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character history and personality.
alba lovisa martin-hersilie
née vilgot
(alba lovisa andromeda)
Physical appearance.
Alba is groomed for her looks and mannerisms above all else. Her diet is very regimented, and her physical appearance prioritized by a team of aestheticians and physical trainers to a high degree. Her outfits are planned, including what she wears to lounge at home. She has a signature perfume, which she uses frequently. She is conventionally beautiful, with long dark hair and grey eyes - a genetic marker of one of the first families to establish the empire in the Moon. The light coloured eyes don’t give her a physical advantage over anything, it’s a social marker in her society.
Personality descriptors.
(-) haughty, entitled, overbearing, petulant, conceited, dismissive, vain, careless, vindictive, impatient, resentful, fickle, inconsiderate.
(+) faithful, curious, affable, charming, generous, insightful, lively, observant, passionate, romantic.
Content warning.
Alba’s backstory contains themes of violence against women. The Lunar Imperial Government is a very patriarchal, rigidly structured society with very narrow roles for both men and women.
OOC Preferences.
World info.
CONFLICT IN EARTH
This verse is set many years into the future: interstellar travel is not only common, but also used everywhere outside of Earth. At this time, Earth, unable to sustain its population, became completely uninhabitable and drove developments to encourage leaving the planet. There are a few Terrans living on Earth and the planet is viewed as a ‘backwards’ planet. That being said, Earth remains valuable as a mining field of metals and half-metals. For the remaining citizens on Earth who were never able to leave, mining and processing of these minerals for export is their only way of survival. Everything else on Earth relies on imports and humanitarian aid.
Earth has a fractured government that rules over the entire planet. The “Representative Government of Humanity” is funded by the Lunar Imperial Government (LIG), a Moon-based military government and its surrounding colonies, and they rule from the North Pole all the way to the Tropic of Cancer. The “Democratic Government of Terrans” is funded by the Revolutionary Republic of Mars (RRM), which rules Earth from the Tropic of Capricorn to the South Pole. Compared to the number of humans in the height of the space age, Terrans now number several hundred thousand thanks to the proxy wars by the LIG and the RRM. Most of the Terrans are concentrated in the mining and processing hubs. Terrans hate the generations-long proxy war of the LIG and the RRM, however, it does not have the resources to fight either one.
In the past several years the Terran government has been largely sympathetic to the RRM. The RRM offers a religious and spiritual backbone which the LIG can’t provide. That being said, this preference is out of convenience more than actual tradition. Terrans favour the government that is able to provide them the most humanitarian aid.
THE LUNAR IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT
In the height of the space age, seven wealthy families evacuated Earth in order to terraform the Moon and create an infrastructure to support a separate economy from the planet they came from. In order to be able to live in obscene wealth and luxury, it was decided by the seven to precipitate the continuous mining of the Earth to support life in outer space. Greed tore the seven apart, and two of the most powerful families split from the seven and formed a separate government in Mars, then becoming the RRM. The five who remained became the rulers of the Lunar government. Both governments are keen on exploiting Earth for its resources considering the expense of keeping entire populations - thriving, wealthy, and healthy populations - were a lot more than what their respective colonies and planets can support. Hence, a proxy war erupted in Earth: the planet was divided into two, with both the LIG and the RRM vying for resources as Terrans suffer.
The history of the LIG has been scrubbed of its origins since then; only the five original bloodlines truly know the history of the LIG and the Lunar colonies, and the important role that Earth plays in sustaining life in space. The LIG is made of five huge colonies, highly stratified, highly insulated, and extremely wealthy. Its society is very well aware of its privilege: any disruption in the status quo is viewed by the colonial population as an existential attack, and the LIG is beholden to keeping the status quo.
It's said that everyone lives happily in the imperial lands. From the beginning of the space age, to the present-day, even the youngest Terran dreams of one day making it to the moon - the promised land.
HISTORY.
Alba is the only daughter of the Vilgots. The Vilgots are one of the five families that founded the Lunar colonies, which specialized in the manufacturing of a variety of hypersonic weapons that were instrumental in defending Lunar sovereignty in space, due to the difficulty in defeating them. In the colourful history of the Lunar colonies, the Vilgots were held as scientific heroes and disciples of war.
The recent economic downturn and financial mismanagement of the subsequent heads of the Vilgot family eventually led them to ruin. Greed and corruption also ensured that quality control in the factories were secondary to profit; following an investigation, Auguste Serge Vilgot, Alba’s father, was put to trial by the current ruling family, and found guilty. The Vilgots were then put into caretaker status, with all of their assets seized and given to the current Minister of Defence for the Lunar colonies, Martin-Hersilie. Whether or not the corruption charges were true or false mattered little; the important thing is that the Vilgots have to pay the price for being caught, and the Martin-Hersilies were to advance their fortune and wealth by carrying out the ruling family’s orders, eliminating a potential rival, and bolstering their influence in the imperial court.
