app for tlv
User Name/Nick: Gelise
AIM/IM: gelsqkazoo
E-mail: wessawoo@hotmail.com
Other Characters: Angelica Sexby, Coyolxauhqui (and this is a trade-in for Donny Donowitz)
Character Name: Lady Petronilla de Vilers (nee de Broc)
Series: The Margaret of Ashbury series (novels)
Age: In her mid twenties, give or take a few years. She screams that she's "nowhere near thirty" and has a hissy fit when called middle-aged.
From When?: Petronilla is taken from the end of the third book in the Margaret of Ashbury series, The Water Devil. She's killed by her father-in-law, Sir Hubert de Vilers, for attempting to sacrifice his grandchild to an ancient water demon.
Also, the year for Dame Petronilla de Vilers is 1362.
Inmate/Warden:
Inmate. Dame Petronilla is - for lack of a better term - a crazy bitch. She's a woman who believes she deserves the very best in life, though does absolutely nothing to earn it. Though her upbringing taught her that a lady with a dowry like hers has a right to be entitled, Petronilla is selfish to the point of being completely insufferable, and is scheming, manipulative, and often times cruel and abusive. Petronilla is even briefly driven to a state of madness by her greed and jealousy, only to relish being the center of attention when she's strapped to a plank and exorcised by a canon and a bishop in front of the entire village.
Petronilla has dabbled in all sorts of villainous things. She loathes the family she marries into so much that she schemes to take away their land from them with her confessor and a local abbot. She kills a local midwife for daring to accuse her of faking her pregnancy, attempts to kill her sister-in-law by cutting out her baby, beats the servants, abuses animals, pretends to be a succubus by seducing men in the nearby woods, and attempts to drown her nephew.
In short, Petronilla is a one awful human being.
Abilities/Powers:
Petronilla claimed at one point to be able to see the secrets that people are hiding, though instead of this being an actual supernatural ability, it's more likely that she's just been blessed with a keen eye and a clever mind. In fact, it's her ability to notice the things that others miss that causes her sister-in-law to remark: "thank goodness ordinary people don't have as sharp sight as the crazy ones."
Otherwise, Dame Petronilla is fond of out-of-doors sports, particularly hunting, and is a skilled rider and archer. She also knows a little witchcraft, but nothing more than how to mix herbs and utter chants.
Personality:
According to her childhood nurse, Petronilla began life as a sweet and dear child, though either that went downhill really quickly once Petronilla hit puberty or the childhood nurse was making things up. The first real impression we're given of Petronilla in the series is that she is an incredibly vain young woman. When first meeting her sister-in-law, Margaret de Vilers, she sets her eyes on the golden cross around her neck and immediately covets it. Though Petronilla herself is covered with jewels while Margaret herself only wears two rings and the simple gold cross, she looks at the necklace with a gaze that says, "don't wait so long, dear sister, to offer it to me as a wedding present. It's not gracious." Unaware of its nicknamed as the Burning Cross, as it sets all those who do not walk closely with God ablaze, she touches the necklace and it burns her fingers almost immediately.
Because of her upbringing as a "proper lady", Petronilla doesn't know how to read or write, and she likes it just fine, thank-you-very-much. To paraphrase Sir Hubert de Vilers, a lady doesn't dishonor her household by reading and writing, and Petronilla strictly adheres to this. However, just because Petronilla doesn’t read or write doesn’t mean she fulfills her other duties mistress of the household. Though she relishes the power that comes from being the lady of a manor, Petronilla refuses to act with any sort of responsibility or grace. She’s content enough to sit around the manor with her lap dogs and pretend she’s the mistress of a wealthy and prosperous manor, even while the estate falls into disrepair around her and the servants and villagers hide away from her.
Whether it’s because of her beauty - and she is beautiful and knows it well - or the fact that her father has lots of land and connections at court, Petronilla feels that she’s entitled to the very best of life. This sense of entitlement leads to bitterness and jealousy, as life doesn’t turn out as she anticipated. She harbors resentment against her husband and his family, their shoddy estate, and her entire living situation. She wants bigger and better and becomes bitter that she cannot obtain it, though doesn’t actually possess the ability or the motivation to actually make a positive change in her life. A particular sore spot for Lady Petronilla is the fact that she’s unable to get pregnant and produce an heir, while her sister-in-law has three children and then one on the way.
