[BN APP] don't be surprised if they don't buy your lies
1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Jenni
Current characters in Bete Noire: None!
2. Character Information
Name: Jack Benjamin
Livejournal Username: dugdowndeep
Fandom: NBC's Kings
Image: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_UBeyWmBvlUg/TN5Od6JYZxI/AAAAAAAAAoc/vS2L-KAukNI/s800/yarly%20028.png
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Jack is a slick, well-put-together twenty-four-year-old-prince. At 5'10", he's a little on the short side, but he's well built and generally confident about his body. He has light blue eyes, dark brown hair that curls a little if he lets it, and a five-o'clock shadow that can only be avoided via a particularly judicious shaving regimen. He dresses expensively, alternating between dressy and casual as the situation requires and seems equally comfortable in both. His tastes tend to be sharp, trendy and a little quirky, like he's purposely disrupting what would otherwise be a very flattering outfit.
History: Jack was born four minutes after his twin sister Michelle, making him the second child of Silas and Rose Benjamin, king and queen of the Royal Kingdom of Gilboa. Gilboa is a modern-day monarchy analogous to ancient Israel, with Silas being the counterpart to the biblical King Saul, while Jack is the counterpart to Saul's son, Jonathan. But while Gilboa and Israel bear a striking resemblance in terms of history and geography, Gilboa is a pastiche of cultural anachronisms more so than a reinvention of Israel. They talk like they've read too much Shakespeare, make war like it's WWI or WWII, live in 21st-century cities, and govern like the Old Testament.
Jack was raised a prince, in all the privilege and luxury that position implies. As the first male child, he was assumed to be Silas's heir and was brought up under the belief that the only path before him was to become king, but legally the monarchy was never declared a blood dynasty, let alone a patriarchal one. Thus Jack grew up with a constant need to prove himself worthy of the throne, both to his people and to his father. Unfortunately for Jack, the latter consistently withheld his approval, holding Jack to higher standards than he could reach. As a result, Jack's childhood years were split between trying very, very hard to impress everyone and getting into ungodly amounts of trouble acting out.
A large portion of Jack's life has been spent in the military, in some form or other. As a teenager he was sent to Gilboa's finest military academy, from which he probably would have been expelled if anyone had had the guts to expel their future sovereign. He continued to be trouble throughout his teenage years, but trouble took on new forms: alcohol and recreational drugs, wild parties, sexual exploration, etc. He discovered his rather problematic sexuality early, and the effort of constantly hiding that (along with every other politically unsound aspect of his life) left him exhausted, frustrated, and generally miserable. Bingeing offered a distraction, and being the life of the party let him have control over one tiny sphere of his life at a time when he felt like everything else was dictated by his family and his future as king. After graduation, he enlisted and went to war against Gath, which meant partying less often, but he just partied harder when he had the chance. Even in the middle of a war, Jack is the kind of person who's capable of (mostly) turning off the internal soldier for whatever hours or days or weeks he has free; when he wasn't in uniform, he took full advantage of the time to spoil his buddies rotten and dig to profound depths of debauchery.
Despite Jack's insane behavior on the sidelines, the military was a formative experience for him. It was one of the few places where his money and status as prince didn't get him everything (though it did allow him more leeway than most). His accomplishments as a soldier meant more to him because he actually worked for them. This is where Jack learned to be a leader and to take care of those under him. The military shaped him into a stronger person with values that, while they may not have anchored in his conscience until later in life, at least made him proud to adhere to from time to time. Unfortunately, his time in the Gilboan army also pushed the limits of what he would do for God and country, and Jack was not the type of person whose limits needed pushing. He went to some morally distressing extremes in his efforts to prove himself as a soldier and later as a commander, including interrogation techniques that probably would not adhere to the Geneva Convention if such a thing existed in his universe. (Luckily, Gilboa isn't big on human rights anyway.)
A few months ago, his unit was ambushed and Jack, along with one of his men, was taken hostage. Enter one David Shepherd, lowly soldier, who single-handedly took down a "Goliath" tank and crossed enemy lines to rescue Jack. The heroic act propelled David into fame, which Jack was less than pleased with. If Jack had died behind enemy lines, at least he would have been a war hero; coming back to David's parade and his own court martial inquiry was not kosher, and it did not endear him to David. David's interest in Jack's sister and the king's affection for the young hero made David doubly a threat - since Michelle was the oldest, marrying her could easily make David king instead of Jack. Jack fought back against this perceived threat any way he could. He leaked pictures of David with another woman to the press in an effort to scare Michelle off, he tried to get David's brother executed for treason so that David would leave the capital, he punched David in the face when they were on special assignment together... their relationship was off to a rocky start.
At the same time, Jack was going through some rather massive personal issues. His father had ever-so-kindly informed Jack that he had known about his sexuality for years, was disgusted with him for it, and would never respect him or let him be king if he didn't straighten out. When Jack was done shaking in his boots (Silas Benjamin: most terrifying father alive), he tried to accept the fact that he would never have an authentic relationship with anyone, ever, and determined to cut men out of his love life entirely. That might not have been so bad if Jack hadn't been in a serious relationship at the time. While his relationship with Joseph Lasile was limited by the extreme discretion Jack's public position required, this was much more than a fling. Joseph didn't take it well when Jack pushed him away without an explanation or even a goodbye. A month later, Jack was able to sneak back and see him during a city-wide blackout, only to leave (likely for good) as soon as the lights came back on. Joseph realized that not only would he and Jack never be together, but Jack would never have any kind of happiness if he didn't come out to the public. Joseph committed suicide the next morning. He sent his suicide note (a video goodbye in which he outed Jack) to a national news network, intending his last act to free Jack from his charade of a life. Unfortunately, he also sent a copy of the video to Jack, which the queen intercepted. She stopped the mail and prevented the video from being aired.
Losing Joseph was a major turning point for Jack. He blamed himself (with good reason), but more than that, it showed him how damaging his habit of living a lie could be to those close to him. Unfortunately, the lesson he took from that was not to let anyone else close. After his mother maneuvered him out of a blackmail-inspired marriage (long story), Jack took the opportunity to choose his own bride, Lucinda Wolfson, while he was still too depressed to imagine actually falling in love again. Their relationship was unhealthy from the start, based as it was on an outright lie, but he did care for her in a platonic, protective sort of way.
