Aline Penhallow

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Aline Penhallow is the only child of Jia and Patrick Penhallow, and is the wife of Helen Blackthorn. She is the adoptive mother of Lynn, Michael, and Eleanor, and is the biological mother of Cece.
==Biography==
===History===
Aline was born an only child to Patrick and Jia Penhallow. With her parents being good friends with the Lightwoods, Aline became friends with the Lightwood children Alec and Isabelle when they were young, but they stopped seeing each other when she was around nine. She lived with her parents at the Beijing Institute for a few years before they moved to Alicante.
When Aline was thirteen, she and Jace—a boy taken in by the Lightwoods—explored the Brocelind Forest in Idris on horseback and got lost. While Aline had been terrified, Jace seemed fearless to her and, though it took hours, managed to get them out of the forest.
===Mortal War===
In September 2007, the Penhallows agreed to house the Lightwoods and Sebastian Verlac, her cousin, who were visiting Alicante for the signing of the Tenth Accords. When the younger Lightwoods arrived with the hurt vampire Simon Lewis, Aline, like most Shadowhunters who were ignorant about Downworlders, was curious about them, and her questions and statements came off as rude and judgmental.
At that point, Aline had already begun to question her own sexuality. In an attempt to figure it out, she flirted with Jace and later kissed him to see if "any guy was [her] type." While she was making out with Jace, they were interrupted by Clary, whom everyone believed then to be Jace's sister. The flirting no longer progressed past that. During a conversation with Sebastian and Isabelle, Aline noted that Jace seemed too overprotective of Clary.
On the evening of the Morgensterns' attack on Alicante, when the demon towers were miraculously decativated and demons swarmed the city, most of the adult members of the Clave were meeting at the Gard and were thus not there to protect them. Several demons broke into Aline's house and one pulled her out into the streets. While outside, Aline was knocked to the ground by a demon which then attempted to rape her. Isabelle Lightwood arrived just in time and stopped the demon. Aline went after the fleeing demon and killed it before running off. 
The same evening, Isabelle and Alec's little brother, Max, was killed by Sebastian. Aline contacted Sebastian's aunt Elodie, and the woman immediately sent back some of Sebastian's things and pictures in disbelief, making her realize that the Sebastian that had been staying with them was an imposter. Aline then shared this revelation with Clary, hoping she would tell the Lightwoods, who had distanced themselves from her family after the incident, and that they would forgive her family. In addition to this conversation, she cleared the air with Clary about her intentions when she kissed Jace.
In preparation for the impending battle with Valentine Morgenstern's demons, the Penhallows' home was used as a refuge for at least twelve children, and Aline and a few other teenagers looked after them.
After the battle and war was won, and the subsequent defeat and death of Valentine and Sebastian, Aline prepared for the victory party with Isabelle and Clary, during which Clary was finally able to be open with them about her feelings for Jace. At the party, she conversed with the werewolf Maia Roberts.
===Blackthorns===
After the war, her mother was appointed as the new Consul.
Aline eventually realized that she was a lesbian. Inspired by Alec's brave act of kissing Magnus in front of Clave members and his family, she eventually came out to her parents. Shortly afterwards, while in Rome, Aline met and began dating Helen Blackthorn. She also began to form a bond with Helen's six siblings, who liked her and saw her as a calming presence for Helen.
She assumed that her parents were trying to ignore their relationship, and while her father was indeed disappointed, Jia was more concerned with the fact that Helen was part-faerie and feared that she would break her heart.
===Endarkened===
Aline and Helen's relationship quickly turned serious, to the point where they eventually exchanged family rings.
She and Helen attended the Council meeting in New York in November later that year, convened to discuss what should be done with Jace, who had gone missing with Sebastian—Jonathan Morgenstern, the imposter who'd stayed with them before the war who has since adopted the name as his own.
While meeting with Maryse at the New York Institute one day, Isabelle and Alec arrived and told them that they'd been conducting their own unsanctioned search for Jace. She understood and promised not to report them to her mother. In gratitude for Isabelle saving her months before in Alicante, and in retaliation for Sebastian killing her real cousin, she even offered to help them. She and Helen joined in the battle against Sebastian and his army at the Burren. She continued to cover for them by telling her mother that there had been no time to notify the Clave and that they needed to act as soon as they got the intel on Sebastian.
===Dark War===
Aline had been in Idris with Helen when the Blackthorns were attacked at the Los Angeles Institute. After Helen's younger siblings, except for Mark, and Emma Carstairs escaped through Portal, they were brought to the Penhallow's home and allowed to stay there throughout their stay in Idris.
Aline was later among the people who witnessed a drunken Simon professing his love for Isabelle before being interrupted by Robert Lightwood. She was also at the Council meeting when the Endarkened Matthais Gonzalez threatened her mother's life and passed on messages from Sebastian. Helen held her back, preventing her from hastily rushing to them; she was forced to watch as the Endarkened held a knife against Jia's throat and began to cut; fortunately, Alec managed to knock Matthias's weapon away, and Aline rushed over to hold her mother.
Before the war's culminating battle, Aline stayed in the Gard with her family. After the city walls were destroyed and their enemies entered the city, Aline went down and participated in the fight against Sebastian's Endarkened army and faerie allies. She fought in the Angel Square, protecting her mother and the Accords Hall where the children and the elderly were hiding. Helen tried to get to her but was unable to in the crowd. After the Hall's defenses were breached, Aline and Helen rushed in to get to the children as soon as they were able—when the Endarkened army was destroyed.