Lady Petronilla constantly seeks attention and praise, though in her desperation to be noticed she doesn’t mind being cast in a negative light. A good example of this is Petronilla’s exorcism. After her initial struggle against being dragged to the village church for the exorcism, Petronilla realizes that the entire village is focused on her and so decides to milk the event for all it's worth. Not caring that the villagers think her insane - and also dementedly believing that the exorcism would show everyone just how special a lady she was, to be possessed by not one but four demons - she draws out the exorcism so that it lasts for three days. Her act is so convincing that it's scheduled to go on for weeks, but then Petronilla becomes bored with it and was miraculously heals when something else draws the attention away from her.
Petronilla is a clever woman and more perceptive than most. She’s able to spot a pregnancy that’s only a month or two along, and she also knows about her sister-in-law’s secret faith-healing ability when it took Margaret’s own husband years to notice it. She's also exceptionally devious as well, and once injured her own lapdog in order to gain someone's attention. Most intelligent people in the series outright avoid Petronilla because they fear her schemes and devious plots to gain attention.
She takes what she wants without thinking of others, and doesn't pay any mind to later consequence of her misdeeds. She expects to be forgiven as a repentant Christian for all of her sins, though clearly doesn't believe a word of what she's saying. After Petronilla attempts to drown her only nephew in a spring, she's confronted by her father-in-law in the forest and, expecting to die by his hand, she pleads with him to spare her life so she can spend the rest of hers repenting and praying for his soul. As a Medieval woman, Petronilla knows exactly what to say in order to pay lip-service to people, though she doesn't really mean a word of it. She's completely delusional and thinks the sins of the past can be easily forgiven because she's a lady and comes from a relatively wealthy family.
Even worse than being completely selfish, Petronilla has a horribly abusive temper that appears when she’s angry, frustrated, or just feeling particularly malicious. She takes her riding crop to the servants and Margaret's children, has kicked dogs when they've had the misfortune to cross her path during a tantrum, and uses her spurs excessively when riding her horses, cutting up their sides so badly that they’re often left injured and unable to be ridden for weeks. She’s clawed, stabbed, and attacked people when they’ve upset her (which doesn’t take much at all), and viciously insults and berates people no matter what their social standing is. Petronilla is so violent and vengeful that when the midwife that comes to assist with her delivery announces that she hadn’t actually been pregnant at all, she kills her by pushing her down the stairs and tells her daughter that she had missed a step in the dark.
She’s a humorless woman too, though has a bit of a morbid streak. When asked if she’s prone to inappropriate laughter, her husband remarks that she hardly ever laughs, save for in church when there's a sermon on humility and duty, and once during a hanging and quartering. Nothing much ever strikes Dame Petronilla as funny, though she does certainly enjoy activities like watching a good execution and hunting. In fact, there’s nothing Petronilla loves more than the hunt, and because she’s a good rider she never misses the death-throes of the animal, or ‘mort’.
Clearly there’s a mad streak in Dame Petronilla. While the inability to bear a child for her husband clearly eats away at her and makes her do all sorts of odd and terrible things - like trying to sacrifice her nephew to a water devil and having sex with random men in the woods - she refuses to admit that she’s barren. Her vanity makes her fake two pregnancies, but her desire to be in the limelight causes her to fake possession by demons. She’s tormented by the fact that her sister-in-law can have children but she cannot, and yet only wants the child to prove to the rest of the world that she’s capable of doing her duty as a wife and lady.
It's also worth mentioning that Petronilla comes from a universe that has its fair share of supernatural elements. Ghosts and vengeful spirits of the dead crop up every so often, as do water devils, demons, possessions, and even the occasional burning cross or two. The stories revolve around Medieval Christian belief, which means in Petronilla's universe relics are holy and powerful, people really can speak to God, and Heaven and Hell exist and can be seen if people have a near-death experience.
While it's likely that Petronilla will still be completely bewildered by the Barge and all that fancy technology (seeing as she's from the 14th century and all), she'll probably be alright with random encounters on a personal level because of her canon, as well as floods and other magical occurrences. It is likely that she'll be more than a little offensive and mean to most people, especially women who she happens to deem beneath her, but that's less to do with her era and more because she's a bit of a snobby jerk.