Meanwhile, David was still hanging around being insufferably nice all the time. Jack had begrudgingly come to respect him as a soldier after David made his first close-range kill on Jack's behalf, but it wasn't until Silas started seeing David as a threat (not an alternative heir) that Jack was able to see him as nonthreatening. Which is of course when Silas decided to have David arrested for treason on false charges and asked Jack, as acting Minister of Information, to prosecute. The trial was...eventful, to say the least, but the important thing for our purposes is that this is where Jack grew a conscience. His father asked him to crucify David for the media, and Jack did so very effectively, using the public's (and his own) insecurities to convince them that David was too good to be true. What he didn't expect was that he'd get away with it. David was a national hero, and more than that, he was a truly good person. Jack isn't naive about much, but he honestly thought someone would see through his bullshit and defend David. But when even Michelle failed to come to David's aid, and Silas went so far as to convince David he was actually guilty of treason, Jack was forced to be the good guy for once. He exposed his father's fabrication of evidence and stood up for David on national television, which earned him accusations of treason all his own.
The subsequent events are ridiculously complicated, so I'll try to be concise: Jack's uncle had been planning a coup d'etat against Silas for months and had offered Jack a part in it as the new king. Jack, incorrectly assuming he'd get any real power out of the deal, agreed, and though he quickly regretted the decision, his uncle was less than willing to let him out of the bargain; either he could join up, or his uncle would kill him too. When Silas declared Jack a traitor, his uncle took him into hiding and prepared to strike, while David was sent off to Silas's secret prison, Gehenna, to be executed. On an unrelated whim, Jack's mother convinced Silas to give Jack another chance, since it's not like they had any other heirs hanging about. Jack came back just in time to step in front of the first of four bullets that an assassin (hired by his uncle) had aimed at Silas. Jack was not severely injured, but Silas took three rounds to the chest, and the ambulance that took him away was supposed to ensure that he didn't recover. But he did.
Jack ruled for all of a week. As part of the coup, he had arranged for David to be rescued from the firing squad and brought back to Altar Mansion. It seems as soon as Jack gave up on trying to hate David, he realized how much affection he had for the other man, and after Silas's supposed assassination, Jack asked David to serve as his advisor when he took the throne. Unfortunately, Jack's uncle had other plans. It quickly became clear that Jack was to be nothing more than a puppet, the face for his uncle's reign. Furious but essentially powerless to fight back when his uncle controlled all the troops, Jack played along, but after having his hopes and dreams of a kingship crushed, he took out his pain on his people. Technically he was only responsible for one death, but it was a very messy, public, and undeserved execution. David left to find Silas and returned with a small army of tanks to reinstate Silas as king.
If you want to pinpoint the singular biggest turning point in Jack's life, this was it. The sum total of his life up to this point had been dedicated to becoming king. He'd given up everything, denied himself every happiness and literally let the person he loved most die under the belief that when he became king, it would all be worth it. So it's difficult to overestimate how devastating it was for him to get within arm's reach of that goal and fail. As if being rejected by his people and his father wasn't enough, the prophet Reverend Samuels also informed him just before Silas reclaimed the throne that God himself did not want Jack to be king. So by the time Silas returned Jack pretty much just wanted to die, and in fact asked Silas to kill him.
Continuing with the theme of Silas is the worst father ever, Silas said no, and instead found a punishment worse than death: locking Jack in a room with his bride-to-be until they produced an heir. This is the point from which he'll arrive at Bete Noire.
Personality: Since I touched on a lot of how his life has shaped his personality in the history section, I'll just hit on the main constants here - which are hard to pin down, honestly, because Jack's outward presentation is remarkably labile. Jack is an extreme example of something most people do to some degree: compartmentalize their identities. You put on a different face for your boss than your best friend, Jack has a different face for everybody and every situation. This is part practicality, part survival mechanism: a ruler needs to wear many different hats, of course, but Jack takes this to an extreme, projecting so many different personas on a day-to-day basis that his internal self is nigh-inaccessible - which is intentional, no one can hurt him if they don't know who he really is. He's a charmer, a terrific lush on the club scene and a spoiled brat for the press, but when the situation call for it, he can also be a well-mannered future leader of the free world, the commander you'd follow into certain death, or the political opponent you expect to be gutted for crossing. Jack is very good at playing all of these parts and more, but he's gotten so used to doing so that it's difficult to separate his various masks from his actual identity anymore. He really is a charismatic hedonist, he really can be terrifyingly violent, and somewhere underneath all that, he really is a good leader who cares about the people under him. But when he plays those roles, his self-presentation is as much a lie as it is true. He's smart, he knows how to manipulate people to get what he wants, and he's very willing to reinvent himself to achieve his goals, even if that means burying his real self so deep even he can't find it anymore, to paraphrase canon.
Of course, Jack isn't especially happy living a constant lie, which shows in his most consistent personality trait: cynicism. Jack's default state of being is sarcastic, be it the light tease that underlies nearly everything that comes out of his mouth or a heady undercurrent of "I'd kind of like to kill myself lol." This is another defense mechanism, a way of coping with the fact that he often legitimately hates his life and feels powerless to do anything about it. His brand of humor has often been rooted in actual pain, so it's easy for him to cross the line between laughing at things that are funny and laughing at things that are so unfunny it hurts. Mocking his own pain also means he doesn't have to deal with it on a serious level, and neither does anyone else, which plays into his belief that no one wants to take his pain seriously anyway. Of course, half the reason he throws these sarcastic comments around in the first place is because he wants someone to care, be it about his own issues or whatever else he happens to be mocking. Similarly, when he throws his cynicism around it's usually because he wants to be proven wrong, not because he actually believes the world is a terrible place. He has a great amount of faith in humanity and hope for the future, he's just certain he'll be disappointed, so he rarely broadcasts anything but backhanded hints of his real hopes and dreams. It's difficult for Jack to be entirely sincere about anything, though when he is, he's whole-heartedly so.
