villainess yuri: side characters!
I’m apparently in too deep, so this is a post introducing the two (four? You’ll see) most important side characters, and some things about Eliza.
Let’s start with Eliza. Eliza is rather chubby, which is something that she’s been picked on for her entire life in the central region. So, when she is freshly arrived and has to conduct the humiliation ritual that is telling the Duke and Duchess that no, she can’t fit in any of Adrienne's clothes despite being almost a year younger, she readies herself for the usual comments she has to brush off. But all that happens is Ambrose off-handedly says that he wishes his daughter would put on more weight and muscle, he worries he'll break her whenever they spar & Adrienne flatly says she will make sure to put him in a horrible retirement home in his old age. Anastasia ignores them both to gleefully tell Eliza that she’ll be calling for a tailor then, and in the meantime they’ll just hem some of her old dresses to fit (<- woman who LOVES clothes) [<- people who don’t spend their time thinking about people they aren’t responsible for, which includes what people look like]. Eliza feels, oddly, very warm in the coldest place she’s ever been in.
Oh, and Eliza is bad at everything, which is mostly played for laughs, but means she is quite untalented and clumsy. Very, very clumsy. So clumsy that the Duchy starts making their own bandaids because of how much she has scrapes that are patched up, and her doodles are nicked for the designs of said bandaids. Eliza is thrilled to be of help in any way at all, but Ambrose and Adrienne are awful, not heartless, so they have a bank account made for her and half of the proceeds from sales given to her. It is her first ever business, and bank account, and in a move that only Anastasia foresees, it makes Eliza's affections deepen and her resolve to stay in the North only strengthen.
Oh, one last thing. The Knights of house Astielo, nicknamed the Knights of Knightfall, love Eliza. Eliza grew up on tales of knights saving damsels in distress, unlike Northern girls who can both wield swords and become knights, and whose fairytales consist of heroes of varying genders saving towns, cities, or families, and becoming beloved. Eliza is delighted by the knights and despite being grown ass adults, they preen at her cooing and attention and find her the sweetest kid.
Enough with Eliza for now. Back to the new guys. Adrienne has one (1) friend and it is her mother. Ambrose has two actual Friends and his wife is one of them. However, there are caveats to both of these statements.
Ambrose's other friend is one he's had since his school days, he couldn't shake the guy off if he tried. And, in true Ambrose fashion, he did try. You just have never met a more thick skinned guy than his friend.
Now let’s meet said friend. His name is Dorji, from the East. And by East I mean Eastern continent, not Eastern region. He specifically is from a place that’s kind of like fictional Tibet. He just schooled in the [still unnamed] kingdom because his family does business with them and his parents wished for him to make connections.
There’s a big academy (a boarding school) in the central region that nobles from all over the continent go to for their schooling, and Ambrose and Anastasia both went there. It’s prestigious etc etc. Some nobles from outside the continent send their children there as well. Eliza is too low-ranking to go, and Adrienne's parents too unwilling to send her.
Dorji's parents were one of them. They were hoping for a well-rounded amount of friends, because Dorji was a friendly, amiable kid, and deeply likable. And Dorji did make a lot of friends from different regions, built bridges and all that, but his parents said Make connections in strange boarding school! & thirteen year old Dorji brings back possibly the most terrifying kid around and goes I made a friend :). Said kid VEHEMENTLY denies being his friend, and Dorji goes He’s just shy :)
Dorji was Ambrose's best man at his wedding! And this is because Ambrose in true terrible fashion planned to have no best man at all but Dorji swore he would stop trading with the North entirely if Ambrose did that. So he got to be best man. It’s a testament to their (then) decade long friendship that the threat even worked at all because Ambrose would have gone "Bet you won't. Bitch" to anyone else who tried such a threat.
Dorji initially didn't think Ambrose should entertain Anastasia's advances because "well there's no way she's thinking clearly if she stalks you with such boldness, surely it's immoral to take advantage of those struggling here as well?" <- Mostly believes what he's saying, partly just trying to piss his friend off. Ambrose cites this as reason Dorji can't be his best man half a decade later and Dorji looks at his best friend in the world and thinks ‘Should I just fucking kill him?’ before calming down.
Dorji suggested that Ambrose have more than one child since obviously being an only child did something unfixable to Ambrose and he would hate to see the same done to little Adrienne. Ambrose suggested Dorji stop talking before he slits his throat. They have fun together. Dorji's own children serve as older siblings for Adrienne, as Dorji is the second-oldest of five and strong believer in siblings.
Now that they’re older, Dorji can talk to Ambrose honestly because they’re assured in their friendship. When they were teenagers it was because Dorji was a skilled enough mage to be able to take Ambrose in a fight and with that came confidence.
Speaking of magic, Dorji is a mage! Mages are on every continent, but there’s differences in the kinds of magic depending on the region and personality of the wielder. The North was the first place in the Western continent to have magical engineering because of Ambrose and Dorji's close bond. Dorji doesn’t specialize in magical engineering, however. That’s Chime.
Chime is Dorji's wife. They married two years before Anastasia and Ambrose did, which is very young across the board, but Chime was sure and Dorji had been in love for years, so they decided waiting was foolish.
