Donatien LeBlanc
Donatien LeBlanc (a.k.a. Dona)
Welcome, friends and audience, to the greatest show in Eisen! Prepare to be amazed, shocked, awed, and enraptured at what you will see tonight! From the acrobats to the Oddities, the midway and the Big Top, there is something for everyone here at this, the Circus of the Disquieting!
I am Monsieur Donatien, your ringmaster tonight. Now, who's ready for the show?
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Not too tall and not too short, Dona is thin and wiry for his height.
Facial Features
Light scar over his right eye. Has curiously long canine teeth.
Special abilities
His fey blood allows him to fade into mist. He is a learned illusionist, having studied magic independently in the rogue tradition of Arcane Trickster.
Mental characteristics
Gender Identity
The ability to change forms often comes with the tendency to not conform to one specific gender. He often presents male, especially when performing, but pronouns vary based on the persona.
Sexuality
Dangerously, shamelessly bisexual
Education
Dona has not attended any educational institutions.
Employment
Works as one of three ringmasters for the Circus of the Disquieting. He is one of the owners of the circus, and is generally the ringmaster people turn to for leadership. Having other people able to do his job allows him free time to adventure and socialize.
Personality Characteristics
Virtues & Personality perks
He encourages talent and actively advocates for people to pursue their interests. He has great compassion for the downtrodden, and is willing to help orphans, vagabonds, and others who are down on their luck without expecting anything in return.
Vices & Personality flaws
He is easily tempted by worldly pleasures. He can hold his liquor well. He can be a shameless flirt when the mood takes him. He is willing to engage in certain pleasures more than others depending on the persona he is using. He also has a spiteful streak against people who have wronged him or harmed any of his circus family.
Personality Quirks
Often wears a smug grin when he is being deceptive, snide, or flirty. This smile is a tendency that can give his identity away when shapeshifted to those who know him well, so he hides it best he can when in different forms.
Unlike many changelings, he does not hide that he is a changeling unless he has adopted one of his personas. Otherwise he has no qualms about letting people see his true form on a daily basis.
He has an alternate persona, Dahlia Briarwolf, who is far more sadistic, shameless, and violent than he. She may act as the devil on her friends' shoulders, but is always willing to do bad things if it will help people she cares about. She is like a shadow side to him, one that he uses to stuff all his emotional vulnerability and darker impulses into so that they don't reveal themselves to society. An unseelie side to his seelie side. As Dahlia, he doesn't have to put on the air of propriety he shows to society--he can be callous, relaxed, and as uncouth as he wishes without worrying about social reprecussions.
Hygiene
Dona keeps well-groomed and wears nice clothes when he can. He has a varied wardrobe with many costumes and clothing for his various personas.
Social
Contacts & Relations
Views Violet like a daughter. Has a working relationship with Khemma and Nel. He has made many new friendships in the past few months. In his alternate personality, is a friend to Lady Mirabella.
Family Ties
The closest thing Dona has to family are his fellow circus performers and staff. The Oddities, Clowns, performers, and other staff are close with one another and while sometimes personalities clash, everyone generally gets along.
His father (a human, Armond Sebastian Leblanc de Montfort) is deceased and his mother (a fae, Duchess Maghanna) is not someone he enjoys associating with.
Religious Views
Totally not a follower of Steyfano in any way, shape, or form. Nope. Isn't a very devout worshiper, though.
Social Aptitude
He adapts his social graces to the social class of the people he is interacting with. Among the high and middle classes, he acts gentlemanly and polite, while when interacting with the lower classes, he relaxes and behaves more informal.
Speech
Everything is show business. Dona's career in theater is evident in how he holds himself and how he speaks with others. Bows are dramatic, language and word choice are elaborate and occasionally rambling.
Wealth & Financial state
Comfortable
The Changeling ringmaster of the Circus of the Disquieting, a circus that employs many talented or otherwise bizarre individuals.