In terms of internal psychology, Jack is a hot mess. Usually this just manifests in the above-mentioned constant sarcasm, wherein he quietly deals with whatever horrors are going on in his life by pretending they're some fantastic joke. This method is not always successful, however, given his degree of fucked-up'ness (technical term, that). He has Major Issues with both his parents, with being overwhelmed by his mother's manipulative tendencies and with never being good enough to earn his father's affection. When your father is a God-anointed king, daddy issues are only an inch away from God issues, and Jack has those in spades too. He's been under a somewhat ridiculous amount of pressure from all three for as long as he can remember, and since he has never been in a position to get back at any of them, he's learned to bottle up and redirect his not insignificant frustrations. So he's developed a bit of an explosive temper. He is extremely sensitive about certain issues, and when he's hurting, he tends to lash out at people completely unrelated to his pain - occasionally loved ones, but strangers are just as likely targets. Sometimes he literally beats said people to a pulp, but more often he makes use of his fantastic verbal skills and talent for finding people's weak spots to...rip them to shreds, basically. Uh. Thankfully that doesn't happen often.
Jack rarely comes off as a nice person. Charming, yes, to the point that, for brief periods of time, he really can make a person feel like the center of the universe, but this always ends badly. He's spoiled, petulant, and inherently kind of a jerk. However, I think the events of his canon show that he does have a hidden nugget of goodness underneath it all. His biblical equivalent is, after all, a heroic figure, and times of crisis tend to force those qualities to the surface. In his mind, playing the villain is something he's forced to do just to survive the insanity that is his life, but this act doesn't hold up under pressure. When his sister was in danger of being exposed to the media and even their mother refused to save her, Jack was the one to step in and offer his humiliation in place of hers. When David was about to be convicted of treason and Michelle failed to save him, Jack was the one to come forward and expose the whole mess. Getting Jack to do (or at least admit to doing) anything truly selfless is like pulling teeth, but he does care deeply about people, and in his own way, he's intensely loyal toward those he cares about.
Relatedly, because Jack spends so much time repressing his good character, he is also intensely drawn to people who are fundamentally good, e.g. David. Hearkening back to his disappointed-optimist/cynic mentality, he wants so badly to believe that good people (or at least perfectly moral leaders like his father was once rumored to be) actually exist, but he's similarly certain that all of them are too good to be true. This translates into a terrible habit of corrupting the innocent and doing his damnedest to prove everyone is just as sinful as he is, but again, what he wants most is to be proven wrong, even if the thought of anyone being that good makes him tremendously insecure about his own failings.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation: On the Kinsey scale, Jack is about a 5 or 5.5, a hair short of gay. However, in canon, he does sleep with a ridiculous number of women, which bears some explanation. On the one hand, he's trying way too hard to project a heterosexual playboy image to distract from where his true sexuality lies. However, his womanizing really goes beyond practicality - he sleeps with his mother's secretary, for example, for no better reason than to get on his mother's nerves in the distantly hypothetical situation that she even have reason to suspect. He goes through women faster than drinks, and while he sometimes puts a lot of effort into entertaining them, underneath that he's very blasé and even resentful toward them. He sleeps with women because it's easier, because his celebrity affords him a frightening level of access, and because he's lonely enough to try filling his emotional needs with whoever he can - but also because it makes him feel less powerless to exercise power over them. The women he chooses to sleep with are women whose social standing is significantly below his own; they're women he can control, to an extent, or women he wants to control. Not to get too Freudian here, but they're often substitutes for the women in his life who control him, i.e. his mother. Jack has a lot of control issues, so he sleeps with a lot of women.
It's safe to say Jack is at least very good at faking his attraction to women, and he doesn't get nothing out of sleeping with them - but at the same time, women are not enough for him. If they were, he honestly wouldn't bother with men. Being gay doesn't get much more inconvenient than when you're the heir apparent to a blood dynasty in a fairly anti-gay divine monarchy. His life would be much easier if he could ignore his interest in men, and the fact that he can't should tell you how high on the Kinsey scale he actually is despite his ridiculous tendency to sleep with every willing woman in the kingdom.
When it comes to men, Jack tends to be much more emotionally involved, but it's hard to tell that because he's extremely protective of his feelings. Sex with men is infinitely more satisfying for him, but it also leaves him wide open to blackmail by default. So that's fun. He compensates by being almost as controlling with his male partners as he is with his female partners. What he wants in his relationships is a near-equal power dynamic, with conflict only in the sense of playful competition; what he tends to end up with is a hugely disparate power dynamic, because in order to protect himself, he has to be able to control his partner. This makes for tumultuous and generally unhealthy relationships, often with people who literally depend on him for their livelihoods! Like...his bodyguards. Which is not exploitative at all. While he has fallen in love with men that he's slept with, he tends to keep them at arm's length and angst about it rather than foster any emotional intimacy, because he knows it can't last. Significantly, he doesn't think it's morally wrong for him to love or have sex with a man (or with anyone else, for that matter), nor does he think God will damn him for it. (Homophobia is a social prejudice in Kings, not sanctioned by religion.) He just knows it's not possible for him in the long-term, as crown prince, and he's irritated that he can't control his sexuality the same way he self-consciously rearranges every other aspect of his self-presentation.
Orientation aside, Jack is a sexual hedonist of the finest caliber. He's spent his experimental stage with endless resources, near-endless power over the people around him, and a mindset of Maybe if I keep digging, something will satisfy, so just...imagine what his sexual history is like. Sadly, since he's been mostly restricted to women, very little has satisfied, but he's gotten well-acquainted with the available options. He pushes the boundaries of his kinks in ways that are sometimes exploitative, which doesn't usually make him happy (actually it makes him a little scared of himself), but sometimes anything less intense is just not enough of a distraction, and that kind of moral desensitization makes him feel less vulnerable. (Yes, everything about him really can be summed up as "Jack is ~tremendously insecure~".)
Of course, all that was before his efforts to "control" his sexuality resulted in his lover, Joseph, committing suicide. So it's simplest to just pour a helping of guilt on top of that sexuality sundae and say Jack's feelings on sex are profoundly fucked up at this point. At some level, sure, he enjoys sex in the way that anybody enjoys sex, but lately it's either mindless, morally distressing and unsatisfying or too emotionally complicated for him to properly enjoy. Which won't stop him from trying, but there you go.
