Post by Christine Daaé on Feb 27, 2012 21:30:45 GMT -5
CHRISTINE DAAÉ
The Swedish Nightingale and Fairy of the North
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Name: Kristianna (since Pau and Lyds already started calling me that and it would cause confusion if I went by the shortened), though on facebook and to a lot of people I am "Christine" Hence the likely confusion. I dunno, maybe Kristine with a K? *nods* Yes. With a K shall do.
Years role playing: 8 total, 6 in Phantom fandom including LARP and cosplay, all mostly as Leroux Christine
Gender: female
Contact me: PM here is fine, several here know how to contact me on facebook though. my skype name is Christine_marie1992, google is ChristineMarie1992 (also youtube), and twitter is @christineimarie
Anything else?: Pau and Lyds said they'd help me through any others
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Basic Information
Age: 17
Canon or OC?: Cannon, the Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux 1911[/size]
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Appearance
Body type: Very petite, diminutive, hourglass curve typical of the period
Eye color: clear blue doe eyes
Wardrobe: The year is 1887 (approx.) and so the bustle is en vogue (as it is the second bustle era), rather than the natural form, though she does have a few older dresses of natural form that belonged to her Mamma Valerius once. She also wears costumes of the opera, right after or during a performance or rehearsals. She usually a necklace of some sort and earrings (usually pearls). On occasion she will wear hats, but is not much of a hat wearer in general. She usually pins hair half up, half down, with barley curls. She wears a lot of pink, red, lavender, wine, sky blue, yellow, black, and white colour-wise. She like to wear lace. She wears a fur and veil in cool weather.
General Appearance: She has golden blonde hair in soft curls; very fair ivory skin, almost ghostly pale with rosy cheeks and lips; a relatively long face with slightly pronounced cheek bones; thin eyebrows; and small hands and feet. Her hair and eyes especially are reminiscent of the character "Little Lotte" from her favorite story that her father used to tell her as a child, who had clear blue eyes and hair as gold as the sun's rays. Because she is small and slender, people often mistake her as frail and delicate. While this is so to some extent, she is surprisingly strong for her size.
Played By: Christine Nilsson (A.K.A. Christina Nilsson, Kristina Nilsson, Kristina Jonasdotter, Kristina Törnerhjelm, Mme. Christine Rouzaud, Comtesse de Casa Mirinda, etc.)
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Personality
She's a bit childish and coquettish, and enjoys playing games, particularly with those she is close to. Having lost her father at a young age, she clings to these childhood memories and habits, almost as a source of comfort.
Despite being raised mostly on folklore, she is not very superstitious. Though she has heard rumours of the 'Opera ghost' but doesn't believe that the ghost exists. instead of basing conclusions on superstition, she bases them on reason and religion. She is a fairly religious person, catholic, and tries to attend mass regularly.
She is very inquisitive, always making an effort to know every person in the opera and all of their individual lives and hobbies. She likes to meet new people and try new things. She is very polite and a major people pleaser. She loves to make those around her happy and proud of her, though she remains humble about her own talents and abilities, mostly because she doesn't really have any aspirations for music any longer now that her father is gone. She is a bit withdrawn and down about the loss of her father, which she has never really fully recovered from.
She has a bit of a temper on occasion, mostly brought on when people attempt to control her when she feels it is not their place. She also likes to live a little on the edge. When she hears that something is dangerous, she gets curious and wants to test just how dangerous it really is. I suppose in this way, she could be considered brave, laughing in the face of danger.
Dreams and Goals:
Dreams of the day when she will hear the Angel of Music, like her father promised her. All aspirations in music were lost with his death. She has no desire to become anyone's wife, as she feels that such a thing would only tie her down.
