Josephine De Coeur

Queen Josephine De Coeur is perhaps the most notorious female figure in Reven history. The daughter of an equally infamous adulteress, Cornelia De Coeur, and a governor of the Seldonna Colony, Joseph Leclair. Her mother had a wifely-known affair with a colonist for many years, drawing Josephine's true parentage into question. Despite her family's besmirched reputation and her possible illegitimacy, Josephine managed to seduce the young prince Edouard, captivating him enough to make her his wife against the wishes of his advisors.

Physical Description
Josephine was known to be a rather plain-looking woman of her features; neither hideous nor beautiful. To make up for her rather unextraordinary appearance, Josephine would dress herself in brash, bold colors and patterns. She was very meticulous about her style and attire; it was reported that it once took the queen an entire suite of ten ladies-in-waiting seven hours to assemble one of her outfits for an afternoon. Most accounts place her outfits between ridiculous and childish, to bewildering, to more ornate than the palace itself.

Apparently, it was very difficult for Josephine to walk, dance, or even sit down due to the weight, size, and complexity of her dresses. She had a specially designed chaise upon which she would be carried to and fro the rooms by servants.

Though her excessive ways never quite caught on, she is known as a pinnacle of Reven fashion. Young noblewomen and courtiers were known to aspire to the queen's level of dress. According to rumor, she was one of the first women to introduce panniers and hoop skirts to mainstream fashion.

Personality
By all accounts, Josephine was a diva. Spoiled, demanding, and quite arrogant, she was known for being an attention-seeker and melodramatic. It was not uncommon to spot the queen in a state of extreme distress over the slightest mishaps; one story goes that the queen once wept so terribly, with such sorrow, that the servants feared the king had been assassinated. The palace went to a panicked state of alarm until the king was found to be safely working on legislature in his study. When asked why she cried so terribly, Josephine explained in misery how a button had fallen from her shoe and her complex outfit was thus ruined.

Background
Josephine was born sometime in summer in the Reven Year of 645. Her mother was clearly Cornelia De Coeur, but her father has been questioned since her birth, including by Josephine herself. Though she is legally the daughter of Joseph Leclair, she was bestowed with her mother's family name when Joseph initially refused to claim her. Though he later decided to accept her as his daughter, he did not have much time to act as a father to her; in 659R, Cornelia and her lover, Devon Gardner, murdered Joseph and fled. Finally charged with adultery, and now murder, there was a search far and wide through the Reven lands for the pair. They were never found, though historians now believe they may have fled to Tjaver.

As her mother fled with her lover and Joseph lay dead, Josephine was sent to an orphanage in Sonne Sainte Capitale, just outside of the Guttering. According to her memoirs, Josephine was bullied by the other children due to her mother's fugitive status, and ran away from the orphanage several times.

Meeting Edouard
In order to make a living as an unmarried young woman, Josephine became a servant at the palace at age eighteen. She worked as a scullery maid in the kitchens, cleaning and assisting the royal chefs. It was by happenstance that Edouard Lugh, then a young prince of no older than fourteen, came to the kitchens to complain that his dinner had not been made to his specifications. Again according to her memoirs, Edouard was smitten with her the moment he laid his eyes upon her. Though she never admits it outright, the memoirs seem to imply that Josephine eagerly took advantage of the young prince's crush on her because she knew it could get her a wealthy station.

Against All Odds
It wasn't long before Edouard announced their betrothal, against the wishes of his parents and advisors. Ultimately, however, they allowed this on the condition that Edouard's elder brother and future king, Rever IV, would marry a bride of their choosing. Edouard's marriage was ultimately dismissed as unimportant in favor of his brother, however this proved catastrophic. After his unmarried brother died in a horseback accident (which many speculate Josephine may have had a hand in), Edouard became the dauphin and his new wife, the future queen.

The Frolic
Josephine was happy following Edouard's coronation, for a time. Their marriage was stable and, if Josephine's writings are to be believed, romantic. They even managed to produce a child; a daughter, Charlotte. However, once she became accustomed to a queen's life, she quickly became bored and frustrated. According to her memoirs, she was most annoyed how her husband's demanding job denied her the time and attention from him she sought. She soon concluded that if her husband could not provide her with the affection she craved, she would have to seek it elsewhere.

Josephine began her search for a lover, writing that her requirements were someone handsome, sensitive, and attentive. She considered many potential candidates, including the famous poet Vincent de la Vallée as her first choice. Josephine was a great fan of his work and mentioned in her memoirs, several times, that she found him incredibly handsome. She soon invited Vincent to the palace, under the pretext that he would be hired to write an epic poem to immortalize her. As he worked, however, she tried many things to seduce him including and not limited to bribery, blackmail, and threatening not to pay him. Vincent, repulsed by her advances, left the palace willingly without pay. It wasn't long after that Vincent published his poem recounting the experience titled The Frolic."Frolic! Thy hands beckon me hither.""Frolic! Thine hands are aged and withered""like coiling fangs of a venomous snake!""You, who seek what she must never take.""Married are thee and married ye be!""What wretch is this of this he cannot see?""Frolic! Thine eyes meet me with sultry gaze.""Frolic! Mine eyes meet yours with a glaze""for I have no need of what you desire""and I see too clearly your thoughts to conspire.""Is the marriage of kings to you but a game?""Be if that so, to His Majesty's shame.""Frolic! What behooves to consort with thee?""Frolic! What fool thought makes a consort of me!""Stay from my sight, ye wicked woman of red!""May no man love you but for fear of his head.""You are violent and noxious and haughty and mean.""The thought of laying with you makes me turn green.""Frolic! Cast not your smile to me.""Frolic! I shall escape to be free!""Your tinseled arms cannot hold me tight""for I would struggle away with all my might.""Curse degenerate ways lest you stray.""A daughter needs her mother, wouldn't you say?"Needless to say, Josephine was incensed and humiliated by the poem. Through he never mentioned her by name, there were many clues to the identity of the 'frolic' which all eventually pointed back to Josephine. Fortunately for the queen, her husband was too busy to to partake of poetry. Though a word was never uttered against her and the king remained oblivious, Josephine's reputation was tarnished.

