Roderick Usher

## CHARACTERISTICS

> "*I promised my confession. And here it is. I **knew**. Deep down. In the witching hour. I knew. I knew I would climb to the top of the tower on a pile of corpses. And we told them… it was about soothing the world’s pain. The biggest lie we ever told. You can’t eliminate pain. Theres no such thing as a painkiller. And imagine if we’d put that on the bottle. I bet I still could’ve sold it.*"
> ― Roderick's confession to Dupin[source]
>
>

**Roderick Usher** is the villainous protagonist of *The Fall of the House of Usher*. He is the patriarch of the Usher family and the CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. He is the brother to Madeline Usher and father to six children with multiple women.

## Personality

Roderick is ambitious and driven, sure in his ways, and relentless. He expects only the best from his children while failing to show much fatherly compassion. He expresses, multiple times, that Lenore is his favourite and the only good Usher family member.

## History

### Early Life

Roderick was born in 1950 to Eliza Usher and William Longfellow, the current CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. Longfellow abandoned Eliza and the kids, forcing them to live on their own. Eventually, their mother fell ill. One day when Roderick and Madeline went to check in on their mother, they found her unresponsive and declared her dead, burring her in the backyard. That night, their mother dug herself out of the ground and traveled to Longfellow's home and strangled him to death as Roderick watched before dying herself.

### New Years Eve, 1979

Roderick and Madeline met Verna at a bar and make a deal for wealth and power with her. In exchange, their offspring will die before them.

### Running Fortunato

Roderick was appointed the CEO sometime in 1980 after the "disappearance" of Griswold. Him, alongside his COO, Madeline, transformed Fortunato into a Fortune100 company. With his great wealth, Roderick created an Usher dynasty with his eldest son, Frederick, the heir to the entire company.

### The Fall of House Usher

In 2023, Fortunato was once again put on trial against Dupin who was now a district attorney. During Dupin's opening statement, he revealed a member of the family was a whistleblower speaking to the FBI but refused to identify which of the family members was said spy.

## Quotes

"If pain and suffering were the kisses of Jesus, then he kissed the living fuck out of my mother in the years that followed."
- "A Midnight Dreary"

"First, you roll out a multi-media campaign to convince people lemons are incredibly scarce, which only works if you stockpile lemons, control the supply, then a… A media blitz. Lemon is the only way to say "I love you," the must-have accessory for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out, lemons are in. Billboards that say she won't have sex with you unless you got lemons. You cut De Beers in on it. Limited edition lemon bracelets, yellow diamonds called lemon drops. You get Apple to call their new operating system OS-Lemón. A little accent over the "o". You charge 40% more for organic lemons and 50% more for conflict-free lemons. You pack the Capitol with lemon lobbyists; you get a Kardashian to suck a lemon wedge in a leaked sex tape. Timothée Chalamet wears lemon shoes at Cannes. Get a hashtag campaign. Something isn't "cool," "tight," or "awesome". No, it's "lemon". "Did you see that movie?" "Did you go to that concert? It was effing lemon." Billie Eilish, "OMG, hashtag… lemon." You get Dr. Oz to recommend four lemons a day and a lemon suppository supplement to get rid of toxins 'cause there's nothing scarier than toxins. Then, you patent the seeds. You write a line of genetic code that makes lemons look just a little more like tits… and you get a gene patent for the tit-lemon DNA sequence, and you get a gene patent for the tit-lemon DNA sequence, you get those seeds circulating in the wild, and then you sue the farmers for copyright infringement when that genetic code shows up on their land. Sit back, rake in the millions, and then, when you're done, and you've sold your lem-pire for a few billion dollars, then, and only then, you make some fucking lemonade."
- "Murder in the Rue Morgue"

"We're at battle stations, I'm the commanding officer, I don't wanna hear anything but, "Sir, yes, sir." You get me?"
- Roderick to his surviving children, "The Black Cat"

"Denial. It's amazing how far you can get on denial. You know why so many people use denial to get by? Because it really fucking works. The thing about denial is sometimes problems do just go away on their own, so it makes it feel like denial works. The placebo effect. Sometimes it works, like I said. But other times, it doesn't. It really fucking doesn't."
- "The Black Cat"

"And the mind of guilt... it's filled with scorpions and I wouldn't wish their sting on anyone."
-"The Tell-Tale Heart"

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered... weak and weary. "
- "The Raven"

"Thank you for coming tonight, Auggie. I’m sorry for all the times I inconvenienced you. It may not have been perfect, but you can’t say we didn’t change the world. How many people can say that at the end?"
- "The Raven"

"Nevermore"
- Roderick's last word, "The Raven"

## Trivia

* He suffers from a rare and inherited vascular disease CADASIL, which also killed his mother, Eliza Usher.

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