“HISTORY IS WILLFULNESS” “IS” “PRECIOUS PARTS”

“history’s for those” “who ask not” “to be forgiven” “we ask to be forgiven” “& loved” “no, we ask” “to be absolved” [...] DAMAYANTI SIVASANKAR ––––– SILVER-TONGUED GOLD-KISSED DIAMANTINE.

[damayantia]

welcome DAMAYANTI ‘DAMIATA’ SIVASANKAR. you hail from VIJAYANAGARA and have been risen to the position of a COURTESAN. you are a member of the house of COLONNA and will go down in history as the MUSE. though you are CONDESCENDING & CALLOUS, you are blessed with being BEGUILING and DISCERNING.

links.  character  study  /  playlist  /  pinterest  /  threads

━━ BASIC INFO.

NAME:  damayanti  sivasankar  NICKNAME:  damiata,  dami  AGE:  thirty-eight  PLACE OF BIRTH:  vijayanagara  IMPERIUM:  rome  GENDER:  cisgender  woman  PRONOUNS:  she/her  ORIENTATION:  bisexual  RELIGION:  shaivism  PARENTS:  sivasankar  vikramaditya  &  bhima devi  SIBLINGS  one  brother  LANGUAGES:  tamil,  telugu,  kannada,  portuguese,  latin  (  fluent  )    urdu,  italian,  french,  arabic  (  conversational  )    english,  mandarin  (  learning  )    spanish  (  reliant on intelligibility from the other romance languages  )    sanskrit,  hindi  (  childhood’s  forgotten  tongues  )  EDUCATION:  private  tutoring  TITLE:  courtesan  INTERESTS:  martial  arts,  poetry,  natural  philosophy,  fine  art   HOBBIES:  swordplay,  archery,  hunting,  singing  LABEL  the  muse

━━ PERSONALITY.

mbti. entp-a  enneagram. 3w2,  the  enchanter  instinct. sx/so  character inspo.  helen,  the  iliad  /  daenerys  targaryen,  a  song  of  ice  and  fire  /  kaeya,  genshin  impact  /  dazai  osamu,  bungou  stray  dogs  /  serval,  honkai:  star  rail

beguiling,  discerning,  mellifluous,  determined

condescending,  callous,  ruthless,  deceptive

━━ SNAPSHOT.

character  study  TBD

known    most    everywhere    through  her  perhaps-scandalous  links  with  the  de  facto  ruler  of  rome,    damayanti    —    also  known  as  damiata    —    is  a  figure  who  confounds  understanding:    a  non-believer  reigning  as  the  queen  of  beauty  in  the  eternal  city,    whose  visage  has  been  writ  by  many  a  roman  artist  in  their  canvas.    she  is  charming  and  witty,    yet  all  her  intelligence  seems  to  be  geared  towards  ensuring  immortality  of  her  fair  form.    she  plays  at  expectations  and  makes  the  crowd  part  of  her    —    not  make  herself  part  of  the  crowd,    which  is  a  very  subtle  yet  important  distinction.    she  could  revel  with  the  drunkards  at  the  taverns  yet  converse  ever  so  delightfully  with  the  bluebloods  in  their  chateaus  and  fortifications.  in  short:    a  woman  of  any  occasion,    or  perhaps  a  woman  of  many  masks.

in    truth,      her  reservation  about  her  past  is  less  a  thing  cultivated  to  incite  curiosity  and  more  just  a  natural  reaction  to  the  plight  that  her  family  experienced  when  she  was  young,    fleeing  another  country  simply  because  they  gambled  wrongly.    she  is  perceptive  yet  deceptive  but  also  endlessly  indecisive:    she  charms  people  to  know  their  secrets,    yet  does  almost  next-to-nothing  with  them,    preferring  to  keep  it  to  herself  to  the  point  of  seeming  fruitlessness.    what’s  important  to  her,    however,    is  that  she  knows  others  yet  others  don’t  know  her:    a  guardedness  borne  from  exile.

━━ TIMELINE.

1392.  a son is born to bhima devi and sivasankar,  the former a renowned poetess and the latter a court adviser in the employ of emperor harihara ii of vijayanagara. 

1394.  damayanti is born to sivasankar and bhima devi.  in the same year,  a portuguese merchant settles in vijayanagara.  he is quickly contracted under the sivasankar household as a languages tutor for the children.  damayanti is educated alongside her brother.

1405.  the death of harihara ii paves the way for virupaksha raya’s accession to the royal throne of vijayanagara.  however,  with the succession disputed by his other brothers,  his reign is short-lived.  virupaksha is eventually murdered by his sons.  having been in the employ of the murdered king,  the sivasankar family looks as if they might share their lord’s fate.  however,  their tutor arranges passage for them alongside him back to portugal.

