Gretchen Di Val
| Gretchen Di Val | |
| Sect: | Camarilla • |
|---|---|
| Clan: | Toreador (Masquerade) • |
| City: | Canberra -- |
| Pack/Coterie: | ? |
| Title: | ? |
| Sire: | ? |
| Lineage: | ? |
| Embraced: | ? |
| Generation: | ? |
| Player: | P. Saunders |
| Storyteller: | Canberra VST |
Personal Information
Appearance
A willowy young woman, graceful and delicate, with pale skin, dark grey eyes and platinum hair, given to dainty, feminine fashion, with a marked penchant for pastels and soft silhouettes. With wide eyes and doll-like features, she's undeniably pretty - if somewhat bloodless-looking.
Personality
Dreamy and fragile, Gretchen's a romantic soul. As delicate as the petals of a rose, she's a little girl's dream of a fairytale princess, and a grown man's fantasy of a Waterhouse nymph. However, her highly neurotic, hyper-needy edge and tendency towards violent mood-swings pings her on many a Malkavian's radar.
Mortal World
The world knows Gretchen Di Val as a performing polymath; a prodigious violin concert soloist, pianist, composer, and the prima ballerina with the Queensland Ballet Company, who in the 2015 season danced the part of Titania in the Company's acclaimed presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
It's something of a family tradition, musical and dancing genius.
And something of a family name.
Information Known by Kindred Society
Gretchen Di Val came from Boston, in 1932, with, curiously, a Southern accent, a German first name and a Welsh last, entrusted to the stewardship of the Elder, La Belle Dame d'Lumiere. First childe of Kaalia, and of mysterious provenance, she settled quickly enough into life at the Brisbane Court. Her mesmerising dancing, and beautiful music, soon won her the patronage of both Mr Parker, the Harpy, and Nicolette DuQuesne, the Ventrue primogen - as well as, eventually, apprenticeship to the former.
In 1944, she was left alone, when La Belle Dame set out on a journey overseas to bring home the rest of her family. Upon the return of herself, the ancient Vashti, and Kaalia to Brisbane, they found she had become embroiled in a scandalous relationship with an undesirable, far below her station. The Elders quickly put the affair to bed, and a chastened Gretchen was thereafter a model of good behaviour. The Elder Vashti left, to found the Court of Canberra, in the early '80s, and then in 2013, sent word that Kaalia and Gretchen were to follow her.
Kaalia did, but Gretchen was in the middle of back-to-back seasons with the Queensland Ballet Company and touring with the New South Wales Symphony orchestra, and so was unavailable at the time.
Timeline
OOC Knowledge Only
- 1912: Born Edith Sumner in Mystic, Connecticut.
- 1917: Her youngest Uncle dies at Passchendaele. Though little "Edie" is too young to understand what has happened, the family's life will be forever darkened, and her own thus marked, by his death.
- 1918: Begins dancing.
- 1919: Begins learning to play the violin.
- 1920: Begins learning the piano.
- 1922: Owing to her splendid talent for all three, is often asked to entertain her parents' visitors, in the drawing room. Her parents are gay, gregarious pillars of the local community, and the house is often the site of dinner and cocktail parties. Little Edie is quickly educated in the importance of keeping up appearances.
- 1925: Her talent as a dancer sees her sent away to France to study under Isadora Duncan, herself.
- 1927: With the death of her teacher, and somewhat heartbroken, Edie returns to her family in America, and writes her first piece; a violin solo "requiem" for her mentor. Her parents, concerned by her sudden retreat into swings between sullen depression and screeching tantrums, enter her into a local dance academy, in the hopes of distracting her from her grief.
- 1928: Edie's parents discover her to be romantically entangled with the older, and very married director of the school, and pull her from the academy. Her behaviour worsens, becoming more and more erratic, as she spends most days locked in her room, composing pieces on her piano and violin while sobbing loudly, and then tearing them up in a fury and flinging things around the room. When she is seen, she is a ghost - listless, empty-eyed, refusing to eat, and descending into shrieking rages when provoked or alternately clinging, weeping, to her mother's skirts. She grows thin and drawn, and takes to wearing longer sleeves and hemlines, in spite of the fashion. The Sumners stop hosting visitors to the house.
- 1929: Edie's mother discovers a straight-razor in her dirty clothes basket, and says nothing, but that night, and with a stomach heavy with dread, bursts in on her in the bath. In between her daughter's indignant screeching, and lunging for a towel, Mrs Sumner glimpses deep, angry lacerations scoring the insides of her thighs and upper arms and breaks down in tears. Strong men with a van are called, and they take a weeping, pleading Edie away to Danvers State Hospital, where she is diagnosed with "hysteria" and held for some months.
- 1930: Shortly after Christmas, Edie is allowed to come home. She is different; gay and lively, sweet and gentle. Her parents believe her cured. The family begins to entertain again, and Edie dances, and plays her instruments for the visitors. Many remark upon how charming she is, and how pretty, and how (this, always the last mentioned and least esteemed) talented. In time, a romance blossoms between her and the handsome and promising son of one of her father's work superiors, and all looks bright. Mr Sumner beams with pride, and imagines his climb through the ranks. Mrs Sumner plans for her daughter's future, and begins to crochet a trousseau.
