leo was.
She is a moderately talented artist but a highly skilled ballerina and excellent dancer of nearly all forms.
Hobby/Hobbies: Organising social events that see a range of people and immortals brought together in order that she forges new connections and networks through her artfully weighted parties. Painting, sculpting, drawing, glass blowing, needlepoint, weaving, ballet, ballroom dancing, photography - basically, if it's creative and beautiful in some way, she does it.
Likes: Beauty, being a woman, creative expression, love, the way the world constantly evolves and accepts different things as beautiful, feeling like a mother, attention, playing the coquette, dressing up, parties, looking beautiful, fashion, changing her clothes frequently, shopping, socialising, networking, winning an argument, being right, speaking her mind.
Dislikes: Arguments, ugliness (in form and in people), idle gossip, gluttony, dithering, procrastinators, fighting with Charon, being parted from her family, business and other such practical annoyances, having the weather spoil a perfectly good hairstyle or outfit, monotonal thinking.
Strength: She knows her own mind, knows what she likes and is singularly focussed on everyone enjoying themselves so that they might get the most they can out of life. Her words are not idle, she is trustworthy, sincere and determined and certainly someone you want on your side (or at it, as the case may be).
Weakness/Flaw: She can lose sight of the fact that not everyone shares her point of view and becomes impatient when she can't persuade others to her way of thinking. She can be superficial and so determined to maintain illusions to hide an ugly truth that she fools herself into believing, simply because she wishes something to be otherwise. She makes many allowances for those that dwell in her heart - even if they don't deserve all the chances they get.
Pictures: History
Jeanne was born fourteen minutes before her twin brother, Yves-Michel Jérôme, to parents Yves and Dieudonnée D'Arshan in Massilia, Gaul, on the (equivalent to the) 24th of October, 578. They were brought into the world as a new day struck and dazzled their parents from that moment until their untimely death when the twins were nine years of age (their house caught on fire and their father suffocated in his sleep, their mother rousing just in time to wake the children - whose bedroom was at the back of the house - and send them to safety). Orphaned, they went to live with their father's sister in the same town and although she loved them dearly, they were just two more mouths to add to her hefty brood of eleven children and the twins became lost in the crowd most of the time, nevermore to be the focus of an adult relative's watchful eye.
Finding their cousins to be raucous and uncivilised compared to the quiet and educated upbringing they'd been experiencing as the only children of their scholarly parents, Jeanne and Michel (he dropped the inclusion of his fathe\'s name in his because it was too poignant a thing to hear spoken aloud) took to extricating themselves from their chaotic home and travelling the surrounding forests, hills and vineyards together. They found silence and solace enough in each other's company to get them through the mourning process with a very practical and philosophical understanding of the tragedy that had befallen them and learned a great deal about the land and people around their hometown simply by observation. They visited the burned out shell of their former townehouse far more often than would have been considered healthy - it was a morbid fascination to anyone on the outside but an homage and some contact with their deceased parents to the twins. They frequently left fresh posies upon the hulk of what was once their parents' bed and stood, clinging to one another for hours on end before they finally moved on to see other sights (they never spoke but always agreed, by silent accord).
It was on one of these nightly sojourns for peace and quiet (for they never restricted themselves to wandering only in daylight, people asked too many questions of them and they didn't wish to cast aspersions upon their harried aunt and uncle) that, at ten, they happened upon a very beautiful and rather odd man. Naturally, he questioned their post-midnight roaming but, when told that it was because the new baby at their home had colic and they couldn't sleep, he accepted the story without investigating further. Their own curiosities were piqued when the man introduced himself as Lucius and confessed to a spot of melancholy himself, boldly unveiling the story of his lost brothers who were, amazingly, twins. Enchanted by this connection and by the easy and charming manner in which he spoke, Jeanne and Michel curled at his feet and talked with him through the night, telling him all about their own history and lamenting their lack of schooling (and, on Jeanne's behalf, no longer having a mother to teach her to dance and sing). Lucius voiced sympathy to their pains and looked thoughtful about their situation but said nothing concrete at that time.
That first nightly meeting became one of many to occur over the next year, by which time the twins had learned Lucius' awful secret; he was a vampire! His gentle nature and endless wisdom convinced them that he was no harm to them - or to anyone, in their opinion - so they weren't scared by this fact. Quite the opposite, in fact, they were excited by his exotic nature and the seeming romance of being a creature who has lived so long their young minds couldn't fathom it, seeing so much and learning, learning all the time. It seemed impossibly wonderful to two innocent children already besotted with such an inappropriate friend and when he told them tales of how he had a family (in the truest sense, not necessarily by blood ties) that he would be with eternally - they were too young to notice the ironic twist to his lips as he spoke it - they were enchanted.