Path to Redemption:
While Petronilla can be redeemed, it’s not very likely that a warden will be able to turn her into a good person. She’ll probably always be a greedy, vain, and jealous, but it is entirely possible to make her repent for the terrible things she’s done in her life.
A lot of Petronilla’s issues can be traced directly to the way in which she was raised. She believes that as a lady of high standing it’s perfectly acceptable to treat other people like dirt and abuse the servants, and thinks this justifies all the horrible things she’s done in order to get her way. A good starting point for her warden would be to make her see that being born into aristocracy doesn’t automatically give her the right to be a nasty and selfish person. Because Petronilla is completely oblivious as to how much she’s loathed and how insane she actually appears to most people, she needs to be made aware of how she looks to others and how unacceptable her behavior actually is.
In general, Petronilla needs to learn that there are consequences to her actions. She’s allowed to beat children and get away with murder because she’s a clever mistress of a household (and covered up her misdeeds well), but Petronilla needs to be shown how despicable her crimes really were and have a healthy sense of remorse and shame drilled into her head.
History:
Lady Petronilla de Vilers was the eldest of 3 sisters born to the de Broc family. A girl of good-breeding, she was taught the manners and customs of the French Court, which included how to mince to show off her slippers and cross index fingers with her future lord husband when walking together, as well as other lady-like activities such as singing, embroidery, playing the psaltery, and how to waggle her fingers so the gems on her rings would catch the light. She was renowned for her beauty, charm, grace, her ability to use a short bow, her taste for the fashionable things in life, and her substantial dowry.
At the age of 15 she was married to Sir Hugo de Vilers, the eldest son of the de Vilers family in Hertfordshire, and taken to live with him and his father, Sir Hubert de Vilers, at Brokesford Manor. Told that she was to be the Mistress of Brokesford Manor, a grand and noble estate of an old knight with powerful connections (who was unfortunately on his death bed), her disappointment at the sight of the run-down and crumbling manor (and a very much alive Sir Hubert) was great. To add further insult to her predicament, Petronilla learned that the Lady Margaret de Vilers, a strange woman who was the wife of the youngest son Gilbert de Vilers, was to be sharing the manor with her.
The early weeks of her marriage were tough and traumatic for Dame Petronilla. Sir Hugo was an idiot and a brute, and well-known for his whoring and for the number of illegitimate children he sired both at home and abroad. When Lady Petronilla would fuss about broken promises and the hovel that was Brokesford manor, her husband would beat her, rape her, and threaten to break her nose - the last of which was the greatest insult to Lady Petronilla, for then she would no longer be pretty.
Worst of all was the presence of her sister-in-law, Lady Margaret, and her two red-headed daughters. Though Petronilla was the wife of the first-born son, and therefore the Mistress of the Manor, Margaret was an out-spoken oddity who glowed orange and pink on occasion, baked the best white rolls and brewed the best ale, and argued with the lords of the manor and servants as though she were the lady of the house. Petronilla immediately despised her and her children, but was lucky enough to be rid of them when they ran from Brokesford Manor in order to track down Sir Gilbert, who had been missing in France for some weeks.
Her husband’s philandering ways eventually came back to haunt him in the form of Lady Giuseppa, the Marquesa di Montesarchio, who was promised marriage and impregnated by Sir Hugo during a lengthy campaign abroad. Upon Sir Hugo de Vilers she placed a curse: his marriage bed would forever be filled with abominations, and his soul would be tarnished for swearing falsely on a piece of the true cross. Tormented by the curse - and by Dame Petronilla's insufferable nagging and complaining - Sir Hugo fled to France to track down his missing brother and sister-in-law, leaving his young wife behind.
As the months passed and turned into years, Dame Petronilla grew to become a vindictive and spiteful lady of the house. While in France her husband had transformed from a gruff blockhead into an insufferable dandy, obsessed with fashion and poetry, and the Lady Margaret and the rescued Sir Gilbert had been blessed with a baby boy who was to become the only heir to the de Vilers estate and (meager) fortune. Sir Hubert and Sir Hugo worried that Dame Petronilla was barren, but were pleased when she finally announced her own pregnancy. Unfortunately the birth was difficult and she lost the baby, or rather, Petronilla faked the entire ordeal and then killed the only witness to her "wind baby" - the local midwife, who reportedly took a nasty tumble down the stairs.