Powers: Jack doesn't have any powers per se, but Kings 'verse is pretty heavy on divine influence. Considering Jonathan is the son of a God-anointed king and a halfway important biblical hero, I think it's fair to say Jack would have a little residual divinity. In practical terms, that just means cross-fearing vampires shouldn't bite him, he has a vague awareness of the divine, and maybe if he ever prayed, God would throw him a bone once in a while.
Reason for playing: Jack opens up a lot of the themes that interest me, the biggest being issues with sexuality and identity, the psychological effects of violence, and moral ambiguity. The latter most is what I expect to explore in Bete Noire. Jack's tendency to compartmentalize his identity makes him able to embody a lot of contradictions. He's a loyal friend, a lover, and a good commander, which doesn't negate the fact that he's been accurately dubbed a terrible human being. He's done some bad things to people for arguably inadequate, selfish reasons, and while he's getting better at recognizing his wrongs, it's a process that could go either way. He has the potential to be an incredibly good person, a despicable human being, or aspects of both at once. Even as a biblical figure, he's part hero, part slaughterer of the Philistines. The ambiguity is what appeals to me about him most, and I think a setting like Bete Noire will offer an interesting opportunity for him to teeter between his better and baser sides. Plus the biblical-ish setting is particularly appropriate.
5. Samples
Third-Person:
There's a point in any descent when falling becomes indistinguishable from weightlessness. Time slows. Reference points disappear. The sinking feeling that started like a bead of lead in the pit of your stomach grows, seeps deep into your bones, and in that moment the sensation becomes so natural you can't remember what it was like not to fall.
Jack imagines that's just before you hit bottom.
Or at least one can hope. He's been in this room for - what, days? Weeks? He counted the first few, but then he asked himself why he bothered and couldn't find an answer. Lucinda has counted the days since, he's sure, but in worry lines beside her eyes; there's no place for chalk marks on the walls of their exquisitely decorated cell. (There's a stain on one now, though, where he threw a wine bottle just to see how fast the guards would run to stop him, which he thought was hilarious and Lucinda notably did not.) He's taken to sleeping in a chair facing the door so he doesn't have to wake up to what he's done to her, this woman who loves him, whose every flinch and ever-bitterer smile grate on his nerves a little more each day - tomorrow, or the next, that guilt will eat away the last of his self-control and maybe he'll snap, but not before morning.
He dreams of a journey. Down, of course, but when the path levels he keeps walking. He doesn't know how long, which doesn't surprise him only because he doesn't care how long, but at some point dirt and flattened leaves turn to asphalt, old and sunken down here and there with potholes, and he wonders why his father hasn't executed any pavers lately.
Only this isn't his city.
The air feels wrong. He notices that before the smell. Not that Shiloh smells like roses when it's garbage day in July, but you don't care - Shiloh is a city of glass and steel and light built on the will of God Himself, who are you to complain of the smell?
Here, the smell would be but the first of many complaints. Jack would also like to voice his objections to the poor sanitation, questionable construction techniques, general scarcity of bars that aren't complete dives, and most importantly the fact that whatever quiet emptiness he's always felt and patently ignored until Reverend Samuels gave it name (You are not the one He wants) is, now, distinctly present.
"Oh," he announces to no one in particular. The streetlamp, perhaps. He laughs, a short breath chased with a sickly sound, but his smile is wide. "So it can get worse."
Third-Person #2:
"Enjoying yourself, sir?"
Jack is slipping out of the guest room of his Shiloh apartment with well-practiced ease, leaving the evening's arm candy passed out in the bed beyond. He's still drunk himself, more than his lazily meandering gait betrays, but his nightly conquests never settle him enough for sleep, and besides, he'd rather have a smoke.
That his serviceman is posted in the hallway doesn't surprise him. He had forgotten, however, that it was Stewart's shift, and consequently that otherwise innocuous question may very well not be.
"Hm," he responds noncommittally, which is to say no, not particularly, but rather than answer, he strolls over to commandeer a bit of wall beside his serviceman. "Why, are you jealous?"
"Of whom, sir?" Stu tosses back, innocent.
"That is the question." Jack leans his head back against the wall and eyes his serviceman's withheld smile, considering. Stewart is just playing, maybe, hoping a little repartee will pass the time and nothing more. The prince's bodyguards see him at his worst; Jack bets they know better than to get too close.
But then, he's has always enjoyed being the bad influence.
"Don't worry, Stu, I won't make you choose," he reassures, pressing his tongue against the back of his teeth for half a moment before pushing off the wall. "I think the girls are tired, though."
Stewart catches his eye a little too long. And you?
Jack smiles like the curve of a knife, a silent answer to the unasked question, and turns to head upstairs without looking to see if his serviceman will follow. It's his job to follow.
He tells himself Stewart has the guts to say something if he isn't interested. (When they get somewhere dark enough he pulls the taller man in by the tie like an eager lover, like maybe if they act the part he can forget the difference.) He's not wrong. But there's always a grey area between being interested and being uninterested enough to turn down a prince. Jack relies on that subtle certainty, feeds on it more than he'll admit - more than he's willing to think about. He doesn't want to think.
Once the door is closed, he doesn't have much reason to. It's quick and desperate, like the first spark of contact immolates Jack's always-tenuous self control and everything after is sheer intensity, days or weeks of pent-up frustrations channeled into this one, brief chance to satisfy an ever-present need. But Stu has handled his mercurial charge in more volatile circumstances. He's learned you don't restrain the prince; you just try to point him in a more constructive direction. (This, for the record, could quickly become his favorite constructive direction.)
"I'll have to explain that to tomorrow night's fare, you know," Jack complains of a distinct teeth mark on his collarbone in the fluid haze of sweat and breath after. The tease is entirely unabashed, like if he pretends they're good friends, it's almost as if they are. As if he could afford to let anyone that close.
Stu humors him, because it seems cruel not to. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."
"I will. I'll simply tell the truth - and assign you an appropriate pseudonym, of course. Stewartina, Stella, Stacy, Starlene... Don't give me that look. You tolerate me because you adore me. I'm insufferably charming, and one day I'll be able to order your head on a platter, so you'd best start buttering me up now."
"'Start'?" He gives the prince a look.
"...'Continue' might be more accurate, granted."