In their youth, Chime was uninterested in Dorji. She found him dorky, clumsy, and unwieldy. He spent most of the year on the Western continent in their Academy, so she saw very little of him. For him, however? It was love at first sight. He didn’t tell his family, as he had no want for them to speak to her parents and inadvertently make her feel any kind of pressure, but he pined. Every school holiday or long weekend, he came home and sought her out, much to the light ribbing of his friends who he swore to secrecy via magic seal.
Chime wasn’t very interested, didn’t like him very much, and said exactly that, but never said no, because she knew she could do much worse in a marriage partner. Beautiful and talented but famously cold of personality, not many approached her, which she personally enjoyed as she preferred her studies. Even at fourteen, people whispered about her ability to revolutionalize magical engineering. But Chime knew, ungifted at socializing and unwilling to sit through it as she was, eventually she would want to marry for the social ties it would bring. To her, Dorji seemed to be growing up into a man worth her time. Still dorky, cheerful, and silly, but his frame was beginning to fill out and his personality sharpen into something purposeful. His eyes shined with drive.
She told him, the summer of their seventeeth year, “I could learn to love you, but for that you must wait. I make no promises, and if that unsettles you, as it should, you are free to pursue another.” At this, Dorji beamed. He had a chance. That is all he wished for. Chime felt no strong feeling at the smile, but there was a stirring of something she’d never felt before. She liked his smile.
Dorji graduated from the Academy the year after her not-promise, and he came home with connections galore. On their first ever date, Chime said it was the first thing he had ever been very serious about. Dorji laughed and told her she was the first thing he had ever been very serious about. Chime hid her face behind her hair and said nothing.
Two years and many compromises (mostly on his end) later, they inform their families of their intention to be wed, and a marriage is arranged.
Chime didn’t bring much from her home, but what she did bring was her dog slash best friend, Norbu. She is huge and sleeps in bed with her and will probably outlive most of the continent. Incidentally, she helps Chime with her magic. The only other thing she brought was practically her entire workroom, which included all her books. Dorji honestly had expected more and welcomed her with open arms. He had settled properly back into the East, and while he took many trips to the Western continent for business, he had no desire to ever live there again.
Pregnancy frustrated Chime far more than she thought it would, and when she found out she wws having twins, she understood why. From a young age, Sonam and Tashi inherited her temperament more then their father's, which she was pleased about. While amazed and thrilled at Dorji’s magical capabilities, and the small spells he casts to entertain them, they are far more predisposed to magical engineering like their mother.
Sonam and Tashi, her little miracles. Their upbringing was never a source of debate, as Dorji schooled in the Western continent, and gained very valuable lessons from it. He will never make his children do such a thing though, he loves them far too much, so they learn in the Eastern continent. They’re a year older than Adrienne and would be considered her friends, but they think of each other as cousins. Adrienne calls them both Older Sister. In part because her parents warned her to behave and in part because the twins are slightly more skilled in magic than she is at her ability, they have always played together nicely.
While not very fond of Adrienne's awful personality, they still see her as the sick little girl she was for the first five years of her life. They still worry, still seek out any and all proof that she is alive and strong, even though it’s been over a decade. Sonam and Tashi are identical in looks and temperament, but Sonam is slightly better at scrawling magic circles and Tashi more gifted at making models.
While the girls get along, Chime and Ambrose met for the first time at her wedding to Dorji. Ambrose was perfectly polite and said Dorji rambled about her endlessly, and Chime said Dorji spoke of him too. Initial sizing-up over, their relationship warmed to friendly familiarity and nothing else, similar to Dorji's relationship with Anastasia. The kind of relationship where you write to each other sometimes and talk easily when you see each other, but hardly ever seek the other out.
Chime initially finds Anastasia horribly bright, bubbly, and unserious. As a serious, reserved, introverted lady herself, she is uninterested in her husband's friend's wife who she shares nothing in common with. Things are different for Anastasia though. Despite blossoming in high society, she finds it all horribly exhausting fake. She is very pleased with Chime and her distaste and disregard for the illusions and puppet shows, and is very pleased to have another person she can set aside her mask with. Asya believes Chime to be her only true friend and, as these things go, Chime ends up considering Anastasia much the same. A woman often surrounded by people and a woman who secluded herself are equally lonely without each other. They have very little in common, but write and call each other often.
At the start of the story (when Eliza makes her journey to the North), Chime is perfecting a large-scale portal to make travel instantaneous. She will win countless awards and receive critical acclaim for it, and while she enjoys both as well as the pride of her family, her true reward is being able to see Anastasia as often as she'd like. Chime tells nobody this, because she is of the firm belief Anastasia never needs another ego boost. She frames it as an idea that came to her while watching her husband agonize over long transportation times and complex, taxing long-distance teleportation, and managing their trading business and wishing to streamline processes. Despite it all, Anastasia guesses that it’s for her and holds it very, very close to her heart.
Chime and Adrienne swap gripes about foolish people and have solidarity built off exasperation.
And again because I think I'll link this every post, as it's ever updating, here is my Pinterest board for the people you are about to meet and those you already know!