● TWENTY TWO ● WITCH ● CIS FEMALE ● TAXIDERMIST ●
"Don’t forget that she has magic in her fingers and devilry dancing in her blood.”
BIOGRAPHY:
To tell the story of Violet Dinsmore one must first go back about 400 years in time, to a much different woman, Azalea Bodmer. Azalea was born the daughter of Huldrych and Agatha Bodmer, Huldrych, a blacksmith was a very conservative man who believed a woman’s role was to do as her husband said, and to make due with what her husband gave- even if all her husband gave was a pittance of his pay and the unfaithfulness of a Tom cat. But still Agatha made due. The woman had her own things she kept from her husband, and the fact that she was a witch was one of them. Her magic, which she passed down to Azalea, came from a line of powerful female witches, and she raised Azalea to know her power, and to use it in secret. Ultimately, the unfortunate Huldrych, while actually in the home for the first time in days, came upon the family book, one that described common plants around their home, and the uses, both medicinal, culinary, and magical. When he confronted his wife, she confronted him about his string of affairs, especially one with the wife of the town priest. Out of fear of her telling the priest, he ran to the priest and told him about his wife’s ungodly abilities.
Agatha and her mother were hunted down, but Azalea managed to escape the angry mob who caught her mother and grandmother. Hiding in the woods she could only watch and weep as her mother and grandmother were captured and bound in the town square. She managed to sneak back home when she was sure no one was the wiser and reclaimed her family book, and a few things before she retreated back to the woods, watching as her mother and grandmother were killed by the townspeople. As the fire claimed the lives of her mother and grandmother, Azalea stood in the woods and cast the worst spell she could think of, one that made the flames grow out of control, eventually killing every person in town. When the flames faded and the smoke cleared, Azalea made her way back into town where she was able to retrieve the last thing she cared about; a necklace her mother had promised her from the day she was a young girl. One with their mark of magic.
After getting the necklace, Azalea really took a look around, and shocked and horrified at what she and her magic had done, Azalea fled, she fled the area and vowed never to return. She made her way from village to village, offering her services as a housekeeper, or a cook, never staying long enough to get attached to anyone, nor letting them get attached to her; all changed when she found her way into the home of Albrecht IlI von Breiten-Landenberg. The young witch could immediately tell there was something different about the Duke, but even more so, there was something indescribable about being with him. The two danced and spoke all night, and thus began the great love story of Azalea and Albrecht. He was a vampire, and she a witch, though she refused the eternal life he offered her. Her mother and grandmother had died for their magic, and was not going to just throw hers away. Unfortunately without someone to guide her in her magic, and the book she had being just what her mother and grandmother knew, she didn’t realize that she had many other options for staying with Albrecht, and she devised a plan. She would allow herself to die; but she would come back to him. Entrusting him with the essence of herself, and her soul, she gave that fraction of herself to him in the form of a necklace; a necklace that would remind her future incarnations of herself of their life, of their eternal love.
After she died, Albrecht was alone to find the next iteration of his lost love, and for centuries he did so. Finding her and reuniting until ultimately she perished yet again. It drove the already sensitive Duke mad every time she was forced to leave him, until the birth of Violet Dinsmore some four hundred years later.
Violet Dinsmore was a witch born to a family of witches. While her family focused mostly on garden and earth magic, Violet was born with the gift of necromancy, and she used that necromancy in ways that made her family very unsettled. Growing up on a farm in the Midwest there was no shortage of carcasses, and Violet had a knack for finding and bringing the carcasses to life with a touch. It wasn’t uncommon for members of the family to look out back and see the little blonde child running around in the field with the reanimated corpse of a deer she had found, or playing with a recently dead raccoon. Unsettling, but not uncommon. It was only after her father sat her down and explained that while she came upon this gift honestly, it was unnatural, it toed the line between dark magic and light magic, and they would not support dark magic in their home. He forbade Violet from ever using her gift to reanimate again- and the worst stuck with Violet so much that when he was accidentally run over with a combine and lay dying in the field, Violet stood by and watched. Even as he begged her to reanimate him, she didn’t do it, and watched as the life left her father.
Violet never reanimated things again, and eventually her sisters grew up, got married and left the house, leaving Violet with their mother. Even without her sisters, she was still the dark sheep of the family, the girl rejected magic, and pulled herself inward, choosing to do things the human way. She insisted her mother get WiFi put in, bought a cheap laptop and began to teach herself taxidermy and about death. As a necromancer she had an uncanny ability to still find dead things, and she did that, bringing them home to the basement where she had built her own perfect studio and bedroom. She raised flesh eating beetles to help with her taxidermy, and rarely left the basement except when her sisters came over and for school.
One winter all of her sisters were coming home, and Violet’s mother insisted on hosting them and many friends for a big Christmas party and celebration. Violet was forced to give up her bedroom for a friend of the family’s and her new boyfriend, a music teacher named Scott. When the night of the party came around, Violet escaped the party by sneaking down to her room, where she met Scott. The two ended up talking, and Violet realized there was something different about him. Talking to him was easy, he didn’t judge the dark teen for her interests, and in fact shared some of his own interests with her. It wouldn’t be until a few years later that Violet realized how significant that meeting was.
Violet went away to college as soon as she could, getting in on scholarships, and a prayer. She signed up for a work study program, and was working one afternoon when she ran into Scott. He had long since broken up with the family friend, and he and Violet easily began to talk again. Over the next year the two grew closer until they couldn’t deny their attraction any longer and began a relationship. During a switch for Scott, when his alter, The Other, came out, she was presented with the necklace that contained the piece of Azalea’s soul- the piece of her soul- and everything came back to her. The memories that had been stored for the past four hundred years, the realization that their wonderful relationship and meetings meant more than either of them knew, and the memories of each life with Scott she’d had, it all came back to the young witch who made a promise to herself. She would not make him or herself go through this again.
Little does Scott know, Violet plans on waiting a few years and then allowing him to change her as he’d begged to do for the past four hundred years. She has decided enough time has passed and her mother and grandmother’s deaths will not be in vain. However, she does want to find the person responsible for her own death in a previous life, one that Scott didn’t realize was a murder, and has spent the last few decades believing was a tragic accident. After the Great Announcement the two were thrust into the spotlight as Scott is still technically the Duke of Zurich, and after three years, they have finally decided to settle for now in Saintes, giving the town a much needed good image by having a member of nobility as a member of the community.
Violet is played by D, 31, She/They, PST