The orders for seizure and execution came in the night: Auguste was disappeared; Alba’s mother, Étienne Calixte, was confined in a mental asylum under false pretences, and Alba herself, engaged to the late Baron’s son, Emrik, callsign "Starling".
As part of paying the Vilgot’s debt to the crown, Alba is forced to give up her career aspirations to become a flight navigation officer and to become a socialite and housewife for the Baron instead. Baronness she may be, but only in title; Starling is a violent and jealous man, and what few liberties Alba had for a woman of her station were ripped from her the moment she was married to him. Her duty, as the Lady of the house, is to become a perfect host, a well-regarded socialite, a patriot and supporter of the war, and the first line of defence against her husband, the current Minister of Defence, Baron Emrik Martin-Hersilie.
PERSONALITY.
Alba is an unhappy woman who was raised to understand the threat she can be to her husband's career and personhood. To that regard, she is made to prioritize three things, in service of the imperial crown, but also with consideration to the office that her husband holds: her appearance, her mannerisms, and her goals to be aligned with the Baron’s. Alba is successful in 2 out of 3 of these requirements. She chafes at the idea of being made tribute to the Martin-Hersilies, but understands that her options are severely limited in her position. Alba currently attends her Finishing School for Imperial Ladies with resignation. She is trained in etiquette, some manner of politics and history, culture, accounting, and against verbal elicitation. She is trained to be docile, and she certainly can play the lovely housewife if required, but Alba chafes at the idea of being someone’s weakness. Her freedoms are highly contingent on Emrik’s assessment of how well can she manage herself, and his opinion of her on that regard is very low.
Emrik’s role as the Minister of Defence exposes Alba to the side of the LIG that most normal citizens aren’t privy to. And while she understands that the Terrans are being exploited in horrifying manners in order to continue the lifestyle she and many others enjoy in the colonies, she is afraid of retaliation against her husband, and herself, should her husband fail. A second humiliation will certainly be more unbearable than the first. As a result, Alba is a patriot of the ongoing war, and takes her duty to protect Emrik seriously. She may hate what his family has done to her family, but she will not betray him. Not when the alternative for her is death.
She has a few hobbies, none that take her too much outside of the house: her public appearances are very regimented and monitored by her husband, out of concerns for safety, but also because Emrik is a jealous man. Alba’s public image is that of a socialite who contributes to the right charities, who has the right soundbites during interviews, who seems madly in love with her husband, and who cultivates rather sensible talents in music and gardening. In private, she and Emrik fight all the time, mostly for Alba to beg for a few liberties from Emrik. Emrik’s family is pressuring her to give him a child, and Alba is terrified of failing him, but also terrified of the prospect of saying no.
Hurt and repressed, without too many outlets or friends to rely on, Alba puts up a cold and impersonal front in order to protect herself. She feels starved of true affection, she misses her family, and has taken to introducing herself with her last name as the name of their factory, Andromeda; all while zealously prioritizing her survival. She is the last of the Vilgots, and all she has is pride: she will not yield. She can only advance.
likes / dislikes / hobbies
- gardening
- hunting (she picked this up because it's the only hobby that emrik likes to share with her; this is the only thing they have in common which makes her feel like emrik actually is her husband, mostly because emrik is delighted to menace some wild game instead of his wife)
- music: piano, dancing
LIKES
- being fashionable and pretty
- being Online
- flowers
DISLIKES
- hunting
- music: piano, dancing (she was forced to learn this as part of her training)
note on imperial style
- a lot of the architecture is going to be ostentatious, with architecture and fashion styles being a mish-mash of trends from 'vintage' earth. the imperials have a habit of taking whatever style or aesthetic they want from earth and just adapting it to high culture. a lot of these adaptations range from creative to, well, the most offensive appropriation you could think of, because the imperials don't think it's bad. this even extends to their military garb; depending on the ruling family, each service's colours reflects the sigil of the current ruling family.
- the entire colony is very technologically heavy; think smart cities with heavy surveillance and a monitored and censored net. this absolutely clashes with the kind of 'vibe' the city projects, with the upper classes living like aristocrats, and the 'lower classes' (they don't have poverty! don't believe dissenters who say otherwise! dissenters will be shot) looking like they live in space vegas. the population has accepted loss of civil liberties to trade off economic success, and it's so far worked all these years.
- all colonies are climate controlled; never a bad day around here. however, climate control is generally better the higher in strata you are, and if your colony is 'poor' by imperial definition, well, tough shit
note on alba's style