- 1931: Edie and her beau are engaged, and all the house is a-twitter with activity. Edie sews a wedding dress while her parents excitedly plan the wedding. Her fiance, accompanied by her in-laws to-be are over what seems like three times a week, and she dances and plays for them until she feels her legs and fingers must surely fall off, while her parents smile on. Great plans are made for the wedding, and all the neighbourhood is to be invited. Her mother picks out flowers, alight with joy.
- A month before the wedding, a letter comes for her - an acceptance into a ballet Company in Boston, to which she had applied in secret - and her father reads it out in disbelief, then shakes it in her face in a rage. Edie weeps, and shakes, and promises it means nothing to her, that she never expected to receive an offer, as he throws it in disgust into the kitchen bin.
- A week before the wedding, she takes a cab to her fiance's family home, crawls in through the window of his room, to his shock and delight, and into bed beside him. Before dawn, as he sleeps, she slips out again. When her parents wake, that morning, they find her gone; her drawers empty, her wardrobe stripped, her case missing, and no note of where she's gone.
- After hitchhiking and train-jumping all the way to Boston, she finds her way to a small, grimey alley, and knocks on a door, a stained, crumpled, greasy letter clutched tighter than life itself in one trembling hand.
- 1932: Having adopted the rather more glamourous name of Gretchen Di Val, and a Southern accent befitting a Tennessee Williams heroine, Edie is now all stolen mystique and affected glamour. She is living in a dingy bedsit, she is slightly starving, but she is dancing for her life, and so she is happy. The once-great company had fallen on hard times, but to Edie, now Gretchen, it is Heaven itself. In the spring of 1932 she dances the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Company's small production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. The audience is small, but in attendance is the young Toreador, Kaalia. Entranced by Gretchen's performance, the Kindred is waiting for her outside the stage door when she leaves. Delighted to meet a fan, who isn't simply some over-earnest sailor enamoured or greasy wolf hoping to seduce her, the young dancer is all-too-pleased to walk, and talk, with the admiring vampire - unaware of the hunger that belies that fascination, or the danger that lurks in those arms. When they reach her small apartment, Gretchen she invites the beautiful stranger up for a late-night coffee, hoping to continue their conversation.
- Shortly before dawn, Kaalia bursts into the haven she shares with Vashti, bloody tears streaming down her face, and the pale, limp body of the ill-fated ballerina in her arms. "I took too much," she sobs, and as the cold, stiffening body of the pretty girl begins to stir, and her eyelashes to flutter, Vashti whispers, "Kaalia - what did you do?"
- A deal is struck with the Prince of Boston to forgive the fledgeling's accidental indiscretion, but only if the new Embrace is sent into exile, effective immediately. A disoriented and bewildered Gretchen is pulled from the arms of her new friend, and sent away from everything she has ever known, to the strange, distant nation of Australia, where she is placed under the personal tutelage of La Belle Dame d'Lumiere.
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Recent History
2013
- JUN - Details
- JUL - Details
- AUG - Details
- SEP - Details
- OCT - Details
- NOV - Details
- DEC - Details
Lineage
Known Sire
-
Known Siblings
-
Known Childer
None known.
Known Grand-childer
None known.
Quotes
Quotes By
"Quote" - reference
Quotes About
"Quote" - reference
Conversations
"Quote" - reference
Rumours
Inspirations and Soundtrack
Inspirations
- Lucille Sharpe, Crimson Peak
- Painted Doll, The Devil's Carnival
- Nina Sayers, Black Swan
- Juliet Hulme, Heavenly Creatures
- Claudia, Interview With The Vampire
- Daisy Buchanan, The Great Gatsby
- Emilie Autumn, in general
- Lindsey Stirling
Soundtrack
- ¿Viva La Gloria? by Green Day: The traces of blood always follow you home, like the mascara-tears from your getaway
- Use Me by Garbage: Use me, I'm beautiful. Take me, I'm yours. Hurt me, it feels like medicine, and all I deserve
- Time To Dance by Panic! At The Disco: Give me envy, give me malice, give me your attention
- Strawberry Gashes by Jack Off Jill: Curse me, sold her; the poison that runs its course through her
- Bad Habits by Billy Field: Can't help myself; bad habits. I'm running wild, lost control
- Your Ex-Lover Is Dead by Stars: It's nothing but time, and a face that you lose - I chose to feel it, and you couldn't choose
- Down In Flames by Welbilt: Burning under me, the things that you can't see - I can't blink my eyes, and I can't breathe
- Unwell by Matchbox 20: I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
- Problem by Natalia Kills: Don't you want to save this dirty little damsel?
Status
City
- Given by Character on date for details.
- Given by Character on date for details.
- Given by Character on date for details.
Clan
- Given by Character on date for details.
- Given by Character on date for details.
- Given by Character on date for details.
Boons
- Trivial boon owed by Character to Character for details (date).
- Major boon paid by Character to Character for details (date).
OOC Information
| Member Information | |
| Player: | P. Saunders |
|---|---|
| Number: | 2003100615 |
| Domain: | Canberra |