Name (or internet handle): Jenni
Current characters in Bete Noire: None!
2. Character Information
Name: Jack Benjamin
Livejournal Username: dugdowndeep
Fandom: NBC's Kings
Image: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_UBeyWmBvlUg/TN5Od6JYZxI/AAAAAAAAAoc/vS2L-KAukNI/s800/yarly%20028.png
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Jack is a slick, well-put-together twenty-four-year-old-prince. At 5'10", he's a little on the short side, but he's well built and generally confident about his body. He has light blue eyes, dark brown hair that curls a little if he lets it, and a five-o'clock shadow that can only be avoided via a particularly judicious shaving regimen. He dresses expensively, alternating between dressy and casual as the situation requires and seems equally comfortable in both. His tastes tend to be sharp, trendy and a little quirky, like he's purposely disrupting what would otherwise be a very flattering outfit.
History: Jack was born four minutes after his twin sister Michelle, making him the second child of Silas and Rose Benjamin, king and queen of the Royal Kingdom of Gilboa. Gilboa is a modern-day monarchy analogous to ancient Israel, with Silas being the counterpart to the biblical King Saul, while Jack is the counterpart to Saul's son, Jonathan. But while Gilboa and Israel bear a striking resemblance in terms of history and geography, Gilboa is a pastiche of cultural anachronisms more so than a reinvention of Israel. They talk like they've read too much Shakespeare, make war like it's WWI or WWII, live in 21st-century cities, and govern like the Old Testament.
Jack was raised a prince, in all the privilege and luxury that position implies. As the first male child, he was assumed to be Silas's heir and was brought up under the belief that the only path before him was to become king, but legally the monarchy was never declared a blood dynasty, let alone a patriarchal one. Thus Jack grew up with a constant need to prove himself worthy of the throne, both to his people and to his father. Unfortunately for Jack, the latter consistently withheld his approval, holding Jack to higher standards than he could reach. As a result, Jack's childhood years were split between trying very, very hard to impress everyone and getting into ungodly amounts of trouble acting out.
A large portion of Jack's life has been spent in the military, in some form or other. As a teenager he was sent to Gilboa's finest military academy, from which he probably would have been expelled if anyone had had the guts to expel their future sovereign. He continued to be trouble throughout his teenage years, but trouble took on new forms: alcohol and recreational drugs, wild parties, sexual exploration, etc. He discovered his rather problematic sexuality early, and the effort of constantly hiding that (along with every other politically unsound aspect of his life) left him exhausted, frustrated, and generally miserable. Bingeing offered a distraction, and being the life of the party let him have control over one tiny sphere of his life at a time when he felt like everything else was dictated by his family and his future as king. After graduation, he enlisted and went to war against Gath, which meant partying less often, but he just partied harder when he had the chance. Even in the middle of a war, Jack is the kind of person who's capable of (mostly) turning off the internal soldier for whatever hours or days or weeks he has free; when he wasn't in uniform, he took full advantage of the time to spoil his buddies rotten and dig to profound depths of debauchery.
Despite Jack's insane behavior on the sidelines, the military was a formative experience for him. It was one of the few places where his money and status as prince didn't get him everything (though it did allow him more leeway than most). His accomplishments as a soldier meant more to him because he actually worked for them. This is where Jack learned to be a leader and to take care of those under him. The military shaped him into a stronger person with values that, while they may not have anchored in his conscience until later in life, at least made him proud to adhere to from time to time. Unfortunately, his time in the Gilboan army also pushed the limits of what he would do for God and country, and Jack was not the type of person whose limits needed pushing. He went to some morally distressing extremes in his efforts to prove himself as a soldier and later as a commander, including interrogation techniques that probably would not adhere to the Geneva Convention if such a thing existed in his universe. (Luckily, Gilboa isn't big on human rights anyway.)
A few months ago, his unit was ambushed and Jack, along with one of his men, was taken hostage. Enter one David Shepherd, lowly soldier, who single-handedly took down a "Goliath" tank and crossed enemy lines to rescue Jack. The heroic act propelled David into fame, which Jack was less than pleased with. If Jack had died behind enemy lines, at least he would have been a war hero; coming back to David's parade and his own court martial inquiry was not kosher, and it did not endear him to David. David's interest in Jack's sister and the king's affection for the young hero made David doubly a threat - since Michelle was the oldest, marrying her could easily make David king instead of Jack. Jack fought back against this perceived threat any way he could. He leaked pictures of David with another woman to the press in an effort to scare Michelle off, he tried to get David's brother executed for treason so that David would leave the capital, he punched David in the face when they were on special assignment together... their relationship was off to a rocky start.
At the same time, Jack was going through some rather massive personal issues. His father had ever-so-kindly informed Jack that he had known about his sexuality for years, was disgusted with him for it, and would never respect him or let him be king if he didn't straighten out. When Jack was done shaking in his boots (Silas Benjamin: most terrifying father alive), he tried to accept the fact that he would never have an authentic relationship with anyone, ever, and determined to cut men out of his love life entirely. That might not have been so bad if Jack hadn't been in a serious relationship at the time. While his relationship with Joseph Lasile was limited by the extreme discretion Jack's public position required, this was much more than a fling. Joseph didn't take it well when Jack pushed him away without an explanation or even a goodbye. A month later, Jack was able to sneak back and see him during a city-wide blackout, only to leave (likely for good) as soon as the lights came back on. Joseph realized that not only would he and Jack never be together, but Jack would never have any kind of happiness if he didn't come out to the public. Joseph committed suicide the next morning. He sent his suicide note (a video goodbye in which he outed Jack) to a national news network, intending his last act to free Jack from his charade of a life. Unfortunately, he also sent a copy of the video to Jack, which the queen intercepted. She stopped the mail and prevented the video from being aired.
Losing Joseph was a major turning point for Jack. He blamed himself (with good reason), but more than that, it showed him how damaging his habit of living a lie could be to those close to him. Unfortunately, the lesson he took from that was not to let anyone else close. After his mother maneuvered him out of a blackmail-inspired marriage (long story), Jack took the opportunity to choose his own bride, Lucinda Wolfson, while he was still too depressed to imagine actually falling in love again. Their relationship was unhealthy from the start, based as it was on an outright lie, but he did care for her in a platonic, protective sort of way.
