Claude Élisabeth of Savoy

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Claude Élisabeth
claudeprovins.png
Lady Pruvia, c.1850. Art by 28idle.
Director of Civil Affairs
Tenure: 1849-1855
Predecessor: Minuvas Melphestaus
Successor: Princess Amelia of Renzfeld
Viscountess consort of Provins
Tenure: 1838-1844
Predecessor: Princess Anne of Crestfall
Successor: Charles Alexander of Carrington
Born: 13th of Horen’s Calling, 1818, Arx Rubra, Luciensburg
Spouse: Philip Michael, 3rd Viscount Provins
House: Ashford de Savoie
Father: Olivier Renault Ashford de Savoie
Mother: Adeline Lorena Helvets

Princess Claude Élisabeth of Savoy (13th of Horen’s Calling, 1818 - Present) was the progenitor of the written foundations of Campagnois culture as the matriarch of the House of Pruvia via marriage. She was also a member of the Council of State of the Holy Orenian Empire under Emperor Philip III as the Director of Civil Affairs, and is remembered by the Petrine for her efforts towards female participation in the imperial government.

She was styled as Viscountess of Provins from 1838-1844 by proxy of marriage to Lord Philip Pruvia. After her husband's ordainment as a priest, she acted as an advisor to her daughter and went by 'Lady Provins', 'Madame de Provins' or 'Lady Pruvia' unofficially while she began to foster the spirit of Campagnois culture.

Throughout her life in Oren, she was the second of the trio of Orenian Socialites that made up the ‘Madames de Savoie’, Savoyard Princesses as daughters of Prince Olivier I, restorer of Savoy in Almaris. They were raised in Orenian society within the Augustine Palace, boarded there in their youth during the reign of John VIII. A multitude of issues caused a rift between the Madames and their father only somewhat amended by their father's hand in the Aster Revolution that helped Emperor Philip III onto the imperial throne. Claude served beside her father in Philip's Council although the two were rarely seen in close proximity if ever.

Early life & adolescence

Claude was born on the the 13th of Horen’s Calling, 1818, as the second child of Olivier Renault de Savoie and Adeline Lorena Helvets during Olivier's tenure as Consul of Luciensburg. She was delivered in the Arx Rubra Palace near 2 years before it became infested with an army of hostile rat men that forced her father to process her, age 4, and her elder sister Laurène to the court of Oren, where they were placed under the care of the Countess Renzfeld. Their procession was attended by the Future Governess of the Augustine, Lady Mary Casimira, whom Claude grasped onto, calling her 'Madame Marie'. Mary would become of the two prominent women who'd be a mother figure to the de Savoie girls for the rest of their lives, the other being Maisie Adelheid d'Arkent.

As a foreigner, Claude possessed a thick auvergnat accent which fearsome courtiers ridiculed. Claude, being intensely timid in her youth, was therefore frightened by the court and buried herself within the comforts of her apartment, reading the books that littered their bookshelves to entertain herself and priming her for a love of literature. However, Laurène would notice this behaviour and forcibly wrench the girl into parties and events, where she befriended Matyas Jahan Basrid (later Count of Susa), Princess Amelia Novellen, and her greatest friend, Anastasia Ruthern (later Duchess of Furnestock). Via parties, she'd exchange her shyness for energy and charisma. This newfound confidence allowed her and her sisters to openly adorn the fashions of their homeland, inspiring the transition of the Augustine court into the Nouveau-Savoie fashions [1](1820-present) for which the 'Madames de Savoie' are now known.

A few years after their immigration, Luciensburg crumbled to finality and the rest of the de Savoies joined Claude and Laurène in Oren. The appearance of sister Eugénie completed the trio of madames. Due to their return, Claude was made to double down on canonical values as per her Savoyard paternity, and constant prayer for the cleansing of her mother's illness heavily reinforced them. Lady Mary wrote of the young girl as holding 'frightening zealotry and strong vindictions about the state of humanity, but a strange reverence for her own gender'. Lady Maisie stated that she was "in loving concordance with her returned family, seeing them as the light of her life and GOD the progenitor of it, natural for a child of her age."

