"Whyever would I care what you think?"
BASICS
NAME: C'lina
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual, she thinks
BIRTHDATE: Spring 2753
AGE: 18 as of 2771
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Candidate
WING: N/A
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'4"
PLAY-BY: Charisma Carpenter
FULL APPEARANCE:
With long brown hair and symmetrical features, Cordelina is the very image of perfection, or so she believes. Trained to be graceful and decorative, she usually wears delicately-embroidered gowns or skirts and bodices in colours that suit her to perfection, and is only ever seen wearing trews or clothing that clashes if there's no alternative.
Overall, Cordelina is athletic in build, with long legs and only enough of a chest to fill out the style of bodice she prefers if padding is added - which it generally is. She's far too vain to admit it, too. She's almost always wearing at least a little in the way of cosmetics, and where other Candidates might roll out of bed, pull on a tunic and go to breakfast, she rarely spends less than half an hour in front of a mirror in the morning, getting ready for the day.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Vain, self-centred and far too concerned with manners and deportment, Cordelina can be truly unpleasant to be around. A woman must be ladylike at all times, or Cordelina will be sniping, backbiting and generally talking about her to everyone else - but of course saying something to someone's face would be rude, and we can't have that. Conflict-averse, petty and spiteful, Cordelina believes herself the very pinnacle of womanhood, and someone whom everyone should be trying to emulate. When someone sees Cordelina at less than her best, she tends to get upset; those who comment on it can make an enemy for life.
Cordelina is also very traditional in outlook. Homosexuality is something she was not raised to understand, and a woman acting as a man or vice versa is going to find her making life more difficult for them. Not to their faces, of course, but it's just not right and it's just not done. This is the Weyr, and she'd heard things were different here, but beyond the usual rumours about men riding green and women riding brown (or even bronze!), the reality of what the Weyr tolerates and even thinks of as normal has been a shock.
HISTORY
FAMILY: Holders Cordon and Eldelina of High Spires Hold; one baby brother
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: Her own ego.
BIRTHPLACE: High Spires Hold, beholden to Fort.
HISTORY:
The eldest child and only daughter of a minor Holder at an isolated Hold, Cordelina was raised and educated to be the perfect Holder's wife, and taught that she would be absolutely superior to anyone who didn't have a title. The absolute ruler of the other Hold children her age, spoiled by her parents and given an inflated sense of her own station in life, she was a petty tyrant. That was cemented with the gift of a large flit egg on her tenth turnday, and the little queen who hatched was a source of eggs for Cordelina's favourites and a good reason for those who weren't her favourites to at least make an effort to stay in her favour. And yet as her teenage years got properly under way, Cordelina realised that her home Hold was a complete backwater, and with Thread falling there weren't even the visits to and from others that her mother remembered so fondly, with even the trading caravans becoming few and far between.
The arrival of a fosterling from somewhere beholden to Nerat caused problems, as the girl didn't see why she should do as Cordelina said just because Cordelina said it. The arrival of a baby brother caused more, as suddenly he had all her parents' attention when before there had just been Cordelina. So when a bluerider arrived at the Hold on some errand or other, Cordelina marched up to her in a fit of pique and demanded to be Searched. The rider was about to tell Cordelina where she could shove her demands when her dragon told her not to be hasty; within short order Cordelina was on dragonback, abandoning the Hold for the much busier Weyr and all its potential for Cordelina's own advancement. After all, why would she want to be a Holder's wife when she could be a Weyrwoman, or at least attract the attention of a Lord Holder's son?
She had no idea how very different the Weyr would be to the Hold, both in environment and in attitudes. She'd heard that dragonriders were much more permissive of certain things, but actually seeing two women kissing for the first time brought it home to her that she wasn't at the Hold any more - and then there were the chores. Ugh. They expected her, a Holder's daughter, to do drudge work, and neither complaining nor tantrums had gotten her anywhere. For the first time in her life, someone told Cordelina 'no' and refused to budge even when tears were produced.
After a month or two the Holder's daughter has settled into life at the Weyr, drudge work and all. She no longer passes comment openly about those who don't fit in with Hold mores, but that doesn't mean she approves of them. She's just learned to bide her time and hold her temper better.
UPDATES
- Early spring 2773: Impressed to bronze Wyrmeth, became C'lina