Meanwhile, David was still hanging around being insufferably nice all the time. Jack had begrudgingly come to respect him as a soldier after David made his first close-range kill on Jack's behalf, but it wasn't until Silas started seeing David as a threat (not an alternative heir) that Jack was able to see him as nonthreatening. Which is of course when Silas decided to have David arrested for treason on false charges and asked Jack, as acting Minister of Information, to prosecute. The trial was...eventful, to say the least, but the important thing for our purposes is that this is where Jack grew a conscience. His father asked him to crucify David for the media, and Jack did so very effectively, using the public's (and his own) insecurities to convince them that David was too good to be true. What he didn't expect was that he'd get away with it. David was a national hero, and more than that, he was a truly good person. Jack isn't naive about much, but he honestly thought someone would see through his bullshit and defend David. But when even Michelle failed to come to David's aid, and Silas went so far as to convince David he was actually guilty of treason, Jack was forced to be the good guy for once. He exposed his father's fabrication of evidence and stood up for David on national television, which earned him accusations of treason all his own.
The subsequent events are ridiculously complicated, so I'll try to be concise: Jack's uncle had been planning a coup d'etat against Silas for months and had offered Jack a part in it as the new king. Jack, incorrectly assuming he'd get any real power out of the deal, agreed, and though he quickly regretted the decision, his uncle was less than willing to let him out of the bargain; either he could join up, or his uncle would kill him too. When Silas declared Jack a traitor, his uncle took him into hiding and prepared to strike, while David was sent off to Silas's secret prison, Gehenna, to be executed. On an unrelated whim, Jack's mother convinced Silas to give Jack another chance, since it's not like they had any other heirs hanging about. Jack came back just in time to step in front of the first of four bullets that an assassin (hired by his uncle) had aimed at Silas. Jack was not severely injured, but Silas took three rounds to the chest, and the ambulance that took him away was supposed to ensure that he didn't recover. But he did.
Jack ruled for all of a week. As part of the coup, he had arranged for David to be rescued from the firing squad and brought back to Altar Mansion. It seems as soon as Jack gave up on trying to hate David, he realized how much affection he had for the other man, and after Silas's supposed assassination, Jack asked David to serve as his advisor when he took the throne. Unfortunately, Jack's uncle had other plans. It quickly became clear that Jack was to be nothing more than a puppet, the face for his uncle's reign. Furious but essentially powerless to fight back when his uncle controlled all the troops, Jack played along, but after having his hopes and dreams of a kingship crushed, he took out his pain on his people. Technically he was only responsible for one death, but it was a very messy, public, and undeserved execution. David left to find Silas and returned with a small army of tanks to reinstate Silas as king.
If you want to pinpoint the singular biggest turning point in Jack's life, this was it. The sum total of his life up to this point had been dedicated to becoming king. He'd given up everything, denied himself every happiness and literally let the person he loved most die under the belief that when he became king, it would all be worth it. So it's difficult to overestimate how devastating it was for him to get within arm's reach of that goal and fail. As if being rejected by his people and his father wasn't enough, the prophet Reverend Samuels also informed him just before Silas reclaimed the throne that God himself did not want Jack to be king. So by the time Silas returned Jack pretty much just wanted to die, and in fact asked Silas to kill him.
Continuing with the theme of Silas is the worst father ever, Silas said no, and instead found a punishment worse than death: locking Jack in a room with his bride-to-be until they produced an heir. This is the point from which he'll arrive at Bete Noire.
Personality: Since I touched on a lot of how his life has shaped his personality in the history section, I'll just hit on the main constants here - which are hard to pin down, honestly, because Jack's outward presentation is remarkably labile. Jack is an extreme example of something most people do to some degree: compartmentalize their identities. You put on a different face for your boss than your best friend, Jack has a different face for everybody and every situation. This is part practicality, part survival mechanism: a ruler needs to wear many different hats, of course, but Jack takes this to an extreme, projecting so many different personas on a day-to-day basis that his internal self is nigh-inaccessible - which is intentional, no one can hurt him if they don't know who he really is. He's a charmer, a terrific lush on the club scene and a spoiled brat for the press, but when the situation call for it, he can also be a well-mannered future leader of the free world, the commander you'd follow into certain death, or the political opponent you expect to be gutted for crossing. Jack is very good at playing all of these parts and more, but he's gotten so used to doing so that it's difficult to separate his various masks from his actual identity anymore. He really is a charismatic hedonist, he really can be terrifyingly violent, and somewhere underneath all that, he really is a good leader who cares about the people under him. But when he plays those roles, his self-presentation is as much a lie as it is true. He's smart, he knows how to manipulate people to get what he wants, and he's very willing to reinvent himself to achieve his goals, even if that means burying his real self so deep even he can't find it anymore, to paraphrase canon.
Of course, Jack isn't especially happy living a constant lie, which shows in his most consistent personality trait: cynicism. Jack's default state of being is sarcastic, be it the light tease that underlies nearly everything that comes out of his mouth or a heady undercurrent of "I'd kind of like to kill myself lol." This is another defense mechanism, a way of coping with the fact that he often legitimately hates his life and feels powerless to do anything about it. His brand of humor has often been rooted in actual pain, so it's easy for him to cross the line between laughing at things that are funny and laughing at things that are so unfunny it hurts. Mocking his own pain also means he doesn't have to deal with it on a serious level, and neither does anyone else, which plays into his belief that no one wants to take his pain seriously anyway. Of course, half the reason he throws these sarcastic comments around in the first place is because he wants someone to care, be it about his own issues or whatever else he happens to be mocking. Similarly, when he throws his cynicism around it's usually because he wants to be proven wrong, not because he actually believes the world is a terrible place. He has a great amount of faith in humanity and hope for the future, he's just certain he'll be disappointed, so he rarely broadcasts anything but backhanded hints of his real hopes and dreams. It's difficult for Jack to be entirely sincere about anything, though when he is, he's whole-heartedly so.