1406.  having arrived in portugal, the sivasankar household experiences a difficult start in establishing themselves. they sell off their treasured possessions — whatever few they can smuggle with their escape — and begin attempts for a burgeoning mercantile trade, specialising in goods exported from the east.

1413.  with the family having found its footing after many long years,  damayanti takes after her erstwhile tutor and takes up travelling.

142?.  eventually,  she settles in italy.

1432.  she arrives at the court of king charles of france as julius’ courtesan.

━━ PLOTS.

mercantile  links  through  her  family’s  trading  empire,    courts  she  may  have  visited  in  her  travels,    husbands  whose  wives  she’s  slept  with,    wives  who  she’s  seduced,    artists  and  poets  and  other  creatives  she  enamoured,    philosophers  she  discoursed  with,    a  person  she  might  have  unwittingly  insulted,    people  she’s  outraged  over  her  ‘artist’s  passions,’    etc.

[writeswiftly]

closed starter for @damayantia

The loose silks of Isabel’s frock seemed to be in place against the bright depiction of religious figures and Greek tragedies painted across cream canvas, colorful but so still as she admired each rendering, soaking in all the beauty and meaning carefully poured into each frame. It had long been her opinion that art was more than something pretty to look at – instead, each creation was a window into the soul of the person who created it, revealing to others truths they could convey no other way. It took bravery to create, and she stood now in silent, awestruck appreciation of that courage. 

Her quiet meandering was interrupted, briefly, when she spotted yet another visitor wandering through the gallery – though perhaps wandering wasn’t the right word. This visitor, who she recognized as having come with the Roman party but had not yet had the opportunity to meet, was not wandering at all: she, too, seemed awestruck by the art in front of her. Curious as to what had grabbed the woman’s attention, Isabel approached, pausing by her side. 

“Oh, that’s marvelous, isn’t it?” The words left her in an almost breathless rush as she took in the portrait of the Florentine port of Livorno, easily recognizable despite her having only visited the city once years before. The world within the portrait was even more vibrant than she remembered, the afternoon sun casting the world aglow in hues of warm orange, gold and faint pink, every brush stroke a lyric in a love song to a city she suddenly felt she’d seen with distorted vision. “Do you know who painted it?”

[damayantia]

no  matter  the  number  of  tongues  that  she  twisted  her  lips  to  speak,    strange  and  foreign  phonemes  brought  home  to  her  mouth    —    yet  one  language  reigns  universal.    art  speaks  where  words  cannot,    could  express  emotions  rarely  beheld.    perhaps  it  is  a  certain  incongruous  tendency  of  hers,    to  feel  so  deeply  over  oil  paints  and  canvas.    once,    she  might  have  regarded  it  as  weakness;    now,    she  delights  in  it,    plays  with  it  like  an  old  friend,    has  learned    —    over  the  years    —    that  it,    too,    is  a  certain  kind  of  power.    an  attainment  of  divinity:    presenting  the  possibility  of  immortality  itself,    for  whose  visage  shall  be  remembered  in  ages  unimaginable,    but  she  who  crowns  the  filigreed  walls?     yet  so  absorbed  is  she  in  the  possibility  of  everything,    that  she  barely  registers  the  question  posed  to  her  until  she  feels  the  very  presence  of  the  fair  lady  herself.    like,    here,    recognises  like:    that  kind  of  curiosity  betrays  a  respect  for  the  craft  that  only  a  true  lover  might  possess.    damiata,    in  all  that  she  is,    is  well  familiar  with  the  feeling. ❛    fra  giovanni  da  fiesole,    ❜    she  says,    the  italianate  name  lyrical  in  her  tongue.    ❛    yet  perhaps  the  esteemed  master  is  more  familiar  to  you  as  fra  angelico,    but  whether  fra  giovanni  da  fiesole  or  fra  angelico:    he  is  a  most  rare  talent.    ❜    she  smiles,    her  dexterous  fingers  almost  coming  to  commit  so  blasphemous  a  sin  as  touching  the  canvas    —    yet  her  hands  only  hover  about,    pointing  towards  the  finer  details.      ❛    it  is  supposed  to  be  an  allegory  representing  the  early  church  fathers,    but  see  here    —    the  campanilla,    the  buildings…    our  good  brother,    the  angelic  one,    has  made  the  church  fathers’  respite  the  very  city  of  florence  itself.    ❜    she  luxuriates  in  the  sound  of  her  own  voice,    but  in  this  moment  here,    it  is  less  love  for  her  own  self  than  it  is  love  for  art.    she  remembers  herself  only  at  the  last  moment,    her  smile  not  quite  faltering,    but  a  certain  hesitancy  tells  everything  one  might  want  to  know.    ❛    yet  pray,    tell    —    to  whom  did  i  just  give  a  most  unnecessary,    and  perhaps  uninvited,    discourse?    i  should  know  the  fair  lady’s  name  before  i  could  apologise  to  her.    ❜

[ethelcainlovebot]

- Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart