Isabelle Mercier Biography
Isabelle Julie Mercier, born January 1540, was the only child of Claude and Genevieve Mercier, silk merchants who lived in Lyon at the beginning of the silk trade boom for the city. When the silk trade monopoly was granted to Lyon, Claude was one of the first to begin to make considerable money from it. A shrewd man, he was determined to arrange the best marriage for his daughter to improve both her prospects and the family wealth. In May 1555, Claude made his decision to betroth his daughter to Alessandro Rossi, a damask trader from Florence. Genevieve passed away not long after the engagement was announced and the wedding was suitably delayed until the appropriate mourning period had passed.
Isabelle was married in August 1556 and left France for Italy. She was very homesick but eventually began to appreciate the artistic developments in Italy comparative to what she had grown up with in France. In 1558, Isabelle and Alessandro welcomed their only son, Lyon, who was named after the city Isabelle so missed. Much to Isabelle's relief, providing an heir meant that, for a time at least she would be free of the pressures to sleep with her husband. Isabelle was aware of her husband's affair with the daughter of a well known painter of the time and was secretly grateful of that as it directed attention away from her. Isabelle only experienced sexual and romantic attraction to women so this was of considerable relief to her.
This was a particularly happy period in Isabelle's life and she was utterly devoted to her son. Lyon was a precocious child, the apple of his mother's eye, with a deep love of nature and they regularly left the city to indulge and nurture that love. It was on one of those excursions, in 1561, that tragedy struck.
They were set upon by robbers. Lyon was killed while they fled for their lives, Isabelle falling unconscious after struck from behind. Thankfully, she did not witness the death of her son. Isabelle lost all the jewels and the money that she had on her person and was left only in her torn and dirtied gown, left for dead. This should have been the end of her story but it was not.
Isabelle was discovered by Sevraine whose heart was moved to save and preserve her. She was turned into a vampire, completely unaware of the power of the Dark Gift as it had been worked upon her, being only one degree of separation from Akasha. When the blood gave her the strength to come fully into herself and rise anew, she buried her son temporarily in the location he had fallen. She clawed through the dirt and then curled around his body, weeping until Sevraine urged her to leave else the sun would destroy her. In the nights to come, Isabelle and Sevraine found the robbers and killed them, in the name of Lyon. In later years, Isabelle moved Lyon's body and grave back to the city she had so loved and named him after. She regularly visited his grave and continued to do so to tell him of all that she had seen and the adventures that he would have loved to experience.
Isabelle lived and travelled with Sevraine until the 1800s when she encountered the Theatres Des Vampires. Isabelle fell head over heels in love with one of the vampires there, a slightly older woman named Amelie. Isabelle was never part of the theatre but she did visit regularly, finding that she couldn't stay away all that long from her beloved Amelie. They spoke regularly of travelling together and Amelie was almost convinced to quit the theatre and to embark on a grand adventure across Europe with Isabelle. Isabelle knew that she was wearing down Amelie's resolve and when Amelie eventually agreed to leave after that particular season ended, Isabelle was overjoyed. She was aware of two new vampires in Paris and she was both in wonder and in sorrow at the reveal of a child vampire. She did not have direct contact with them and could not have expected what followed after.
She was visiting her son's grave in Lyon when the theatre was burned down, Amelie perishing with the others after Claudia's demise. Isabelle was beyond devastated and fled the country, heading to Scotland and living in Edinburgh until the late 1900s when the purge began and Lestat resurfaced and revealed most of their secrets. Isabelle was lucky to have survived the purge, having been both far enough away from most other vampires and containing the strong blood that she had, thus avoiding the situation with Akasha. It was not long after this and the stories that circulated at the time that Isabelle found Sevraine again who told her that she had come more directly from the previous Queen of the Damned. Isabelle did not remain long with Sevraine.
At the turn of the century, she moved to New York where she later met Armand again, resuming a sort of friendship that they had established back in the 1800's. Although she was incredibly angry with him for his part in what had happened, she did not blame him entirely for what had happened to Amelie. She did however place the blame almost entirely at Louis' feet and holds deep enmity towards him still to this day.
Isabelle became a regular visitor to Trinity Gate when it was established and would sometimes take Sybelle out on shopping trips for girl time as the modern phrasing goes. Isabelle does not have many other vampire gifts beyond that which is universal to all vampires. The gifts that came from the strong blood she had was centralised and focused in one gift in particular that she has sworn not to ill use; the spell gift.
