"It is difficult sometimes to hear my own voice amidst the noise of this house."
BASICS
NAME: Francesca
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Biromantic Homosexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Spring 2757
AGE: 19 as of 2776
LOCATION: Semaca Weyr
OCCUPATION: Weyrfolk, future candidate
WING: N/A
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Chestnut
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'10, slender
PLAY-BY: Hannah Dodd
EXPY SOURCE: Francesca Bridgerton (Bridgerton)
FULL APPEARANCE: Francesca is a lovely girl, built tall and slender, with delicate features and expressive brown eyes. She has long, musician's fingers, with calluses from her gitar strings. She favors simple clothes, only the high quality of the cloth hinting at her wealthy background. While she is still more comfortable in skirts, she does enjoy the freedom trousers offer and is not averse to trying the sort of styles that would be scandalous in the hold of her birth.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: The sole introvert born into a family of passionate, outspoken extroverts, Francesca is used to feeling a touch out of step with the world around her. She does not enjoy being the center of attention and finds prolonged social events draining, but she does enjoy the company of a smaller group of friends and loved ones, with whom she does not need to fight to be heard. She has a dry sense of humor, when given the space to speak, and is an excellent listener, patient and encouraging when others struggle to find the right words. She can be a bit awkward with strangers, especially when expected to engage in excessive small talk.
While Francesca isn't precisely shy, she is most comfortable when allowed moments of peace and silence, where she has the time and space to hear her own thoughts and understand her own desires. She can be easily overwhelmed and swept away in the expectations of others, who do not need as much time to ponder the directions they wish to go. When pressured, even if that pressure is well-meaning, Francesca is prone to settling for complacency over happiness, taking the road that seems good enough, because she feels unable to wait to find what she truly wants. She asserts herself because she does not wish to be truly unhappy and understands the basics of what she needs to thrive, but struggles to argue for the patience to truly know herself. In her own way, she can be quite stubborn, reluctant to deviate from a path she has decided on, however impulsively.
Unlike her siblings, Francesca does not yearn for sweeping romance or greatness. In her heart of heart, she wants a quiet, peaceful, happy life. She is practical in her desires and does not see anything wrong with that. She has a deep love for the gitar and would love the chance to apprentice as a harper, although she fears she is too late to truly enter the craft. She plays for herself, even when no one else is listening. Music is her refuge and her choices of songs often express the things she cannot bring herself to say aloud. Francesca feels herself at a crossroad of her life, unable to pursue the companionable marriage she had always imagined for herself, unwilling to live forever at home, unsure of where to go. She hopes at Semaca, she will be able to find her place. Raised to be a proper lady, she tries her best to adapt to the new environs of the weyr, although is sometimes clearly taken aback by how...casual Semaca can be.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Father: Edmund (Deceased)
Mother: Violet
Siblings: Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Hyacinth, Gregory
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A (Crush on Michaela, a dragonrider of Fort Weyr)
BIRTHPLACE: Bridgerton Hold, a minor hold beholden to Fort
HISTORY: Francesca's family was a loud and boisterous one, from before she was even born. Francesca loved them deeply, although she often found them exhausting. When she needed a break from trying to hear herself above the din, Francesca retreated to her harper's teaching room, to practice her gitar or learn a new song, and find a moment's peace, without hurting her siblings' feeling. She had a natural gift and ear for the music and the hold's harper gladly gave her extra lessons. Francesca was still fairly young when her father died and does not remember him well, missing the idea of Edmund more than the man himself.
When Francesca came of apprenticing age, she briefly dreamed of traveling to Harper Hall. Her mother quickly put a stop to her ambitions, however, reluctant to let her daughter leave home so young and potentially be assigned so far from home. Not to mention losing the chance to marry well and fall in love, as Violet herself had. Seeing little other option, Francesca agreed and devoted herself to the ladylike arts, in hopes of marrying someone of similar temperament to herself, who lived somewhere beautiful and peaceful, where she could play the gitar as much as she pleased and find contentment with a smaller, less rambunctious family.
Francesca was still a teenager when, all at once, Anthony, Benedict, Daphne and Eloise left home, for their own reasons. Colin was left to assume the reigns of heir and Francesca, as the oldest remaining daughter, felt newly pressured to secure an advantageous match. Francesca, who had never felt any overwhelming passion for any man, focused on the practicalities of her marriage, seeking someone who offered her a home she wished to live in, while providing her family the connections they needed.
When Francesca was 19, her older sister, Daphne, introduced her to John, the cousin of a rider acquaintance. He was the heir to a small hold near Telgar. Like Francesca, he did not feel the need to fill the air with constant chatter. Unlike most other nobles Francesca had met, he listened to her when she spoke and remembered her tastes. While Violet was concerned about how far Telgar was from home, and that while Francesca was fond of John she didn't seem to be in love with him, Francesca was resolved to pursue the match.
Until, that was, she met John's cousin, the dragonrider Michaela, for whom Francesca felt the sort of passion her mother had long urged her to seek. Barely managing to remember her own name, Francesca endured an awkward, stammering conversation, over the course of which she came to definitively realize she preferred women. Unwilling to subject a good man to a passionless marriage, and not wishing to drag her family into yet another scandal, Francesca sought a way out.
While the easiest solution would have been to join her siblings at Fort Weyr, Francesca decided that if she was to leave her life behind, she wanted the space and distance to truly find herself and learn who she was, away from her well-meaning family, with their own ideas of what was best for her. Drawn in by quaint, romantic notions of the beautiful, tranquil Semacan wilderness, Francesca resolved to go the southern continent, where she would be free to be herself, removed from the pressures of family and hold.