Slipping into despair, Lady Petronilla took to dressing all in black and dark greens, and would only keep company with her personal confessor, an Austin Friar named Brother Paul, and her childhood nurse. Often she'd find escape by riding to her father's estates in the south, or taking her grey mare through the paths of the woods and fields of Brokesford. Though briefly considering locking her away in a nunnery, Sir Hubert, in a rare moment of compassion, sent the grieving Lady Petronilla to the Duke of Lancaster's Court to cheer her spirits.
Petronilla returned from the Court (though not happily) around the same time an series of misfortunes had befallen the de Vilers family. A blight had been placed upon the land and the peasants had been unable to pay their rent, while a lawyer made claims that he had discovered a title in which half of the land held by the Lord of Brokesford was, in fact, owned by a group of Austin friars. It was during a deer hunt on the disputed property of Brokesford that Petronilla learned the legend of the local spring from the parish priest, Sir Roger. Though Sir Roger believed the ancient hermitage in the thick woods of Brokesford was a shrine to Saint Edburga, just neglected and fallen into disrepair, the villagers on the estate held fast to the superstition that a devil lived within the waters. Petronilla was told that barren women were especially drawn to the waters of the well - "walk three times around the spring sunwards, then make an offering", and she would be cured.
Obsessed with the idea of a water devil that grants wishes, Lady Petronilla disguised herself in black and began making offerings at the spring. Rumor that a succubus could be seen dancing around the spring spread throughout the village of Brokesford, further fueled when Petronilla seduced and then attacked a local swineherd who had come to visit the well. Though horribly wounded by numerous stab wounds to the chest, he managed to survive to tell the tale of the succubus, which convinced Sir Robert that the spring needed to be exorcised of its demons. Unfortunately during said exorcism, Sir Robert slipped and fell into the spring, his body disappearing completely as it was sucked into the waters.
The death of the parish priest only added to the desperation of the de Vilers family's situation. In an attempt to outsmart the lawyer that held an ancient, though most assuredly forged title to the land, they enlisted the help of Lady Margaret's friend, Brother Malachi, an alchemist and a seller of indulgences and other frauds. Sir Gilbert de Vilers and Brother Malachi drafted an even older forged title and schemed to bury it in secret at the ancient hermitage. The title was to be be unearthed for a crowd of spectators, though the only hitch in that plan was that Sir Gilbert, Lady Margaret, and their children would be forced to leave London and stay at Brokesford Manor until the title was found.
Upon the arrival of Lady Margaret and her brood, Dame Petronilla announced that she was in a "delicate" state. Already somewhat unstable, she accused Margaret of stealing her last child from her and having it as her own, and then called Dame Agathe, the French tutor for Margaret's girls, "a black shadow" and tried to claw her face with her nails. Her husband (truly dumb as a post) believed both of these acts to be a sign that she really was pregnant, though the fact of the matter was Petronilla had simply begun to fake another pregnancy.
Eventually the entire ruse was uncovered by Lady Margaret. She realized that Petronilla's personal confessor, Brother Paul, belonged to the same order of friars that plotted to take the land from Brokesford Manor, and had most likely had covered up her crazy ways for years in order to keep her married into the de Vilers family. Before Margaret could alert the others to the conspiracy, the succubus of the spring appeared once more. Surprised by villagers who had been on their way to worship the water devil, Petronilla was pelted with stones and forced to return to Brokesford Manor while still in her succubus disguise. Margaret revealed to a crowd of spectators that Petronilla's pregnancy was nothing more than a pillow bound tightly to her waist, and after another violent fit, Petronilla was kept locked and out of sight within her chambers.
Thanks to her dimwitted husband leaving the chamber door unlocked, Petronilla managed to escape from her room and make a grand (and completely demented) appearance during a banquet that was being held in honor of the new parish priest. After accusing an Abbot of stealing her place at the table, she pulled a dagger on Lady Margaret and attempted to cut the baby out of her belly. Lady Petronilla was finally dragged away when Dame Agathe stabbed her in the ankle with a skewer, but at that point the damage had been done. The parish priest and Abbot were convinced that Lady Petronilla was possessed by demons, and that an exorcism needed to be done as soon as possible.