Petite Potins & The Rosemoor Convention

As the Social Season of 1827 rolled nearer, Claude befriended another girl, Alina Basrid, contemporarily known as the Baroness of Carrington as wife to Baron Wilhelm. The two girls were equally avid readers, who in their joint efforts encountered the writings of Princess Elizabeth Anne Novellen, and were enamored by the fervor of her recount of events. Taking it upon themselves to emulate Elizabeth in becoming the writers of a new gossip column manifest entirely by the children of Oren, they created the instantly famous Petite Potins Column [2], it becoming a controversial yet eagerly awaited part of the social season for years to come. In her later teen years, Claude abandoned her love for the Potins after growing out of love with the fanaticism of the season, calling it a 'display of pomp frivolously exuded by those who have lost the humility of the Canon'.

Claude Élisabeth, age 15. Art by amyselia.

The first Potins paper had an additional effect on Oren within its second article: Princess Elizabeth Anne approached the youths inviting them to publish a section about her 'Rosemoor Bill', a historical bill proposing the enfranchisement of women across the empire, allowing female nobles to inherit on the same grounds as males. Claude boldly stated to the princess that "I'll do you one better," thus beginning the Rosemoor Convention as a movement towards equal succession in the Empire, Claude's blue flower bracelet becoming the symbol of the movement as a whole. The movement was met with severe scrutiny across all fronts, but the women protested with equal severity and intense devotion, Claude writing her own piece in support as one of her first writings independent of the Potins: [3]. However, things took a turn when Princess Elizabeth brought the bill to the House of Lords and was censured by the other grandees on the grounds of unapproved publicizing of a Diet bill, one such grandee being her brother, Philip, the heir to the Empire. So stricken with grief was Elizabeth Anne that she died the year of, leaving the ladies enraged and frustrated. They answered to the censure with an accusatory letter against Philip [4], which would prompt him to pass the Elizabethan Rosemoor Bill in 1836, a few years following his ascension [5].

The Madame de Provins (age 30) in her hunting attire. Art by sunflowerist.

Blood sports & equestrianism

Olivier and a majority of the de Savoie family left Oren for Sutica around the same time as the Rosemoor Bill was gaining leeway, but the Madames de Savoie stayed in the courts, protesting that it was the only home they'd ever known. However, the dramatics of an active court become too much for the irritable adolescent Claude, who began to fiercely judge everyone around her as lacking the morality and piety that she herself exhibited. On the advice of her best friend Anastasia, an equally pious girl, she decided to leave the capital for 2 years to search for religious clarity in the forests of Dobrov. Living a life of reclusivity within a pine shack, she was taught by a religious hermit to hunt for sustenance and furs, becoming especially fond of fur collection and organic craftsmanship. Her writings of the time detailed her belief that her experience tied her to the natural way of life, the one that GOD always intended for society, and the one that she'd promote in her tenure as regent of Provins, promoting nature as one of the tenets of Campagnois culture. Thus, she became fond of all activities tied to hunting and nature, developing an obsession with weapons collecting and tracking that persisted for the remainder of her life, augmenting her distate for the Augustine Palace despite an admiration for the women that ran it.

Social Season & the Wedding of Roses

To keep up with Orenian activities in Dobrov, Claude began to exchange letters with Philip Pruvia, an older boy who had contracted her to tutor him in french mostly as a jest of chilhood. They formed an untenable bond in her absence. When her godfather and his father, Simon Casimir, noticed this, he arranged a betrothal between her and Philip with her father. This implored her to move back to Providence, where her sisters and herself purchased their own home by each acquiring jobs, which the nobility judged fiercely, creating distance between them and the palace courtiers. This was the final straw for her, and Claude decided to leave the court for good.

Claude and Philip's wedding was held in 1835 as the first event of the 1835 Social Season, remembered as 'the wedding of roses'. Sometime around the start of the Social Season, Claude's father was elevated as the ‘Duke of Corazon’ under Johanna I, Queen of Sutica. Because of their estrangement, the girls did not attempt to be diplomatic with him.

Claude’s moral prerogatives developed a hatred towards the Social season and its associated social activities, including gossip like her writings in the Petite Potins. She declared her sentiments audibly for the next several seasons, urging the children that now led the Potins to "seek GOD’s truth." She also also lamented having to participate in the season beside her sisters. On the signup of the Season, her name was written in Laurène's handwriting. In protest, she entered the season’s first debut lesson adorned in leaves and blood residual of a hunt she’d just partaken of, leading Mary Casimira, now the Governor of the Palace, to dissent her for years to come. For the debut itself, she appeared in a white debut dress layered with black over it, in what she described was an allegory for the social season: "the death of godly womanhood, darkened by the stain of ‘romantic affection’".

