Mariette Desrosiers

## Countess Mariette Desrosiers de La Cygne

* The Countess
* The Witch

Marriette was a vampire and dark witch hailing from the southern Escarian county of La Cygne, on which she held a noble title. Although she was known mainly for her wine enterprise, Mariette's background was filled with turmoil which left her both embittered and empowered.

## History

A tragic story now relegated to the obscure pages of history, Mariette was once the favored daughter of the powerful Desrosiers noble family, which held the Duchy of Chalmette Florissant from the early 1630s to the late 1780s. Born in October of 1711, Mariette was only fifteen when she became engaged to wed the young Prince Auguste Perrault, third in line for the throne at the time of their betrothing.

Auguste was the younger half-brother of Prince Rodolph, an unwed, notorious hemophiliac who had barely survived childhood, and Prince Edmond, whose wife was already pregnant with a child of her own. Although Rodolph was first in line, general assumption among the court held that he would not rule for very long, due to his ailment, and that Edmond would soon be the country's future. Instead, tragically, a mysterious fever plague swept Escaria in the winter of 1736, killing Edmond and yet ironically sparing Rodolph. Suddenly, it seemed as if Mariette was destined to become queen.

Then, tragedy struck again, as Mariette fell ill with the same plague which took the life of Edmond. Auguste, desperate not to lose his wife so soon after his elder brother, resorted to drastic measures to save Mariette's life before it was too late. Blinded by grief, Auguste was finally driven to bring a stranger into his estate to what would have been Mariette's death bed.

Upon seeing the woman beside her bed, Mariette, who had barely moved in days or eaten a nibble, suddenly recoiled, finding the strength to sit up for the first time in a week. She tried in vain to argue to her husband that she would rather die, but he was adamant that her life should continue by any means. The stranger, a vampire, took blood from Mariette and imparted her immortality upon the young woman.

Mariette recovered quickly, but had lost her romantic side through the experience. Her marriage, which had once fostered hopes of children, was now as cold and loveless as the winter night itself. Mariette could no longer leave home during the day, and would spend her many lonely hours spinning intricate webs with the house servants, to whom she would give many gifts in exchange for keeping her connected to the outside world.

Auguste, meanwhile, continued to act as if his wife was merely ill, but the charade proved exhausting, and with many years seemingly between himself and the throne, he openly began to wonder if it would be better to move on from Mariette. These thoughts eventually reached the woman, and her revenge was swift in coming.

Using her connections to gain contact with a dark witch from Tsavania, Mariette learned twisted magics which she then used to torment her husband into madness. Although she had originally intended to control him and impart the same vampiric curse upon him, Mariette's influence instead resulted in Auguste's suicide by poisoning. The estate thus fell under the ownership of Rodolph, who lived with Mariette for several years and even expressed romantic interest in the beautiful and dark lady before dying suddenly from complications resulting from a dog bite. By this time, Edmond's wife had given birth to a baby boy who became first in line for the throne, and almost instantly, Mariette had gone from a future Escarian queen to a widowed vampire on a lonely vineyard.

The new Prince of the Perraults, Ghyslain, and the Desrosiers family chose to leave her alone there and act as if she did not exist, a fact which greatly enraged Mariette and drove her deeper into the dark arts. Over time, members of the royal family and especially with the noble house of Desrosiers would fall ill or lose their sanity, and at each instance, the nearly-forgotten widow was vaguely suspected, but never proven to be responsible. Whatever the cause, the Desrosiers declined and eventually lost their duchy title. The Perraults were eventually overtaken by House Marchand, bringing about a new dynasty of their own.

Along the way, Mariette managed to amass plenty of wealth from her winery and acquire the title of Countess of La Cygne, the portion of Chalmette Florissant in which she lived. She had lost all interest in returning to her former life- she instead began to see parallels between the abandonment she suffered from her family and the way that humans barely tolerated the mere existence of vampires. She decided, then, that if she would not be a queen of the Escarians, then she should seek to become the queen of a new kingdom- a kingdom of vampires...