Beatrice Gramont de Vallon

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**Beatrice Aurélie Nathalie Estée Héloïse Laurine Morgane Renaud Gramont de Vallon** is a character in Murder Mystery 29: Théâtre-Corbignois.

#### Brief Overview

Beatrice is the younger sister of Alexandre Gramont de Éteignière-Dubois and the older sister of Emmanuel Gramont de Éteignière-Dubois and Brigitte Gramont de Éteignière-Dubois.

Beatrice arrived to Théâtre-Corbignois happy to see her siblings, but closely guarded due to the presence of her husband, Philippe de Vallon. Philippe was largely disinterested in the play and resigned himself to mostly being present at the bar. Upon the death of the king Renaud, Philippe's physically abusive tendencies began to show - firstly with him shoving Beatrice into a wall, witnessed by Beatrice's sister and brother. To their dismay, Beatrice withdrew further into her shell, urging her siblings to conform to their duties as she had. They both rejected this idea, and the siblings grew more distant from Beatrice. Later, Beatrice's infertility was revealed in a tearful confession to her sibling, due to physical damage sustained in her reproductive organs. Emmanuel disapproved of Beatrice's attempts to pretend like there was nothing wrong, and yet urged her to run away with him, which she rejected. The strained relationship between the three siblings shattered when Emmanuel outed Brigitte and Éponine de Vallon to Alexandre, who notoriously disapproved of same-sex relationships. In a moment of extreme emotion not long after, Philippe confronted Beatrice on her lie, and fearing he would try to kill her, she pushed him down the stairs of the salon royal. Philippe sustained permanent brain damage rendering him essentially comatose, and died a few days later, his body hidden in a storage room.

#### Personality

Beatrice is obsessed with beauty and is toxically self-sacrificing. She comes across as high-strung and superficial. Beatrice is extremely concerned over appearances, to the point where she refuses to be seen wearing the same dress twice in a row. She is dutiful and obedient and when around men who have power over her, she is quiet and says very little. To her maids, she is a neurotic mess. She is a (closeted, obviously) lesbian and has a lot of internalized homophobia due to Corbigny being Christian as fuck, and due to her belief that it is her sole duty to bear sons. While she isn't homophobic (like she's not going to dropkick a gay person. She's not going to fight for gay people because she's too dutiful to do so but she'll be visibly uncomfortable when people are homophobic yk), she sees herself being lesbian as a cruel challenge put upon her by God to see how she confines to her duties, and thus will do nothing about her sexuality except pretend it doesn't exist. Beatrice is fully aware that she is set to live a miserable life, but she accepts that for what it is because it is her duty to her country. Overall very sad story.

#### Backstory

Beatrice was born on June 22, 1842 in Bivange, Corbigny, as the oldest daughter and second child of Renaud. She is just about to turn twenty-one and has spent her life trying to be the perfect princess. While she will never reign, she still wants a legacy of her own. Most, if not all of Beatrice's years have been spent teaching her in royal etiquette and preparing her for marriage. Overall quite a boring life, if you think about it, but Beatrice has had immense pressure on her her entire life to perform to the 19th century standards set for her. Beatrice is engaged to Philippe de Vallon, who is abusive, to say the least. The basic gist is that it is not a good marriage lmao.

#### Post-Murder Mystery

Following the murderer reveal, Beatrice returned to the duchy de Vallon. With her husband, Philippe, dead, and his sister, Éponine supposedly having killed herself, the duchy was left with no heir to the Vallon name. Beatrice lived with her sister Brigitte for a while at the Vallon estate, but Brigitte eventually left her to live in an apartment in Bivange on the same block as the Théâtre-Corbignois, reportedly roommates with famous actress Giselle D'Avignon. With no husband and no heir, Beatrice lived alone for the rest of her days. She spent her short tenure as the Duchess de Vallon improving relationships among the ruling house of the duchy and the common people. She was plagued by health problems early on, of which she successfully hid from Brigitte but eventually let show following Brigitte's departure. Her health rapidly deteriorated, and knowing there was no heir to the Vallon estate, Beatrice suddenly became very involved in the affairs (read: sexual affairs) of her brother, Alexandre, who had turned to adultery after his wife only bore daughters. Upon finding out that Alexandre had been sloppy and impregnated a woman with his bastard, she shrewdly worked out a deal with him to legally adopt the bastard as her own. She framed it as a gesture of good faith, adopting a bastard from a despondent slum-dweller, and providing the two with a better life in the palace of the duchy. This gesture was widely acclaimed for its charity, although suspicion behind why she'd chosen that specific bastard never quite disappeared. Beatrice was also a known advocate for pacifism, and during the Corbigny-France War in the 1870s would openly oppose Corbigny's participation in the war. Pacifists in Corbigny loved her, and Beatrice became a paragon of benevolence and peace, the idyllic duchy de Vallon gaining many pacifist residents. Her adopted son, named Alphonse after Alphonse Gramont de Éteignière-Dubois, was co-parented by Beatrice and his biological mother Laurine. Beatrice was the first of her siblings to pass away, and never reached the age of forty. Her adopted son was twelve when she died on December 17, 1881.

#### Trivia

* Beatrice is the first of Lev's characters to be married.