After being hauled out of her room kicking and clawing at anyone who came near her, Petronilla was strapped to a plank of wood and brought to the village church. Relishing the sudden attention placed on her, Petronilla milked the exorcism for all that it was worth, shouting things no lady should ever say and thoroughly convincing the local clergy that she had four demons living inside of her. Unfortunately her time in the spotlight came to an end when the false title was discovered. No longer willing to entertain the village if no one was watching, Petronilla was "cleansed" of all her devils and sent back to Brokesfield Manor.
Though less outwardly mad after the exorcism, Petronilla's antics continued. She stole her husband's belongings and sold them in order to buy herself a hideous gown and four new lapdogs, then paraded herself around the manor in order to catch the attention of Sir Gilbert. When Sir Gilbert continued to ignore her advances, she stripped herself down and tried to seduce him in the manor's chapel. Spurned by Sir Gilbert and believed to be a madwoman by the rest of the manor, Lady Petronilla threatened to tell a local Magistrate of the de Vilers family's falsified deed, but was quite wisely ignored by the officials.
Petronilla finally snapped and absconded to the spring with Sir Gilbert and Lady Margaret's son in tow. After tossing the toddler into the spring and realizing that the entire village was on her tail, she fled into the woods on her gray mare with her father-in-law giving chase. Sir Hubert de Vilers caught up to Dame Petronilla, ebullient for the sacrifice and unrepentant, and stabbed her in the heart with her own dagger.
Happily, Sir Gilbert and Lady Margaret's child survived almost being drowned, and the scheme to keep the de Vilers land out of the hands of the clergy was a success. And so everyone lived happily ever after.... except for Dame Petronilla, of course, who was considered a witch and buried on unconsecrated land outside the village churchyard.
Sample Journal Entry:
[Video:
Since Petronilla is illiterate and vain, she's spent the last day trying to figure out how to use the video function on the communication device. She finally turns it on and looks triumphantly into the camera - and aren't you all so fortunate for it? Anyone looking closely enough will see that her nose is a little flattened, as though it's been broken at some point in the past.
The victorious look is quickly replaced with a pitiful pout when she remembers that appearing scared breeds sympathy, and she likes sympathy.]
I don't know why I am here. I remember the moment well though - I was riding along on my gray mare, the dear creature, through the woods of Brokesford when something startled her. Oh! And she threw me! My mare threw me!
[She clutches her chest dramatically.] The poor beast! My beloved gray mare! Was it some beast that made you throw your mistress down!
But why! Why am I here?
[Petronilla stares into the screen, and her gaze flashes just the hint of coldness and contempt before she's back to pouting and looking pitiful.]
Would any soul kindly tell me why I am trapped here in Hell?
Sample RP:
Dame Petronilla stared at her reflection in the mirror, prodding at the bags under her eyes and the freckles on her nose. The dark circles she couldn't do a thing for without her chest of medicines, but she could try and dig the freckles out later with her nails. As much as she hated this place, with its lack of servants and it's shabbily-dressed paupers and villains, at least there was no sun and she could keep her complexion fair.
She turned so that she was standing in profile in the glass. She'd seen her reflection before, of course, but the mirrors here were so clean and smooth, like water, that Petronilla was now able to see all her faults so clearly. She sucked in her belly and observed how thin she looked in her dark-green kirtle, thinking that her hips looked nice and full and perfect for bearing a child. She would need to pad them out in the coming months, but an extra skirt or two would do the trick nicely.
Petronilla exhaled and let her stomach stick out, frowning to herself as the little tummy barely protruded at all. Well, this certainly wouldn't do. She'd have to start sticking a pillow under her dress in the morning, as no one would ever believe she was pregnant with a small belly like that.
She heard the door of the shared bathroom open and quickly adopted a more casual, though hunched, appearance over a nearby sink. Petronilla had found that there was at least one thing she she did like about this place, and that was all the people and their 'concern'. Why, even the villains could fake concern! How Dame Petronilla adored the attention.
As the footsteps got closer and closer to where she stood, she smiled a wolfish grin to herself and then pretended to retch.
Special Notes: Though 'successfully exorcised of all her devils', Dame Petronilla is occasionally still visited by Balam, the Demon of Inappropriate Laughter.