Jenna Kaufmann

Captain Jenna Kaufmann is the main character of The Valkyrie and is the commanding officer of the titular U.S.S Valkyrie after being promoted in the pilot episode, Old Wounds.

## History

### Childhood

After being born on the 9th of March in the year 2251, to English mother Rosalina and Austrian father Stefan, Jenna grew up in Warwickshire, England, where she met Eve Ferencz for the very first time at the age of five, during their early years of primary school. Jenna and Eve both lived in a rural village surrounded by farms, country lanes and open fields.

She has mixed Viking and Prussian ancestry from the maternal and paternal sides of her family respectively, along with some Cockney lineage due to her maternal grandparents originally coming from the East End of London.

### Early Career

During her and Eve's time as Cadets for the UIFA, they met Bruce Sullivan, a Lieutenant-Commander at the time, along with Ensign Martin Keates and Lieutenant Hank Anderson, shortly after which Martin and Jenna started dating. They continued to be a friend group from this point onwards.

In 2276, by which time Jenna now already held the rank of Commander due to her exemplary record, she arrived at her and Martin's shared apartment in New York to find him cheating on her with Tharela, an Orion woman - Jenna, storming out in the process, promptly broke up with Martin.

### Captaincy

It was a month later when Bruce, now an Admiral with Jenna currently being the First Officer of the Flagship-class U.S.S *Zephyr*, when the former announced to her that she had just been offered the chance of being promoted to Captain and given command of the Exploratory-class ship U.S.S Valkyrie, which she accepted. This made Jenna the youngest Human Captain in the Planetary Union in "decades", with one man before her managing to achieve this at the age of twenty-four. She also chose Hank and Eve to respectively be her Second and Chief Medical Officers, and her pet dog Everest additionally came to live with her onboard. Later, though, she found out much to her dismay that Martin, who she hadn't seen or spoken to for the last month, had been assigned as her First Officer; the pair got into an argument with one another about their breakup very soon after his arrival, and they remained hostile and uninviting to each other for most of that afternoon.

However, after the mission they'd been given that day to deliver supplies to Epsilon-Iota, during which a plan that Martin came up with saved the ship, the latter apologised for what he did, and Jenna, too, realised her own mistake in their relationship which was actually what triggered his cheating in the first place: her own hubris and excessive career ambition meant that they barely spent any time together, meaning she driving a wedge between her and Martin by neglecting the relationship. After apologising for her arrogance, the two reconciled and agreed to be friends, with Jenna affirming her desire for them to work together amicably.

## Appearance

She wears a pair of thin, black-framed glasses, along with (from time to time) blue hair dye on a streak from the front of her hair on her right side. Her eyes are pale blue, with her hair being light mousy brown in colour and long enough to end halfway down her back.

## Personality and Interests

Jenna is a cool-headed individual who finds some social situations difficult, such as experiencing awkwardness around young children and preferring to be seen to by female medical officers as opposed to men, but she still attempts to adapt; she was a slightly shy but driven child. Overall, Jenna is a kind and easygoing person towards others. She’s confident and often speaks her mind, and generally isn’t that concerned with how others might view her, and can also sometimes be seen as stubborn.

She’s usually polite and maintains her standards of etiquette, but she’s sarcastic and blunt to people who incur her disapproval. She has an interest in typically vintage items like jabots and pocket watches. Prior to becoming the Captain of the *Valkyrie*, she valued her career ambitions very highly, to a point where this caused Martin’s affair with Tharela because of him feeling like Jenna placed more value on her career ambitions than she did on their relationship. However, when he told her this in 2276, she apologised for it and has since learned from her mistake, realising that it was her own arrogance she had at the time which drove a wedge between the two of them.

## Trivia

* Jenna came into being as a fictionalised version of the series’ creator, BlueSakura007.
* The name “Jenna” derives from the similar name “Jennifer”, and this, in turn, comes from the Welsh name “Guinevere” or “Gwenhwyfar”, which means “fair lady”. Jenna itself means “fair phantom” and “white shadow”. “Kaufmann”, meanwhile, is a surname of German origin and means “pedlar” or “merchant”.
* She shares some similarities with Captain Kathryn Janeway, the main character of *Star Trek: Voyager*: both are female starship leaders who grew up in rural environments and who also both take their duties and careers seriously while still maintaining their personable sides.
* Another Star Trek character who Jenna bares a similarity to is Captain James T. Kirk from the reboot film trilogy known as *Star Trek: Alternate Original Series*: both reached the rank of Captain at the age of twenty-five, and, like Kirk in the second instalment in the trilogy, *Star Trek Into Darkness*, Jenna initially has his same issues with relying on and listening to others instead of taking all the weight on herself.