Not long after the children found out about Lucius' vampiric family, they got to meet them. At eleven years of age, they were uncharacteristically refined and composed children who were polite and awed upon being taken into the Sacramentum home. They had been warned about Charon's monstrous looks and so neither so much as blinked when introduced to the patriarch, bowing and curtseying politely and making mature and respectful small talk with a being who should have given them nightmares. Although they didn't speak with him long, they made an unintentionally good impression when, upon their leaving, they bade Charon farewell by approaching him and simultaneously kissing a cheek each. Like silent and well-rehearsed actors, they then nimbly stepped around one another and neatly wove in and out of his lap in order to kiss his other cheek at the same time, their warm, soft rosebud lips pressed innocently and trustingly to the foreign coolness of his wrinkles without guile. They were simply being polite, as their parents had taught them to be, and the wizened old vampire read this perfunctory understanding easily in their open and amazed minds as they turned and took one of Lucius' hands each and followed him trustingly.
By the time the twins were twelve, their absorption into the Sacramentum clan had been secured. Their aunt and uncle were paid a small fortune for their procurement and the children were ecstatic to find themselves part of a new, sophisticated family that not only lacked the screaming cacophony of too many beings squashed into one straining building, but which encouraged their education with a zeal even their parents had not. Jeanne became precocious as she grew, enjoying greatly any time she got to spend alone with Charon, debating philosophical underpinnings, seeking him out to test his knowledge of history, demanding he listen to her latest mastering of a violin piece or watch her dance. He seemed to enjoy watching her dance most of all and she loved his audience almost as much as she loved Lucius'.
As she evolved into a young and refined woman, Jeanne's love of creative, artistic and beautiful things was encouraged; she was educated in the usual academics but enjoyed moreover her tutelage in the finer things of life. She was enchanted by the tranquility and eternal learning in the house around her, bewitched by the promise of forever spent in noble pursuits and surrounded by unique and fascinating people whom she couldn't truly understand simply because she was not of their species and their secrets were not all hers.
At the same time, she fell deeply in love with her primary mentor, Lucius and though she attempted to coax him with her burgeoning feminine wiles, he resisted her, claiming her too young. She rebelled by spending time with some of the mortal boys who also lived in the house (children of the Sacramentum's devout followers, or some independent young man who had been brought into the fold) and was rewarded with Lucius' raging jealousy. She was all smiles from then on, for she procured herself a promise from him; that he would sire she and her twin brother once they'd come of age and when that happened, he would no longer look upon her as the child she once was, but as the woman he\d made of her.
When they were twenty-two years of age, Lucius did just that and the twins became his fledglings while Jeanne became his lover.
Although fully embraced into the fold, their path was not to be perfect or easy, for much tragedy struck them through the ages. Firstly, their 'uncle' Valerius was murdered by his outraged fledgling, Marcelo, and the whole clan felt the loss as a personal and vibrant thing. Charon's mourning period lasted beyond a century and he enforced a rule that none were to embrace a fledgling in future without being at least five hundred years old themselves, nor without knowing the potential for at least a year.
Four hundred and ten years into their unlife, the twins were separated eternally by cruel fate. While travelling on a ship to Egypt, Michel - ever the gadabout - was making his way back to his berth (from a certain young lady's quarters) just before dawn. To preserve his amour's honour, he took the less-travelled route of crawling along the side of the ship, confident that his superior strength would aid him. When a rope was unexpectedly hauled up, he was knocked from the ship and into the ocean. Swimming valiantly to regain his place on the boat, he managed to get hold of a rope and was hauling himself back up just as the sun's first rays crested the horizon and turned him to ash. Wrenched from her pre-sleep by the loss of her twin, Jeanne sat up straight in her bed beside Lucius and screamed, knowing he was gone.
It became too much for the surviving Cato to bear. Despite his love for Jeanne and his acceptance into the clan by Charon, he could no longer bear to be in a world that so cruelly took from him everyone that he loved. First his brothers, then his fledgling... how long before Jeanne was gone, too? Unbearably depressed (but hiding it well), a year later he snuck away from the family home and situated himself on a desert dune. There, he met his end and all of Jeanne's closest blood connections in the world were lost to her.
Jeanne was clung to by Charon for a time, watched like she might make the same suicidal choice, but that was not something that entered her head. Her grief was enormous, palpable, disabling some nights, but in the end it made her stronger and more determined to find love again, to feel loved and worshipped and whole.
When she was around nine hundred years old, Jeanne met an Englishman by the name of Leoric Godwine. They courted for almost two years before she fledged him - with Charon's permission - and she was convinced she'd found her soulmate. Their relationship was very much like a marriage and she soon began referring to Leo as her husband, taking his name and attaching it to her own, and their love blossomed.