View Character Profile
Alignment
Chaotic Neutral
Age
26
Date of Birth
17 October, 1857
Birthplace
Montaigne
Children
Current Residence
The Circus of the Disquieting's fairgrounds area
Gender
Gender-fluid, usually presents male
Eyes
Yellow
Hair
Blonde
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Pale white
Height
5'8"
Weight
118 lbs
Ruled Locations
Stupidity and Desperation Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
27th of March, 1883
I do not think I have ever been one to resort to desperate measures as a first choice of action. Even when I was without family or troupe, a lost and homeless teenager, I sought rational methods of looking after myself rather than resorting to turning myself over to the orphanages of Bellancourt or something else that would otherwise shackle me into a soulless, hollow existence.
And yet here I am, considering the worst, riskiest plan possible instead of thinking of anything more rational. And this was my first choice, no less. Truly, I am a dullard and a desperate person to even consider it. 'It' being approaching my mother and asking if she would be willing to trade off one of Leahdrain's favors that I owe her. To think I would approach the very woman I sought to avoid all these years ago in order to escape the clutches of another woman entirely. This is a dangerous game I am playing, and I only see dark storm clouds on the horizon that is my future. No doubt she will try to outwit me, but I must remain firm in my choice and not yield any more than I need to. I do not wish to become either woman's knight or slave. I am far more valuable than that sort of menial position.
I do not like knowing that I am but a pawn in a petty battle of politics between two fey duchesses. I have spent more and more nights as Dahlia, trying to avoid being me and, I confess, cursing my own existence and the foul fate that guided the nature of my conception. Imagine if my father had not left his old life, I would be an aristocrat in an established, respectable house in Montaigne. I would never have to know poverty, or danger, or fey nobles squabbling over me as though I were a prize-winning horse. But alas, such is not the life I have been given. It is not that I dislike what I do, or the people I have met, or being a part of my circus family. I just find myself wishing more and more that the troubles that plague me were non-existent. I think everyone feels that way about the troubles in their lives, though, and there are many who are worse off than I. So should I really be complaining? Is it not rude and insensitive of me to do so, when there are those who are starving on the streets, in active danger from the Syndicate, or rotting in prisons for crimes they have not committed?
I know Manny would tell me not to think this way. He'd say that everyone has their own struggles, and that it does not matter if my struggles are better or worse than anyone else's. Comparing oneself to others is not fair to oneself, in the end. I know I should listen to him, but it's so hard to keep positive as of late.
Oh, in other news, I met Steyfano. Figured out who he was halfway into the conversation with him. I'd thought he had far more interesting and important things to do than pay attention to little ol' me, but it appears I've caught his eye somehow. I do not think myself all that special, but I am interested in seeing what it is he is watching me for. Time will tell, I guess
Yet Again, I Find Myself Falling Without Control
21st of January, 1883
I am often perplexed as how the pain of memory and the exhilaration of experience often do not cancel each other out for me. How my past does not interfere with my present as much as I expect that it would. And yet, it feels like history repeating.
Why, O gods why, does he remind me so much of my lost Pierre?
Is it his fair hair? Is it his tender, often shy demeanor? Is it the exuberance and excitement he gets what he talks about what he loves most? It is as though everywhere I turn in this city, I am hurtling forward into relationships, intimacies, and affections at an alarming rate. A sloping cliff carved from my own passions, a web of relationships that could entangle me and give Mother and the Duchess an upper hand over me. And yet...
And yet I find that I cannot stop these surging emotions, these overwhelming desires. I cannot stop these countless, wonderful people from entering my life and changing it forever.
Nor should I. I know this on a factual level, that this is a good thing for me to have these relationships, to have this happiness in my life in spite of--in defiance of--the danger that looms over me like an executioner's axe.
I think I'll keep this short this time. Too much to think about, not enough energy to write it all down.
A Court Really is Missing Its Fool After All
23 of December, 1882
In the end, I have always been a stupid, reckless person. One whose mouth runs faster than their brain. One who is far too careless, far too trusting.
Far too compassionate. Far too easily swayed by a sob story told by someone I mistake to be honest. Far too naive to think that they can outwit and outmaneuver the veritable titans and lords of outwitting and outmaneuvering themselves. It takes geniuses to trick gods and legends to trick fae. I am neither.