Strengths:
- singing
- theory
- pretty (which in the Victorian era, beauty is power)
- has good balance
- level-headed
- good communicator
- playing the violin
Weaknesses:
- small
- often gets hung up on the past
- saying goodbye
- doesn't trust people with her innermost thoughts and feelings
- bottles up emotion
- Fairly primitive education marked my mostly folklore
- a bit near-sighted
Fears:
- the dark
- the devil
- demons
- losing loved ones
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The Past
History:
She was born to a poor Swedish couple living in a little village just south of Uppsala. Her parents owned a small farm and her father would sing in the choir at church on Sundays. Her father was a very fine fiddler and would play for all sorts of festivals and weddings. Little Christine was very gifted in Music from a young age and knew her musical alphabet before she could write and began singing and playing the violin at a very young age. Just before Christine turned five years old, her mother died of typhoid fever.
After her mother died, her father lost taste for all things in life except his daughter and his music, so he sold their form and took his fiddle and his daughter to go travel around trying to fine fame and fortune as a violinist, but instead found poverty. One day, he was playing at a festival in Stockholm where professor Franz Valerius heard him playing and became a patron to his playing and took he and Christine into his home, providing for Christine's education. His wife, Adelaide Valerius, treated Christine as is she were her own daughter.
When Christine was seven years old, Professor Valerius and his wife moved to Paris and brought Daddy Daaé and Christine with them. Paris fascinated Christine, but Daaé often stayed indoors, longing for Sweden where he grew up, especially for the sea. He would lock himself in his room with his daughter and his violin and they would sing together sad melodies from Scandinavia.
So in the summer when Christine was eight years old, they decided to go on holiday to Perros-Guirec. After a little convincing, Daaé managed to convince professor Valerius and his wife to let him take Christine and his violin for 2 weeks and go travel about like they had in Sweden. During this time, they would go around, singing and playing, taking with them only the music required, and refusing any money that was offered to him. Those who heard were very impressed with Christine's voice and thought that she would become a very great singer one day.
Soon after they returned from their little journey, Daaé and Christine were singing and playing on the beach. A little boy, who had been walking with his governess, heard them and made his governess deviate fro their usual walk in order to listen to the two. It was very windy that day, and as Christine and her father were walking on the beach, the wind caught Christine's scarf and blew it off into the sea. She reached out to grab it, but was too late. the little boy, seeing this, he ran off to fetch her scarf from the sea, despite the protests from his governess. He came back, both he and the scarf completely soaked through. Christine laughed and kissed him merrily. The boy was none other than the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny.
From that moment on, Christine and Raoul become great friends. they would play together every day. By request of both his governess and Professor Valerius, Daaé agreed to give Raoul violin lessons, which Christine would often participate in with them. Christine and Raoul did everything together, but their favorite game was to go around from door to door like beggars, asking for stories to tell.
As much as they loved the stores fro this game however, their favorite stories were the ones that Daddy Daaé would tell them at night on the beach. Their favorite of these stories was Daaé's own variation on the Norwegian poem "Den første sorg" about a girl named Little Lotte, who would hear the Angel of Music when she went to sleep.
All of Daddy Daaé's stories had one thing in common and that was the Angel of Music. Daaé insisted that every great Musician had heard the Angel of Music at one point of another. Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the angel and asked her father if he had heard the Angel as well. Daaé said that he had not, but promised Christine that someday she would, because he would send the Angel to her when he was dead and in heaven.
Another one of their favorite games was to slip out in the night and go to look for the Körrigans - little demon elves that would dance around fountains and wells in the night and would sometimes steal away little children. They often liked to look for the creatures from the stories they were told.
The time came when Christine and her father were to go back to Paris with the Valerius, and so Christine and Raoul were parted. Back in Paris, Christine continued to be taught by professor Valerius and to sing and play with her father until professor Valerius was hit by a carriage while out walking late at night, and died from his injuries.
They still went back to Perros in the summers, but Christine never saw Raoul there anymore, until when she was twelve years old and there, and Raoul surprised her with a knock at the door. Daddy Daaé was starting to cough by this point. Christine was happy to see him again and made sure that she was a good hostess to her guest and dear friend.