In terms of internal psychology, Jack is a hot mess. Usually this just manifests in the above-mentioned constant sarcasm, wherein he quietly deals with whatever horrors are going on in his life by pretending they're some fantastic joke. This method is not always successful, however, given his degree of fucked-up'ness (technical term, that). He has Major Issues with both his parents, with being overwhelmed by his mother's manipulative tendencies and with never being good enough to earn his father's affection. When your father is a God-anointed king, daddy issues are only an inch away from God issues, and Jack has those in spades too. He's been under a somewhat ridiculous amount of pressure from all three for as long as he can remember, and since he has never been in a position to get back at any of them, he's learned to bottle up and redirect his not insignificant frustrations. So he's developed a bit of an explosive temper. He is extremely sensitive about certain issues, and when he's hurting, he tends to lash out at people completely unrelated to his pain - occasionally loved ones, but strangers are just as likely targets. Sometimes he literally beats said people to a pulp, but more often he makes use of his fantastic verbal skills and talent for finding people's weak spots to...rip them to shreds, basically. Uh. Thankfully that doesn't happen often.
Jack rarely comes off as a nice person. Charming, yes, to the point that, for brief periods of time, he really can make a person feel like the center of the universe, but this always ends badly. He's spoiled, petulant, and inherently kind of a jerk. However, I think the events of his canon show that he does have a hidden nugget of goodness underneath it all. His biblical equivalent is, after all, a heroic figure, and times of crisis tend to force those qualities to the surface. In his mind, playing the villain is something he's forced to do just to survive the insanity that is his life, but this act doesn't hold up under pressure. When his sister was in danger of being exposed to the media and even their mother refused to save her, Jack was the one to step in and offer his humiliation in place of hers. When David was about to be convicted of treason and Michelle failed to save him, Jack was the one to come forward and expose the whole mess. Getting Jack to do (or at least admit to doing) anything truly selfless is like pulling teeth, but he does care deeply about people, and in his own way, he's intensely loyal toward those he cares about.
Relatedly, because Jack spends so much time repressing his good character, he is also intensely drawn to people who are fundamentally good, e.g. David. Hearkening back to his disappointed-optimist/cynic mentality, he wants so badly to believe that good people (or at least perfectly moral leaders like his father was once rumored to be) actually exist, but he's similarly certain that all of them are too good to be true. This translates into a terrible habit of corrupting the innocent and doing his damnedest to prove everyone is just as sinful as he is, but again, what he wants most is to be proven wrong, even if the thought of anyone being that good makes him tremendously insecure about his own failings.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation: On the Kinsey scale, Jack is about a 5 or 5.5, a hair short of gay. However, in canon, he does sleep with a ridiculous number of women, which bears some explanation. On the one hand, he's trying way too hard to project a heterosexual playboy image to distract from where his true sexuality lies. However, his womanizing really goes beyond practicality - he sleeps with his mother's secretary, for example, for no better reason than to get on his mother's nerves in the distantly hypothetical situation that she even have reason to suspect. He goes through women faster than drinks, and while he sometimes puts a lot of effort into entertaining them, underneath that he's very blasé and even resentful toward them. He sleeps with women because it's easier, because his celebrity affords him a frightening level of access, and because he's lonely enough to try filling his emotional needs with whoever he can - but also because it makes him feel less powerless to exercise power over them. The women he chooses to sleep with are women whose social standing is significantly below his own; they're women he can control, to an extent, or women he wants to control. Not to get too Freudian here, but they're often substitutes for the women in his life who control him, i.e. his mother. Jack has a lot of control issues, so he sleeps with a lot of women.
It's safe to say Jack is at least very good at faking his attraction to women, and he doesn't get nothing out of sleeping with them - but at the same time, women are not enough for him. If they were, he honestly wouldn't bother with men. Being gay doesn't get much more inconvenient than when you're the heir apparent to a blood dynasty in a fairly anti-gay divine monarchy. His life would be much easier if he could ignore his interest in men, and the fact that he can't should tell you how high on the Kinsey scale he actually is despite his ridiculous tendency to sleep with every willing woman in the kingdom.
When it comes to men, Jack tends to be much more emotionally involved, but it's hard to tell that because he's extremely protective of his feelings. Sex with men is infinitely more satisfying for him, but it also leaves him wide open to blackmail by default. So that's fun. He compensates by being almost as controlling with his male partners as he is with his female partners. What he wants in his relationships is a near-equal power dynamic, with conflict only in the sense of playful competition; what he tends to end up with is a hugely disparate power dynamic, because in order to protect himself, he has to be able to control his partner. This makes for tumultuous and generally unhealthy relationships, often with people who literally depend on him for their livelihoods! Like...his bodyguards. Which is not exploitative at all. While he has fallen in love with men that he's slept with, he tends to keep them at arm's length and angst about it rather than foster any emotional intimacy, because he knows it can't last. Significantly, he doesn't think it's morally wrong for him to love or have sex with a man (or with anyone else, for that matter), nor does he think God will damn him for it. (Homophobia is a social prejudice in Kings, not sanctioned by religion.) He just knows it's not possible for him in the long-term, as crown prince, and he's irritated that he can't control his sexuality the same way he self-consciously rearranges every other aspect of his self-presentation.
Orientation aside, Jack is a sexual hedonist of the finest caliber. He's spent his experimental stage with endless resources, near-endless power over the people around him, and a mindset of Maybe if I keep digging, something will satisfy, so just...imagine what his sexual history is like. Sadly, since he's been mostly restricted to women, very little has satisfied, but he's gotten well-acquainted with the available options. He pushes the boundaries of his kinks in ways that are sometimes exploitative, which doesn't usually make him happy (actually it makes him a little scared of himself), but sometimes anything less intense is just not enough of a distraction, and that kind of moral desensitization makes him feel less vulnerable. (Yes, everything about him really can be summed up as "Jack is ~tremendously insecure~".)
Of course, all that was before his efforts to "control" his sexuality resulted in his lover, Joseph, committing suicide. So it's simplest to just pour a helping of guilt on top of that sexuality sundae and say Jack's feelings on sex are profoundly fucked up at this point. At some level, sure, he enjoys sex in the way that anybody enjoys sex, but lately it's either mindless, morally distressing and unsatisfying or too emotionally complicated for him to properly enjoy. Which won't stop him from trying, but there you go.