Claude chose her wedding date to be the first event of the season so that she would not have to be privy to flirtation and dances with miscellaneous men. She invited her father to Oren for her wedding, it being the first time she’d seen him in various years. As Duke of Corazon, he brought his entourage to attend his daughter's wedding. Here, it is revealed that he had conceived 2 other children in Sutica: Leufroy and Athenais. Claude was outraged at her father’s neglect to reveal that she had other siblings, and her sister, Eugenie, shared the same emotion but in the form of verbal hostilities, causing her to retire to their city apartment early, Olivier in tow. With hindsight, it is now known that Olivier sent 2-3 men of Corazon to murder his daughter in cold blood, something he would admit to later. Eugenie was traumatized by the event, and Claude lost any and all affection held for her father or for any of the siblings that would remain at his side after the ordeal, ceasing all communication with them for a significant number of years. When their eldest brother came to attend Eugenie’s wedding following their father’s coronation as Prince of Savoy, Claude berated him for flashing his Savoyard armor in her face and threatened to draw her crossbow upon him if he did not remove it. Her family's unity would come to a grinding halt in light of these events.

Viscountess of Provins; 1838-1844

The Château de Preussens on the hills of Provins.

In the year 1838, a series of scandals involved Philip's father, Simon Casimir. First, his wife, Princess Anne Caroline, discovered his infidelity via Lady Maisie d'Arkent. Then, she discovered his connections to the canon-blaspheming Heralds of Azdromoth, the Azdrazi. The bitter Anne Caroline would expose her husband to her father, Emperor Philip II, leading to Simon's public denouncement, the title of Viscount being thus inherited by Philip. This made Philip and Claude the 3rd Viscount and Viscountess of Provins. For a long time, Claude had spoken of Simon Casimir with great love and appreciation, with friends quoting her to have said that Simon was a father to her where her biological could not be. She and Philip equally admired the man, but his betrayal was one of the largest scandals in the history of the Novellen reign and sought to destroy the House of Pruvia as it stood. In the beginning of the year 1839, the Pruvian estate was torched down by the hand of its masters in an attempt to erase the heresy of their predecessor, a phrase being concocted by them to describe the inferno they had begun: "Cleanse that which has been tainted by the wicked; the heresy abolished in GOD’s light." [6]. Their new estate would be designed by Claude herself, named Preussens in honor of the ancestors of Pruvia [7].

After the completion of their estate, the Viscounty began a shift towards Provinois (contemporarily: Campagnois) cultural practices. Namely: Carnaval Mystique was first held in Preussens following the Pruvian 'All Hallow's Eve' tradition; Claude and Philip purebred white horses understood as symbols of purity, and a proximity to Dobrov guided them towards a mysticism in connection to the Woldzkiy forests. The former was particularly tethered to the witnessing of unexplainable magical occurrences that became an envoy to their eventual adoption of several obscure pagan practices behind closed doors.

Beyond their own culture, they began the event of the 'Coterie,' a gathering of all imperial nobles with a designated lord chosen as host for each party in succession. Generally, the Pruvias were thought to be a content and well-to-do family, ignoring some judgments placed on Claude about her despotic attitude towards her children (who she trained to answer to the command of a horse whistle) as well as her husband, a holy man with little volatility.

Government of Oren; 1836-1855

claude joined civ affairs as providence post writer, later became deputy.

The Aster Revolution

elevated to director.joins philip iii and anastasia in their conquest of the throne when they return.

The Urguani-Orenian War

Residence in the Hawthorn Palace; 1855-Present

The Kingdom of Oren; 1868-Present

Issue

Name Birth Death Marriage
Amadie Marléne Élisabeth 14th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1836 Alive Charles Alexander of Carrington Firstborn child of Philip and Claude. 1st Countess Provins.
Guillaume Louis Michel 12th of Owyn's Flame, 1843 Alive Ophelia Vuiller Married matrilineally.
Jean Henri Antoine 5th of Sigismund's End, 1844 Alive Unmarried
Mathilde Cypriélle Angélique 2nd of Sun's Smile, 1845 Alive Conrad de Falstaff, Archchancellor of Oren
Anastasie Thérèse Caroline 11th of Horen's Calling 1846 Alive Unmarried
Sophie Clémentine Isidore 5th of Horen's Calling, 1849 Alive Unmarried
Eleanor Lucienne Adelaide 4th of Horen's Calling, 1851 Alive Unmarried