Christine remembered Raoul very well and being reunited with him, a sort of warm, fuzzy feeling began to grow inside of her. Though she and Raoul knew each other very well, and though she was normally a very friendly and outgoing person, she suddenly felt shy around him and was very cautious about the way she spoke. She couldn't help but to notice that he had grown more handsome with the time they spent apart and that, as the old saying goes, the absence had also made her heart grow fonder. She hadn't realized just how much she had missed him until that point. Christine did not understand what this feeling was, and decided to keep it to herself.
When the time came for Raoul to leave again (for he was going off to naval training), he pressed a kiss to Christine's trembling lips and told her "mademoiselle, I shall never forget you." Christine didn't know if he forgot her, but she never forgot these words from when they were parted by the roadside.
Daddy Daaé's cough continued and only began to grow once until when Christine was thirteen years old, he died of a lung condition. He was buried there in Perros-Guirec with his violin in the graveyard of the church where, at the bottom of the hill, Raoul and Christine used to play together as children.
After Daaé died, Christine lost all taste for music. It reminded her too much of him, and only brought back bitter memories of his illness and death. Adelaide Valerius, who took in Christine as her daughter after Daaé's death, hated to see Christine like this, lost from music, and so she tried to keep her involved with it. The two live together in a small flat on the Rue Notre Dame des Victoires
When Christine was fourteen years old, in order to please her Mamma Valerius, she entered into the voice performance studies at le Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. She went though the conservatory as a sort of soulless singing machine, not distinguishing herself there and only taking pride in pleasing her benefactress.
When she was seventeen years old, after three years of studying at le Conservatoire, she began singing at the Opéra Garnier in small roles and doing some understudy work. This is where she currently works, still remembering the story of the Angel of Music that her father had told her and had promised to send to her, and still waiting for the day when she would finally hear him.
RP Sample
It was Saturday morning as Christine walked to the end of the Rue Notre Dame des Victoires on her way to mass, carrying with her, her rosary, prayer book, and bible, and hymnal. The first three she used quite often, but the hymnal, not so much. It had belonged to her father, the late Jonas Daaé, before he had died. She carried it more in his remembrance than anything else. On the rare occasion, she would crack it open and glance through it's songs, but she never sang from it. No. That was something she only did with 'Daddy'...
It was November, and the air was just starting to grow cold. If she breathed out though her mouth, she could see the steam of her breath appear before her in the ill lit, walk of the narrow street. As she passed by a photographer's shop, she stopped a moment to peer into the wood-grated window. All of the people in the photographs were so happy. So perfect... Christine wondered to herself why they seemed so radiant. Was there something in that little shop that could make one forget the troubles of the world?
Perhaps, she thought to herself, I should find out for myself some other time. If she didn't hurry, she was going to be late for mass. And so once again, she headed off to the little church Notre Dame des Victoires which the street was named for.
When she slipped through the large wooden doors into the entryway of the church, where just inside, there was a stand full of small candles to pay homage to the departed. She dropped a couple of francs into the box and lit one of the unlit candles.
"Daddy?" she said softly. "Please.... can you hear me? I miss you... I'm at the Opera now, like Mamma Valerius wanted. She said that it would be what you would want for me, but I know that's not the truth... You would want for me to be happy, whether or not it involved music... Right now, what would make me happiest is just to have you back here again... Promise me that, when I am dead as well, you will be waiting for me in Heaven? And when we are there together, you... you will introduce me to the Angel of Music, right?"
She couldn't help but to choke on a few tears.
"You promised me, Daddy... you promised that... that someday I would hear him, just like little Lotte... Did you forget? I haven't forgotten... I never will..."
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This is great, Kristine! I'm so glad we have the first of the original canon on the site! Just what we needed. I like the tweaks you've made to it, and now it officially carries Leffie's HUGE BIG SPECIAL stamp of approval!