name: ilsa ahlgren, née ilsa ludendorff. maarja zehren.
age: twenty-eight. thirty.
hometown: zurich, switzerland. lausanne, switzerland.
occupation: actress ( film, occasionally stage ).
relationship status: single.
Q: does your character have a criminal or questionable past?
ilsa ahlgren has the perfect life. she’s born ilsa lunendorff, an only child with two loving parents, and raised in a secluded manor in switzerland. the trio summer together in the alpes-maritimes and spend winters at their estate in the alps, where she learns to ski at age seven. she begins acting in her early teens, after joining a school production of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead, which she recalls at “the first time i felt real.” her breakout role in european cinema comes at age twenty-one, in the role of lucy in narrow view. seven years later, her career has taken her to
Ilsa ahlgren has the perfect life.
and ilsa ahlgren is dead.there’s two girls chosen from the orphanage before maarja zehren. they are younger and have no freckles and rounder faces, and housemother says it’s because they eat more risgrynsgröt when they’re told too, but maarja leaves spaces between her ribs for the dreams to fill and keeps herself thin to fold into the barest of opportunities. weeks after their adoption, each girl comes back in a clean frock with a new sharp-edged haircut and pink skin, as if scrubbed clean of dirt and misfortune only to be found disappointing at the core. they tell of kind people and white marble chateau and a closet full of dresses, and it makes maarja frown. maarja zehren may have many freckles and weigh too little, but she is all the cleverer for it, and when the couple with the light hair and big black car come for her, she knows she will be the one to make them happy and earn her stay.it took only a year for grief to drive the ludendorffs delusional over the loss of their daughter in an estate fire. it took another of searching through institutions across the country to find the one to replace her. it takes two months for her to figure out she’s wearing a dead girl’s clothing. four more before they take her to the surgeon citing deviated septum and have her awaken with a brand new nose. in two years, on a birthday that doesn’t fit, they wake her up with a cake and call her a name that isn’t hers. ilsa. we love you, ilsa.
this is the mistaken belief about survivalism: it applies only in the hospitable environments. but some circumstances are more subtle, and their heroines less clear. sometimes, the girl making it to the end of the forest doesn’t have the wolf’s teeth in her hands, and she wears no blood. sometimes, it’s a little girl tucked into a pink bedspread willing to murder herself for a chance at love.
i love you too.
love is always, always a type of killing.
ilsa ahlgren has a name that hasn’t been spoken in nineteen years. she is thirty, not twenty eight, and never visited the alps before the age of twelve, but can recite every family vacation before from ages four to eleven with dazzling narration. she’s an award-winning actress and carries the life of a girl who perished twenty-three years ago.
ilsa ahlgren is dead, and she just arrived at the winter palace.
( tl;dr? ilsa’s real name is maarja, and she was adopted by a couple turned delusional with grief when she was 9 years old. in slow form they started to mould her after their dead daughter before pushing her to “become” her completely, and she was willing to give up herself/her identity for a chance at a secure life and the hope of love. while her parents believe this is now the truth, and that they never lost their 7 year old in a fire, ilsa is very aware it is not. that being said, there’s only one individual in her life that knows the truth, and every interview she’s ever given cites her growing up on her family’s luxurious mountain estate. )
Q: does your character have a motive to kill?
A: what do the dead want?
Q: any important factors to know about your character?
A: for those raised in europe, or familiar with the cinema, she’s an excessively well-known figure that would dominate magazines/google searches/the box office - but her fame is contained there, as she’s never done an american/western film. as a fun aside, she’s certainly brought at least two marabou feather robes with her, so expect her to swan around in those in the early hours.
Q: any wanted relationships / connections for your character?
A: people familiar with her work and wanting to brush up against fame/interact with their cinematic crush. there’s only one individual outside of her adopted parents that is aware of her history, but i’d adore someone who has the slightest inkling there must be something off about her/her life and try and play cat-and-mouse to figure it out (this could work particularly well with those whose pasts are -- not entirely full of legality). i’m a sucker for a relationship centering around a battle of wits. ex-flames, hook-ups. ilsa and artjom know each other very well, so playing off that, any other guests of his on the estate could be acquaintances, friends, rivals, etc!
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