At the Council meeting after the Dark War, majority of the Clave voted to "assign"—basically exile—Helen to Wrangel Island to study the wards; Jia was forced to recuse herself from the decision and was unable to refuse it. Aline promised to follow Helen later that year.
In 2008, Aline attended Jocelyn and Luke's wedding at Three Arrows Farm.
===Wrangel Island===
Aline stayed true to her word and eventually followed Helen to Wrangel Island. Eventually, Helen proposed to her, and she accepted. Though Aline's mother was recused from any decision-making related to Helen because of her apparent bias, Helen struck a deal with the Clave—she would agree to go to the Shadowhunter Academy to tell the students the story of her parents and be paraded around as an example of the Clave's distrust of faeries, in exchange for a temporary pardon from her exile for a day and a night so they could get married in Idris with their family and friends present.
On October 1, 2009, Aline and Helen got married in Idris. Jia stood as Aline's suggenes for the wedding. Aline and Helen spent their wedding party surrounded by and talking with Helen's younger siblings.
For the following years, she and Helen spoke to Helen's siblings and Emma every week. Julian would always tell them that everything with them was fine, not wanting her and Helen to worry about them.
Making the most out of the situation, Aline picked up ice sculpting as a new hobby, excelling at the detail-oriented work and the use of a variety of weapons for carving. Her best-known piece was her rendering of Jonathan Shadowhunter, carved entirely with seraph blades, but her favorite subject was her wife, Helen.
===Move to L.A.===
In 2012, Helen and Aline detected when the former High Warlock of L.A. Malcolm Fade broke the wards of the L.A. Institute and immediately reported it to Jia. Around this time, they also saw the earliest signs of the Shadowhunter blight on the maps of Alicante, in the area of the Brocelind Forest, and informed Jia about it.
Knowing what they knew, Jia and Diana Wrayburn plotted to have Helen and Aline present at the Council meeting that would discuss the blight and potentially present themselves as the new heads of the Los Angeles Institute, a position that was recently vacated with the death of Helen's uncle. With Diana's help, Aline and Helen were rushed to Idris for the meeting, where one of Helen's younger sisters, Livvy, was killed.
On the day of Livvy's funeral, Jia had Aline and the rest of the L.A. Institute residents, excluding Julian and Emma, Portaled back to Los Angeles so that Horace Dearborn won't have an opportunity to have them returned to Wrangel Island. Upon arriving at the Institute, she and Helen were assigned as the interim heads of the Institute and immediately got to work, all the while Aline helped Helen adjust to being around the children again. When the Registry was passed, she and Helen registered their city's Downworlders under ridiculous, false names.
Aline was incredibly worried when they found out that Emma and Julian were in Faerie on a suicide mission, and more so when their rescue team returned without them, only to reappear shortly after wounded and dressed oddly and bearing a whole Mortal Sword, which had been broken days before during the Council meeting. Julian and Emma told them about Thule and about the cure for the warlock illness being water from Lake Lyn. Aline had access to the schedule of patrols in Idris and helped Jace and Clary prepare to gather water, though this was ultimately not carried out as planned when another message from the Clave announced that Jace and Clary were dead. She then became distressed upon learning that her mother was imprisoned in the Gard.
She was surprised and impressed when Julian was able to invite so many Shadowhunters and Downworlders to his war council. Aline supported him and agreed to his plans, Portaling to the deserted Brocelind Forest on the day of the Cohort's parley with the Unseelie Court. ALine stayed behind with the group that expected to be ambushed by Dearborn's followers and when their trap succeeded, they all followed Julian and the others to the Imperishable Fields with their attackers, showing all who were watching that Dearborn wanted to have Jace and Clary killed.
Aline was reunited with Jia, who was freed from prison by Dru, on the battlefield. Later, she witnessed Jules and Emma transform into giants—true Nephilim who had little control over their actions and were dying of heavenly fire. She didn't try to stop Helen when she wanted to try to talk the pair down with her family and later even joined them, imploring them to return and continue to be part of the family she and her wife wanted, contributing to the loving words of their friends and family that managed to bring the two back to their human forms.
Aline was among those who were surprised by Jia's announcement at a Council meeting that she was stepping down as Consul. She then supported and voted for Alec. The vote was met with opposition from the Cohort, and Alec voluntarily accepted the exile of the Clave if it meant being free from the Cohort's plots. Soon after, she and Helen were officially appointed heads of the L.A. Institute.
At Magnus' and Alec's wedding, Aline told Helen of her desire to have a child, and suggested the name Eunice if they were to have a daughter, which Helen tried to refuse.
===Kids===
Two months later, Emma found baby warlock Lynn at the Shadow Market. She brought her back to the Institute, where it was identified that she was a warlock by Magnus Bane. Helen and Aline quickly decided to adopt the baby, and named her Lynn. 
Wanting to have a biological child, Alec Lightwood offered to donate sperm so Aline could get pregnant. In June 2014, Cecily Isabelle Lightwood Blackthorn-Penhallow was born. Alec remains a constant presence in her life, and Helen and Aline are doting mothers. 
In 2018, Helen and Aline adopted another orphaned child, a Shadowhunter named Eleanor. In 2022, they adopted a warlock child named Michael.
==Physical Appearance==
Aline is half-Asian. She has curved cheekbones, dark brown, round, almond-shaped eyes, a delicate, pointed chin, straight, black hair, and a small stature.
She is said to greatly resemble her mother, Jia. People perceive her beauty differently—Isabelle and Clary both thought she was pretty, and Simon, who thought she wasn't exactly pretty, described her as striking.
==Trivia==
*Her favorite weapons are seraph blades.