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[takeroot]

PLAYER

NAME: Laura
AGE: 28
PREFERRED CONTACT: jojoveller
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a

CHARACTER

NAME: Constantin d'Orsay
AGE: 25-26
CANON & CANON POINT: canon: Greedfall / canon point: after his 3-day coma at the end of the "Constantin's Fate" questline
RESERVATION LINK: HERE.
HISTORY: Well there's this...

To sum up:

-Constantin is born in the Congregation of Merchants to Prince d'Orsay's second wife; it is heavily suspected that his mother had his older half-brother assassinated, a fact that has caused his father to resent Constantin and be overly demanding with him.

-Constantin grows up both hating his parents and wanting desperately to please them in turn; his closest friend, ally, and confidant is his cousin, the protagonist, known in canon as De Sardet (the first name isn't given, presumably player choice). They are very close, and Constantin makes reference to how De Sardet is always there to bail him out of his many troubles.

-Constantin gets into troubles a lot as a rowdy youth with something to prove. When the game narrative begins, he is missing in action after a night of partying, and found kidnapped by a local gang trying to ransom him. De Sardet breaks him out of imprisonment and they prepare to leave Serene for New Serene, the Congregation's new city on the island of Teer Fradee, of which Constantin has just been appointed governor.

-Before their sea journey, they and their companions encounter a... tree monster, giant humanoid thing. De Sardet kills it and Constantin is very impressed. They start their months-long voyage immediately after. Their mission on Teer Fradee besides governing is to find a cure for the malichor, a disease that has been killing people on the continent.

-Upon arriving to New Serene, Constantin is desperate to squeeze all the adventure he can out of his new city, but is quickly buried in politics and paperwork. He sends De Sardet to the other cities to meet with the other major factions on the island: the Bridge Alliance, focused on science; the Theleme missionaries; and the native islanders.

-While De Sardet is away, Constantin is buried in paperwork, as mentioned. He often complains that he'd like to toss it all out and work on "real projects," and listens eagerly to all of De Sardet's adventure tales. It is also noteworthy that each time De Sardet returns, Constantin seems more and more ill.

-In De Sardet's travels, they discover a myriad of mysteries and corruptions on the island both old and new; those relevant to Constantin include the Coin Guard (the Congregation's guards) attempting a coup, which De Sardet prevents, and the fact that their current attempt at colonizing the island is not the first; merchants from their nation had attempted to settle the island many generations ago. Constantin also learns that De Sardet is not actually his cousin by blood, but professes they will always have a bond anyway.

-Just before the coup attempt Constantin relents and lets a doctor examine him. This is when he and De Sardet learn that Constantin has the malichor.

-Constantin's health continues to fade, and eventually he implores De Sardet to seek out whatever healers he can, to at least alleviate his pain before his inevitable death.

-De Sardet enlists the help of a native healer, who helps Constantin by having him participate in a ritual that basically dumps all the magic of Teer Fradee directly into his body. This removes his pain and seemingly cures him of the malichor. He's then kidnapped by the islanders' High King Vinbarr, who claims Constantin is dangerous and will doom them all because of his interaction with the island's magic. Constantin spends several days in a coma after being saved from this kidnapping, and waking up after that is his canon point.

PERSONALITY:

What Constantin d'Orsay would like to be is an adventurer, bold and brave and whip-smart, unburdened and unrestrained by people who have never wanted him. Naturally, what he is isn't quite that. He's there in bits and pieces: an intelligent young man, bold in his own way, and he's got the spirit, that's for sure— but when it comes to being unfettered and courageous, he has a little way to go. He's getting there; the journey to Teer Fradee that he and cousin De Sardet take is a coming-of-age tale for Constantin as much as anything else, but it's a work in progress. Most people who meet him experience only the surface level: excitable, more than a little whimsical, and maybe a little prone to making poor decisions. He leaps before he looks, or at least he wants to, but experience and circumstance have broken him of this habit, of late.

Still: at first glance, he is almost the picture-perfect royal governor. He's charming and kind, generous to his people and his allies and swift to deal with his enemies, both of state and literally, such as when the Coin Guard attempt to unseat and kill him in a coup. Constantin carries himself with an unmistakable air of someone who's been raised around money and court manners and great expectations; while on the surface he handles himself deftly, good at his job and dedicated to his duty, the expectations and his relative inexperience weigh on him more than he lets on to just anyone. When Constantin wears his heart on his sleeve, it's those friendlier emotions: enthusiasm, kindness, generosity. He loves to meet new people and always wants to chase new experiences, fascinated by the world, its people, and his own place in it.

There is, however, a side to him that is... bratty. As a child he was notorious for being "a nightmare to the other children," and as an adult he carries some of those bad habits still. He's impatient. He'll snap at people just trying to do their job if he's displeased with them (mostly doctors, because he's scared of scalpels, but still). He'll wheedle and beg to join his cousin on a dangerous adventure because he wants to go and that's what's important to him, heedless of the very real danger and the very real circumstances that surround him. While he's been trained to use a sword like any other noble of the time, he has so little practical experience that he becomes more of a liability in the heat of battle, freezing up in the face of real danger; even so, he blusters and boasts about his own courage and thirst for victory in a fight! This part of him is wholly selfish; he gets kicked out of taverns for breaking furniture, kidnapped by thugs for starting fights for his own amusement, wastes his cousin's time begging to be brought along on the adventure when, frankly, the adults are talking. It's a symptom of his stifled upbringing at court, and he's aware of it, but it still comes out sometimes.