After another five hundred years together, the Godwines had moved with the Sacramentum to the Americas, continuing their habit of procuring clubs and bringing together mortals and immortals wherever they could. Jeanne and Leo had reached a place in their relationship where they wished to extend their love to a childe - since Leoric was approaching his fifth century, they began looking around for someone who would fit the bill and stumbled upon a streetwise boy by the name of Taylor.
Approaching Charon with their plans, they were disheartened to have them rejected, based on the fickleness of the modern child and how little he would add to the clan. Jeanne used every trick, every wile, every bit of sway she had over Charon but he was not moved by her claim that
this boy looked to be the exact representation of herself and her husband in mortal form; it seemed a flimsy and pointless excuse.
In the end, the lovers disobeyed their leader's express wishes and co-sired Taylor (though they told everyone he was Leo's fledgling alone). Charon was furious and disappointed and an enormous row was had, forcing Jeanne to supplicate herself for the mercy of her family, harking back to the time when all had seemed lost and Charon had believed she would commit suicide due to grief. Her ploy won them a grudging reprieve and the family attempted to settle uneasily back together.
Unfortunately, even the best laid plans don't always go according to design - and this was a very poorly-laid plan indeed. After sixteen years of forced co-habitation, it was actually Jeanne who ended everything she'd arranged. Taylor's advances upon her became increasingly sexual through his unlife, and it began to twist her love for him from the maternal sweetness she'd designed it to be, to that of an equal.
Without Jeanne's permission nor even any reciprocal expression of interest, Taylor's keen observation of his parents' relationship came back to defeat her when the childe realised exactly the way his 'mother' liked to be treated in private and he initiated attempting to seduce her. When she eventually succumbed to his advances, helpless to resist his domineering taunting, the affair lasted only a few weeks, but the repercussions are still being felt years later.
When Leoric learned that Jeanne had slept with Taylor, he was appalled and disillusioned. Betrayed after hundreds of years together, he told Jeanne he didn't feel they could be together any longer, and that their creation was an abomination that they never should have attempted what they did, that it was the greatest mistake of their lives. He went to Charon to beg his forgiveness and to seek permission to destroy his fledgling. Knowing it would come to that, Jeanne spirited Taylor away from the Sacramentum, telling him they must never have contact again. Soon after, Leoric was transferred to another facility, to service his family away from the core group and the woman he'd felt to be his partner for eternity.
Responsible for the first time, Jeanne mourned the destruction and loss of her family, existing helplessly lost in Charon's disgraces. Even after three years he wasn't happy with her and wouldn't acknowledge her existence, forcing her to find other places to be, other work to do. In an effort to find some solace, she opened a creative arts studio in the heart of the city, naming it the Y.D.M. Creative Arts Studio after her family - Yves, Dieudonnée and Michel - and spending most of her time in the glamourously upgraded warehouse.
Distraction was no cure for heartache, but it certainly made it more bearable.
Jeanne's luck changed when the Oligarchy crumpled and the Mimic Demons that had been the tenuous bridge between them and the Sacramentum disappeared. As one of the oldest Sacramentum members, Jeanne was called back to Charon's presence, reluctantly forgiven and ordered to spend her time at their club, Venture (the new form of Risk) to protect its patrons. Her age and talents make her a formidable foe and, keen to reconnect with her beloved mentor, Jeanne has happily abandoned her creative arts studio to a newly-hired manager so that she can return to the Sacramentum fold and serve as she should.
RoleplaysButterfly Adventures (Jeanne is presented with Reeves at Risk)
Ab Antiquo (Charon, Ari and Murphy - Jeanne is mentioned)
Summons (Charon and Murphy - Jeanne is mentioned)
Rumour Has It (Jeanne is working the door at Risk)
Opening Night (Jeanne oversees the opening night of Venture, the Sacramentum's new project, and becomes embroiled in a gunman's drama and a political minefield)
~18 month break~
Welcome To Venture (Jeanne repels Mithras and is disrespected before he leaves)
A Grand Entrance (The Sacramentum host a party at Penbrook Estate to endorse Sabrina's District Leadership. Jeanne dresses Digital)
A Trial for the Centuries - The CW Districts vs. Lazarus (Lazarus is put on trial and Jeanne and Charon are entertained)
The Academy's Opening Fete (Jeanne attends the Academy's opening with Charon, revealing she's bitter about not being asked to teach)
Testing the Waters (Jeanne accompanies Charon on a diplomatic meeting with Chtahzus'aak and Brael)
Hot Tip (Jeanne rushes to Murphy's aid when he is sired by Lazarus)
Finding A Nest (Jeanne brings vampire Murphy to Charon)
