( gugu mbatha raw, cis-female, she/her, 41) ** ♔ announcing URSULA BEKELE, the PHYSICIAN, MIDWIFE, AND CO-LEADER OF THE PHANTOMS from THE NETHERLANDS ! upon closer look, they resemble GUGU MBATHA RAW. it is a miracle that SHE survived the last five years and for that reason, they are AGAINST the kingdoms working together. reflecting on them now, they remind me of THICK TOMES FULL OF MEDICAL ILLUSTRATIONS AND NOTES, BOTTLES OF MEDICINE USED AS POISON, THE WIDE-EYED TREMBLE OF A NEWBORN KILLER, CHEEKS STAINED WITH TEARS OF GRIEF . (snail, they/she, 27, gmt) **
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𝓑𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂:
TW: Death, Abortion, Child Death
Ursula was a surprise at birth, and has continued to be surprising for all of her years. Born fourteen minutes after her twin brother Lukas, the look upon her mother’s face as she realised she had not one but two new mouths to feed was one of confusion, exhaustion, and just a little bit of frustration. With two older brothers already well into their toddling years, Ursula was the first daughter to be born to Lysbeth and her husband Bekele, but was raised very much as if she were perfectly the same as them. As they received their schooling, so did she. As they scrambled and played in the courtyard, she did also. As they remained young… she did not.
The first time she saw death was at eight. Her eldest brother Johannes fell sick something awful, and he withered before her eyes from a strong young boy of thirteen into a shadow of himself. His shining eyes dulled. His toothy grin turned into a grimace. His skin swallowed and yellowed. He coughed all the time, coughed and rattled and wheezed, until he didn’t anymore.
The second time she saw death she was eleven. Her father had visited home five months prior before setting off again on his travels, and after he had left her mother’s stomach had swollen with the promise of a fifth child. An unwanted child. There were people you could go to, medicines you could take. Quiet, quiet, so that the expressions of your neighbours were ones of sympathy and not scorn. But those tinctures were always dangerous, and five months was a long time for a child to mature in the womb. Any good doctor worth their salt would have turned Lysbeth away, but there were those who had a greed for money larger than a will to do good. Lysbeth had cried and wailed and screamed, until she screamed no more.
The third time she saw death was as a student of fifteen, her body disguised in her brothers’ clothing, her physician teacher overwhelmed in the middle of a lesson by a man crushed by a wagon. He had expired before her eyes, gasping for help though he did not know their names.
The fourth time she saw death was the worst. Lukas, who had shared with her the water of the womb, the air of their first cries, a cot, a bed, and a life. It was a slow sickness, not quick like Johannes, not with screaming like Lysbeth, or with gasping like the stranger. No, his was long. It began with the ending of his laughter. It progressed through the unmoving of his limbs. It soured with alcohol in his stomach. It ended with a rope.
By the time Ursula was twenty, she had seen enough of death. Having disguised herself as her brother for a good section of their teen years, she studied under a physician as an apprentice, greedily absorbing the lessons he passed on to her and poring over the books in his care. When he had no more to teach her, he paid half her tuition for university in Amsterdam, where she studied the research of Franciscus Sylvius, of Van Helmont, of William Harvey.
After graduating, Ursula moved to Ubrecht and cast off her disguise. She refused to hide her knowledge, her heritage, or her gender. Running a clinic, she showed great proficiency in the treatment of mental illnesses and the care of pregnant women. She acted as a midwife for hundreds of births, and was considered one of the safest options for a pregnant woman when concerning the care of herself and her child. For this reason, much of the nobility clamoured for her attention, offering high sums for her work and demanding that she travel out of the city and to their estates. In almost all cases she turned them down. Her mother’s death at the hands of ill-informed and ill-timed medical intervention stuck at the forefront of her mind, and Ursula stayed in the city to do what she could for the greatest number of people. Even when there were whispers that the Queen herself might do well with her attention, she refused to abandon the sick of Utrecht.
Then the plague came. Though there were many deaths in the countryside where doctors were sparse, it was truly the cities where the diseases were at their worst. The first wave was small, and then the second was larger, and by the time the fourth had come Ursula had survived her own sickness, and had seen more death than she could ever imagine. Surprisingly, during those awful years she still received calls from nobles who cared not for the poor who died under her care, nor even the well-off who croaked in their beds. They still wished for her to travel to them, to care for their wives, to birth their children, and promised food where there was none, gold where there was only ash, safety where only danger lurked.
Where the first calls for her aid had been tinder, the noble’s seeming lack of care for the people of their country was a spark. Rage against the ruling classes for their lack of respect for their peoples festered in Ursula’s body like rot, burning fever-hot. When the first stirrings of protest arrived in Utrecht, Ursula donned her brother’s clothes once more to join, covering her face and hair to hide who she was. But where she had only planned to anonymously join them at first, soon she found them turning to her, asking for her input, her opinion, her plan. And, with ire in her heart, she gave it to them.
When the summit was announced, Ursula hatched her plan. She finally offered her assistance to the Jasens and followed them to France, promising help for infertility, for fragility, and for any others suffering on the journey and throughout the meetings. With her reputation still separate from the anonymous man who led the Utrecht protests, she was able to enter France as Ursula Bekele without any trouble. In truth this was an excuse, a way to get close, to follow the royal family into the heart of the storm.
The forming of The Phantoms is shrouded in secrecy, and it is a secrecy which Ursula values. She does not share all of the values of her co-founders, but she does believe that there needs to be massive reform, that the people need to be heard, need to be listened to, and right now the anger within her yearns for revenge almost as much as it yearns for change.
𝓑𝓪𝓼𝓲𝓬𝓼:
FULL NAME: Ursula Bekele
AGE: 41
BIRTH DATE: February 9th
GENDER: Cis Female
ORIENTATION: Lesbian
LANGUAGES: Dutch, French, Latin, Italian, English
RELIGION: Atheistic
𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓘𝓷𝓯𝓸:
Ursula keeps her appearance as the Co-Leader of The Phantoms separate from her appearance as Ursula Bekele. Only her co-leaders know who she is, all other Phantoms are ignorant to the fact that the androgynous, quiet leader is in fact the Dutch Physician. This is to protect her, but it is more to protect her ability to spy on and get very close to various royals.
Ursula is empathetic by nature. Currently, her empathy for those who suffered during the plague is stronger than her empathy for any royal family or specific member. That, however, could change.
There are two surviving members of Ursula’s family; her father Bekele, and her second eldest brother. She has not seen either of them since she went to Amsterdam 20 years ago.