An Obligatory Prengancy
As Josephine began to focus her time more on finding a lover and Edouard focused on his duties as king, what was left of the relationship between the two fizzled out and faded. Edouard, noticing this, attempted to rekindle the relationship by taking a vacation to Proserpina, the city of harlequins, in order to spend some time together. Seeking an escape from the Capitale and the judgmental stares of the courtiers, Josephine agreed. Rather than repairing her marriage, her memoirs revealed the real reason for her agreement to the trip; she hoped to find her lover among the city's many artists. Artists, she figured, were more sensitive.

She searched for word of a handsome young artist within the city, relatively ignoring her husband, and quickly came to find the city hosted the Collège d'Art, the internationally renowned school of artistry. From among the students, she quickly caught word of a young artist who was captivating the attentions of the nobility with his eccentric portraiture style. As soon as she saw one of the artist's self-portraits, in which he was depicted quite hideously, she lost interest.

Edouard, meanwhile, had used their trip to the city to relax and garner his vitality back. Reinvigorated, he impressed Josephine with grandiose romantic gestures and showered her with attention. This briefly rekindled their romance just long enough for Josephine to get pregnant. Upon learning this, Edouard had them return to the Capitale and, unfortunately, lost himself in his work again. The only contact the two had during her pregnancy was upon the day of delivery, wherein Edouard named his son after his later brother.

Arrival of the Artist
Many months passed after Rever V was born and, seeing her marriage had failed her yet again, Josephine returned to her search for a suitable man to romance. Meanwhile, word began to spread to the Capitale of a strange artist who took a comical take on his art, although he now provided many stunning serious portraits as well. It wasn't long before Edouard, curious of the buzz, invited the artist to the palace. That marked the first time Josephine officially met the artist, Alexandre Phillipon. She was surprised to realize he looked nothing like his self-portrait and was actually quite handsome. Choosing him as her intended lover, Josephine encouraged her husband to requisition several large paintings in order to keep him around. She, too, would continuously demand painting after painting for the tenure of her attempts to court the young artist.

Alexandre proved quite difficult to capture as he was quite oblivious to her advances. Finally growing tired of what she presumed to be a willful ignorance, she used her power as queen to threaten him into becoming her lover by force. Lacking the means to deny her, as Vincent did, Alexandre was forced to oblige.

The Affair
Josephine quickly leveraged Alexandre as royal painter and bestowed to him an official peerage in the court as a Comte of La Tour; effectually a useless and meaningless title. Josephine had Alexandre escort her everywhere and showered him with lavish gifts. Despite this, the relationship was very one-sided and abusive. When he refused to obey her commands without protest, Josephine would do anything from burn one of his other client's paintings or even beat him to unconsciousness with a candelabra. She noted his several attempts to escape in her memoirs, writing them off as a young boy's folly and amicably joking that he must have been confused because she accidentally struck him too hard in the head.

As ever-oblivious Edouard began to take time out of his busy schedule to cater to his daughter, Josephine began to grow jealous and her affair with Alexandre grew even more unstable. She forbade him from painting anyone but her, from all contact with other women, and from leaving the palace. She later shaved his head and started making him keep log of his daily activities in a journal. Alexandre desperately sought a means to escape from the queen's clutches, even begging her to send him to a monastery, but she refused to release him. In her memoirs, which quickly began to show her deteriorating mental stability, she referred to Alexandre as her personal plaything.

An Unexpected Pregnancy & Repentance
After many years devoting her attention solely to Alexandre, any relationship between Josephine and her husband was nonexistent. Therefore, when the queen suddenly became pregnant, a few eyebrows were raised. Josephine quickly reestablished a relationship with the king just long enough to make it plausible the child was his. Even so Edouard had his own doubts to the validity of the child and sent Josephine away to Tjaver and told her not to return unless the child had brown hair like him. Josephine became worried the babe would be red-haired like Alexandre but did as she was bade. During nearly the entire length of her pregnancy, Josephine was placed in a Tjan monastery to Saint Thistle and prayed her child would be born with brown hair. During this time of religious reflection, Josephine found herself drawn to faith and became devoted. When the child was born, he was bald. She named the child Babe De Villepin in the meanwhile, after the pine forest the monastery was nestled within.

When the boy finally grew hair, it was brown. Josephine returned to Edouard, who accepted the baby as his own and bestowed him with a name Bastien, chosen due by his ability to say the previous named 'Babe' already.

Josephine dismissed Alexandre from her presence, to his feverish delight. She lived out the rest of her days eyed suspiciously, however it wasn't until her death when her memoirs were discovered, and her adultery. For the sake of his grown son with whom he was close, Edouard had the memoirs destroyed along with any evidence that Bastien may not be his legitimate son.