ALINA KINSLEY + MARJORIE KIRKE

you're alive, so alive "Your grandmother was the most beautiful, vibrant, woman I'd ever known. I was a fool not to fall in love with her. I was a fool to choose this over what was offered to me. ...you remind me so much of her. my Marjorie." -CORIAKIN, the voyage of the dawn treader

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hi! what are your top 5 favorite ocs you've created from your ever fixed mark series?

1) Marjorie, Lady Stornoway

What can I say, I love a conniving woman who likes fashion and knows how to effectively wield soft power. I’m so fond of her I used her in A Monstrous Regiment too. I also admit to a betreayl of my more Jacobean principles in that I am super fascinated by the power and influence of female members of the aristocracy int he Georgian/Regency era(s). Loved getting a chance to use her to explore that a bit more. 

2) Colonel Benet Pascal

He’s just fun to write whenever he shows up. He’s knows who he is and knows he’s good at what he does sees no reason to hide it, or to change himself to suit other people-- a POV alien enough to myself that I find it refreshing to be in his headspace. Fun way to point out there was a large Jewish community in London in the Regency era, and a fun way to play with history of medicine stuff. I will never not be fascinated by miasma theory because it was so close! They so nearly got it! Also gives me an outlet for elegant cattiness. 

3) Beatrice Kirke

Imprinted too early on Horatio Hornblower, probably, but I looooove the Napoleonic Wars and I looooove a chance to point out women were around and on battlefields and contributing to “the war effort” in person in lots of societally expected and accepted ways. Plus I just love competent, plain-spoken characters, especially when they form unlikely friendships with more cerebral and ladylike ones. Also another good excuse to research the diversity of actual Regency England! (Beatrice is half-Jamaican.) 

4) Colonel Dunne, whom I’m not sure I ever gave a first name

I wanted to have a character with a soulmark that referred to a calling or that they at least would interpret as a calling-- so in came Colonel Dunne with ‘Hippocrates’ as his mark and his sense of medicine being a life calling, and a mission to help his fellow that would feed/sustain/inspire his soul. He’d fall on the ace spectrum nowadays, but in this period I think he’d consider it a kind of religious calling to a certain service to his society and everyone else would think it a little odd, but would accept it. I also feel a bit bad for him, because though I made him around this central idea that your soulmate can be a certain field of study, his major scenes are when he bumps up against the limitations of his field of study and his patients die on him despite all his effort, care, attention, and dedication. 

5) Isadora Duncan, who I named kind of tongue-in-cheekly before picking a profession for her. 

I like her because she’s a step down on the social ladder than most of the other characters, and much, much, MUCH more introverted than anyone else. Poor woman. She serves as a great contrast to all the rest of the family but she has the least fun in any scene she’s in. Part of the fun of Dalliance with a Duke was getting to expand on her career and have an “in” into art history and the Parthenon marbles.