Vivien Damaris
Vivien Damaris of Thanasis
Appearance
Vivien is elegance personified. Her copper-red hair falls in soft, silken waves, always carefully kept, catching the light like embers beneath ash. A few freckles scatter across her pale, luminous skin, lending her beauty a gentler honesty that refinement has never quite erased. Her blue-green eyes are observant, carrying a quiet ache she has tried her best to conceal.
She is generally dressed in exquisitely embroidered gowns, fine fabrics chosen as much for symbolism as beauty. Every stitch speaks of restraint, lineage, and expectation. Her posture is impeccable, her movements deliberate, as though she has been trained from childhood to never take up too much space. To see her is to see composure perfected.
Personality
To the world, Vivien is distant, composed, and faintly severe. She carries herself with an effortless, glacial elegance; calm voice, steady gaze, measured expressions. She is polite without warmth, beautiful without invitation. Society often reads her as aloof or sharp-tongued, a woman of cool elegance and distant manners: untouchable, unimpressed, and quietly judgmental. In truth, this is armour, and Vivien does nothing to correct this assumption. Coldness, she has learned, is safer than kindness.
Beneath this carefully cultivated reserve lies a woman gentle by nature, deeply empathetic and capable of profound affection. But those softer instincts have been disciplined into silence after years of learning that vulnerability invites disappointment and expectation invites exploitation. She does not lash out, beg, or rebel, she withdraws. Where others harden into cruelty, Vivien hardens into stillness.
Her restraint is not indifference; it is grief held perfectly in place. She feels deeply, but privately, and believes that longing is a weakness best concealed. She lives for her rare moments alone in her gardens,
Strengths
- Exceptional poise and emotional restraint
- Keen social and political awareness
- Deep empathy and loyalty once trust is earned
- Quiet resilience shaped by years of disappointment
- Internalised belief that her worth lies in what she can provide
- Fear of vulnerability and hope
- Difficulty asserting her own desires
- Dangerous susceptibility to genuine affection
- Her little sister, Adeline
Backstory
House Damaris is small, old, and increasingly fragile. Though respected, its power rests on a dwindling foundation. Vivien’s mother and father are both bonded to male dragons - magnificent creatures, but ones that cannot further the line without a mating female or an egg. Without one, the future of House Damaris is uncertain.
Vivien was raised with this reality woven into her upbringing. From an early age, she understood that her future would be transactional. Her parents valued refinement, obedience, and appearances, moulding her into a flawless offering for alliance rather than nurturing her as a daughter. Affection was conditional; disappointment was not. She learned to be perfect, because perfection was the closest thing to love she was permitted.
Her much younger sister, Adeline, was born nearly a decade later, a bright, affectionate child in a household that had grown emotionally arid. Where their mother remained distant and exacting, Vivien stepped instinctively into the space left empty. She soothed Adeline’s fears, celebrated her small joys, and offered her the warmth and reassurance Vivien herself had been denied. With Adeline, Vivien allows herself gentleness.
Her engagement to Lord Carsan Sahar is meant to save her house. The Sahars are a powerful house, possessing several white dragons, rare and capable of producing the future that House Damaris so desperately needs. To Carsan, Vivien is not a woman but a bridge between bloodlines, a vessel for alliance, heirs, and survival. The Sahars forbid any woman of their house from bonding with a dragon, and though Vivien has long yearned for such a bond, she now carries the knowledge that it will never be hers as a private, enduring ache.
Outwardly, she fulfils every expectation placed upon her. Inwardly, she mourns a life she never chose.