With people he knows better, Constantin's deeper emotions come out in spades. It's disingenuous to call these "people he's close to," as that list has only one item- his cousin- while almost every other person Constantin knows well is distant from him still. His councilors are political helpers, almost all of his cousin's companions are employees, and his parents especially have contributed to the way he both puts up walls and tries as much as he can to make connections with others. His father resents him; his mother uses him for political gain— the result is Constantin's deep, deep resentment in return, coupled with a desperate need to please and to feel adequate. Told since childhood that he will always under-perform, never fill his late brother's shoes, never get anywhere in life unless he changes some innate part of himself... Constantin has shouldered the burden of his father's disdain especially for a long time. He hates his father at the same time he wants to impress him, and this dichotomy bleeds into his behavior elsewhere. With his cousin, and indeed, anyone else he could manage to get close to, he leans into the other extreme: an unconditional love for the people who love him in return. That he has trouble trusting others doesn't stop him from trying; if anything, he reaches out even more in hopes of receiving positive attention. He's needy, in short. Neglectful and cruel parenting left him wanting, and he craves reinforcement from others. His own feelings of inadequacy have not given him the emotional strength to build himself up from within without help.

This neediness also shows in the way he places himself in his relationships as less of a leader. Sure, he's literally a governor, and he takes his job very seriously despite being often bored, but in his personal relationships he's more comfortable if someone else is taking the lead. As his cousin is his closest friend and truest ally, it shows up the most clearly between them: Constantin constantly looks to De Sardet for advice, taking their suggestions in matters of government and war and even his personal health, preferring to defer to someone else when it comes to matters that he feels lost in, or is genuinely fearful of. His own health is the biggest perpetrator of this, as he insists for months that he's just fine, hoping that his symptoms of the literal plague ravaging his homeland appearing in himself will just go away if he insists loudly enough. As he admits has happened many times before, it's De Sardet who has to convince him to take the safe route and take care of himself. If he were to just push himself past this self-imposed hurdle (which he does in the endgame), he would find that he does just fine on his own when he has to. Right now, however, it's too uncomfortable to be completely alone.

Constantin will also occasionally delightedly refer to himself as a damsel in distress, or take pleasure in needing to be rescued... it depends on the exact situation, but his desire for attention even goes this far.

At his core, Constantin is driven by a need to prove himself, to do something that proves his worth and ensures that he will never feel less again. He is intelligent; he has ideas and, in circumstances he has to carve out for himself, the means to achieve them. He hates being idle, and is constantly seeking out details of other people's excitement and adventures that he can't have for himself while stuck behind a desk doing his own job. This restlessness is what pushes him to keep trying to prove himself over and over again, to do something before he wakes up one day and finds his father was right to dismiss him as a disappointment. All he wants to do is be someone worthy, in the abstract, and so it is unfortunate that the circumstances of his canon push him to the extremes. By the endgame, so eventually, he has the potential in him to let his fear and bitterness color his actions— because the people around him have proven again and again that he, as an individual, is worth nothing to them, and never was. Constantin's greatest fears are death and rejection, and after he faces both in quick succession, his worldview shifts dramatically. Always impatient, he develops an "end justifies the means" attitude about his own actions and loses all inhibitions that might have made him wait and make a judgment before rushing toward his goals no matter what.

So at his midgame canon point, Constantin is in a strange place; he's poised himself to take drastic action to save himself and his cousin and take the respect he thinks he's earned, but he's also at his most fragile. He's just come out of a near death experience and an attempt on his life from people who were supposed to be loyal to him, so he's both very confident in his own plans and not very confident in his place in the world. He had a place on Teer Fradee, he was carving out a niche for himself and then it was abruptly torn away from him, leaving him uncertain of things like where he belongs and who he can put his already limited trust in. The lighter parts of his personality are still there, of course; he's still downright chipper and energetic in conversation, at points even more so now that he has renewed vigor to make big changes for himself (and his cousin), but dig just a tiny bit below the surface and he's not in the best place, emotionally.

In sum, Constantin is a friendly and charming person who happens to have a case of poor judgment and complicated trust issues. He's passionate and driven, a tiny bit childish, and wants to fix the problems of his world however he can. As far as his ideal coming-of-age journey is concerned, it's taken a hard left into starting over unexpectedly. He'll get there eventually.

ABILITIES/SKILLS:

Combat: Constantin has training in melee combat, primarily with swords. We're never actually given the chance to see him in action besides freezing in shock when confronted with a Real Monster(tm), but he's always eager to get in a fight and has a bad habit of starting them himself— but he usually loses. Still, he had sword lessons.

Educated: For his time period, Constantin is highly educated, being the son of a prince. He's intelligent; it's harder to get things past him than it seems.

INVENTORY/COMPANIONS: His clothes, a little satchel, a tiny lantern.

FACTION CHOICE: Moon

REASON: As of his canon point he's just gone through a near-death experience that has sent him through a paradigm shift, from someone who is frustrated-but-ultimately-content to stay put and wait for things to fall into place, into someone who cannot sit idly by and is compelled to go out and do things, make changes, no matter the cost. The bulk of his actions become correcting injustice without waiting around for someone to hand him the solution, so basically he goes full doer by midgame. Moon(tm).

TATTOO: Waning crescent, on the left side of his neck close to the ear.

SAMPLES

NETWORK: here

LOG: here

NOTES, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS: nada