Rowena

An antagonist and then supporting character in Robert Beatty’s *Serafina Series,* Lady Rowena Fox-Pemberton is a sorceress and the daughter of Uriah.

## **APPEARANCE**

####  Human Form:

Rowena is an elegant-looking girl who has porcelain-pale skin, striking forest-green eyes, long, chestnut-red curls, thin, delicate hands, and bright red lips. Her back is “a mass of scars and burn wounds”.

#### Owl Form:

As a barn owl, Rowena is smaller than her father. She has ghostly white feathers.

## **RELATIONSHIPS**

Serafina: Rowena and Serafina rivaled each other, even before Rowena was proven to really be the second antagonist. Rowena - never getting affection from her father, Uriah - was jealous of Serafina and Braeden's friendship.

In the third book, Rowena managed to "splinter" Serafina, effectively killing her. Feeling guilty, and more than a little aware of her father's growing strength, Rowena raised Serafina from the dead as a spirit, before eventually helping her return to her body.

Together, putting the past behind them, Serafina and Rowena come together to help defeat Uriah.

After that, the book proves to be that they are friends, at least distantly.

Waysa : Waysa helped Rowena when she was wounded; first from the Battle on the Loggia and then from her father’s abuse. Later relating this information to Braeden, Waysa said that *“'On the night of the quarter moon, I came back and she was gone. She just disappeared.'"*

The next time that Rowena and Waysa see each other is in the third book when Rowena is helping Serafina come back to life. Waysa took little convincing, saying that he trusted Rowena. Serafina thinks that Rowena is pleased by this, although when she brings in up Rowena denies it.

Having successfully brought Serafina back into the living world, the next time Waysa and Rowena are around each other is when they go to fight Uriah during the storm.

When Rowena is knocked unconscious by her father, Waysa single-handedly carried her to Baltimore, so that she could receive help.

By the end of the book, Rowena and Waysa both go their separate ways with a good relationship.

Uriah: Uriah paid Rowena no attention for the first seven years of her life. He let Rowena live in England with her mother, a minor noble, only coming along to “collect” his daughter when she would be emotionally vulnerable after her mother’s death.

Viewing his daughter as a tool to be used when he had need of her, Uriah trained her to be his apprentice through abuse, both physical and psychological.

When Rowena was about fourteen, Uriah sent her to Biltmore Estate under the guise of a English aristocrat hoping she can be used to lower their defenses.

## Abilities

**Magical Mastery:** Rowena is a sorceress, and thus a practitioner of magic. This includes making potions and casting spells. While using the Twisted Staff, her natural magical ability were amplified — giving her a complete and utter control over every animal she came in contact with.

**Necromancy:** Rowena has the power to speak with, raise, and dispel the dead.

**Shape-shifting:** As an unspecified kind of shape-shifter, Rowena can shape-shift into a white owl.

**Supernatural Endurance:** As an unspecified kind of shape-shifter, Rowena has a stronger natural endurance than humans (and maybe even catamounts), an example of this being when she survived Uriah’s abuse in Serafina and the Splinterd Heart far past the existence of what she should’ve been able to survive.

**Acting:** Rowena is a superb actor; having been able to fool everyone at Biltmore Estate to her real motives as her father’s apprentice in Serafina and the Twisted Staff, she later fooled the inhabitants of Biltmore Estate (except for Braeden) again at a party in Serafina and the Splintered Heart, but perhaps the most notable example of her acting skills, however, is in Serafina and the Splintered Heart where Rowena successfully lied to her father, convincing him to trust her despite her previous defection and Uriah’s naturally paranoid nature — which was instrumental in his downfall.

1. ↑ Serafina and Twisted Staff, page eighty-eight
2. ↑ Serafina and Twisted Staff, page eighty-eight
3. ↑ Serafina and the Twisted Staff, page fifty-one
4. ↑ Serafina and Twisted Staff, page eighty-eight
5. ↑ Serafina and the Twisted Staff, page fifty-one
6. ↑ Serafina and the Twisted Staff, page sixteen