Powers: Jack doesn't have any powers per se, but Kings 'verse is pretty heavy on divine influence. Considering Jonathan is the son of a God-anointed king and a halfway important biblical hero, I think it's fair to say Jack would have a little residual divinity. In practical terms, that just means cross-fearing vampires shouldn't bite him, he has a vague awareness of the divine, and maybe if he ever prayed, God would throw him a bone once in a while.
Reason for playing: Jack opens up a lot of the themes that interest me, the biggest being issues with sexuality and identity, the psychological effects of violence, and moral ambiguity. The latter most is what I expect to explore in Bete Noire. Jack's tendency to compartmentalize his identity makes him able to embody a lot of contradictions. He's a loyal friend, a lover, and a good commander, which doesn't negate the fact that he's been accurately dubbed a terrible human being. He's done some bad things to people for arguably inadequate, selfish reasons, and while he's getting better at recognizing his wrongs, it's a process that could go either way. He has the potential to be an incredibly good person, a despicable human being, or aspects of both at once. Even as a biblical figure, he's part hero, part slaughterer of the Philistines. The ambiguity is what appeals to me about him most, and I think a setting like Bete Noire will offer an interesting opportunity for him to teeter between his better and baser sides. Plus the biblical-ish setting is particularly appropriate.
5. Samples
Third-Person:
There's a point in any descent when falling becomes indistinguishable from weightlessness. Time slows. Reference points disappear. The sinking feeling that started like a bead of lead in the pit of your stomach grows, seeps deep into your bones, and in that moment the sensation becomes so natural you can't remember what it was like not to fall.
Jack imagines that's just before you hit bottom.
Or at least one can hope. He's been in this room for - what, days? Weeks? He counted the first few, but then he asked himself why he bothered and couldn't find an answer. Lucinda has counted the days since, he's sure, but in worry lines beside her eyes; there's no place for chalk marks on the walls of their exquisitely decorated cell. (There's a stain on one now, though, where he threw a wine bottle just to see how fast the guards would run to stop him, which he thought was hilarious and Lucinda notably did not.) He's taken to sleeping in a chair facing the door so he doesn't have to wake up to what he's done to her, this woman who loves him, whose every flinch and ever-bitterer smile grate on his nerves a little more each day - tomorrow, or the next, that guilt will eat away the last of his self-control and maybe he'll snap, but not before morning.
He dreams of a journey. Down, of course, but when the path levels he keeps walking. He doesn't know how long, which doesn't surprise him only because he doesn't care how long, but at some point dirt and flattened leaves turn to asphalt, old and sunken down here and there with potholes, and he wonders why his father hasn't executed any pavers lately.
Only this isn't his city.
The air feels wrong. He notices that before the smell. Not that Shiloh smells like roses when it's garbage day in July, but you don't care - Shiloh is a city of glass and steel and light built on the will of God Himself, who are you to complain of the smell?
Here, the smell would be but the first of many complaints. Jack would also like to voice his objections to the poor sanitation, questionable construction techniques, general scarcity of bars that aren't complete dives, and most importantly the fact that whatever quiet emptiness he's always felt and patently ignored until Reverend Samuels gave it name (You are not the one He wants) is, now, distinctly present.
"Oh," he announces to no one in particular. The streetlamp, perhaps. He laughs, a short breath chased with a sickly sound, but his smile is wide. "So it can get worse."
Third-Person #2:
"Enjoying yourself, sir?"
Jack is slipping out of the guest room of his Shiloh apartment with well-practiced ease, leaving the evening's arm candy passed out in the bed beyond. He's still drunk himself, more than his lazily meandering gait betrays, but his nightly conquests never settle him enough for sleep, and besides, he'd rather have a smoke.
That his serviceman is posted in the hallway doesn't surprise him. He had forgotten, however, that it was Stewart's shift, and consequently that otherwise innocuous question may very well not be.
"Hm," he responds noncommittally, which is to say no, not particularly, but rather than answer, he strolls over to commandeer a bit of wall beside his serviceman. "Why, are you jealous?"
"Of whom, sir?" Stu tosses back, innocent.
"That is the question." Jack leans his head back against the wall and eyes his serviceman's withheld smile, considering. Stewart is just playing, maybe, hoping a little repartee will pass the time and nothing more. The prince's bodyguards see him at his worst; Jack bets they know better than to get too close.
But then, he's has always enjoyed being the bad influence.
"Don't worry, Stu, I won't make you choose," he reassures, pressing his tongue against the back of his teeth for half a moment before pushing off the wall. "I think the girls are tired, though."
Stewart catches his eye a little too long. And you?
Jack smiles like the curve of a knife, a silent answer to the unasked question, and turns to head upstairs without looking to see if his serviceman will follow. It's his job to follow.
He tells himself Stewart has the guts to say something if he isn't interested. (When they get somewhere dark enough he pulls the taller man in by the tie like an eager lover, like maybe if they act the part he can forget the difference.) He's not wrong. But there's always a grey area between being interested and being uninterested enough to turn down a prince. Jack relies on that subtle certainty, feeds on it more than he'll admit - more than he's willing to think about. He doesn't want to think.
Once the door is closed, he doesn't have much reason to. It's quick and desperate, like the first spark of contact immolates Jack's always-tenuous self control and everything after is sheer intensity, days or weeks of pent-up frustrations channeled into this one, brief chance to satisfy an ever-present need. But Stu has handled his mercurial charge in more volatile circumstances. He's learned you don't restrain the prince; you just try to point him in a more constructive direction. (This, for the record, could quickly become his favorite constructive direction.)
"I'll have to explain that to tomorrow night's fare, you know," Jack complains of a distinct teeth mark on his collarbone in the fluid haze of sweat and breath after. The tease is entirely unabashed, like if he pretends they're good friends, it's almost as if they are. As if he could afford to let anyone that close.
Stu humors him, because it seems cruel not to. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."
"I will. I'll simply tell the truth - and assign you an appropriate pseudonym, of course. Stewartina, Stella, Stacy, Starlene... Don't give me that look. You tolerate me because you adore me. I'm insufferably charming, and one day I'll be able to order your head on a platter, so you'd best start buttering me up now."
"'Start'?" He gives the prince a look.
"...'Continue' might be more accurate, granted."