Everything was going so well. Everything was going fantastic, even! The night was wonderful, sensual. It was everything I loved about Dark Court revels. And then it all came crashing down. Mother and apparently her rival--which is a thing now, apparently--were in attendance. And all this time, I took Leah at her word. I assumed the best in her. But no. No, she's a bloody fae duchess just like mother. Both of them after me for different reasons. I never realized I was so gods-damned popular...
So everything is rightly fucked now. I must be on my absolute guard at all times, Maelie is probably furious with me because she warned me and I insisted I had everything under control. I hope she can forgive me in time. I know I won't be able to forgive me for a long, long time. And all the bluster, all the confidence, all the sass and attitude and boldness means absolutely nothing in the face of this impending, looming doom that I have woven for myself.
Manny will probably be angry with me, too. He's always told me more than anyone else to be careful in dealings with fae beings, certainly even more so fae lords and ladies. I bought into my own lie, my own persona of who I think I am versus who I really am. I think myself clever; I am an imbecile. I think myself witty; I am a dullard. I think myself cunning; I am anything but.
Is there hope? Sure, probably. I will likely need help from others. But I am almost certain that I have upset damned near everyone in my life. Upset with worry, upset with anger or frustration; it matters little, for the pain of knowing that I have erred and caused others pain and worry is enough to keep me awake at night. Perhaps amends can be made--gods, how I hope amends can be made. But is there a way out from this conflict between Courts? If it comes down to it where I am well and truly doomed to be a slave of either duchess, I only hope that I will still have the free will to choose to put an end to my own torment. I hope it does not come down to it.
Being unmade and stripped of agency is a fate worse than death.
Failings that I can never escape
8th of December, 1882
I have, deep within and hidden from others, always been a careless person. I have ruined small scams, friendships, business transactions, and other similar things all because I could not keep my mouth shut or read the room properly. Granted, most of this was back when I was young, foolish, and naive. Nevertheless, one's failings always find a way to haunt one until the end of time. And circumstances and situations that bring such memories to fore, that draw parallels to past mistakes, sting all the more painfully in the immediate moments after they happen.
I have offended someone last night, someone that I respect and genuinely enjoy the company of. Offended may not quite be the proper word--perhaps upset, disappointed, or discouraged him. And while I do not know him overly well, I had no knowledge that the situation that caused him discomfort would affect him so thoroughly. To see a normally spirited and charismatic man be brought low by a conversation spoken out of careless impropriety is a sorrowful and unhappy thing to witness. I failed to read the room. Failed to read the relationships between the people I care about. And though one may argue that it was impossible for me to have known the depth of his emotional investment and that I am thus ultimately blameless, that I am ultimately not responsible for the reactions of others, it is painful to know my role in causing the trouble--it eats away at my mind, a pervasive and icy needle of guilt that pierces the skull and embeds itself, ready to stab and cut away for weeks after the incident.
I tried to encourage him, tried to show him that there is hope. That his mood need not fall, that he need not think all is lost. I watched, to my heart's despair, him put up a mask of cordiality, an attempt at returning to the way he was before the inciting statements, but it was to no avail. I do not know what he was thinking, but I saw an agony that moves the hearts of every fey creature, great and small, to tears. We, as beings of wild emotion, can be very sensitive to the moods of others; many of us possess great empathy and consideration for the mental and emotional well-being of our fellows. And to know that someone is suffering is to feel as broken and despondent as they may be.
Am I a terrible person? Am I discourteous, doomed to harm those around me? I have spent so long looking after myself and the circus family, I at times wonder if I can adjust to society at large. The circus knows me well, they accept my eccentricities, they can read me better than anyone can. But those not of the family, well...
How deep does this maze of relationships that connects he and I go? Does he love both of the women that I do, and if so, will I appear as an obstacle to him? I don't want to be an obstacle. I don't want to be seen as a rival. I want to be seen as a friend. I want to be a comrade, a person he can confide in. Someone he can turn to and open up to when times grow tough. The way friends do. The way family--real family--does. Hells, were I a younger... whatever I am... and if he were not a noble, I would likely have made a pass at him already. But I fear that all is ruined, all is shattered before me like a fragile mirror. And in each shard of glass, I see the person responsible for the destruction.
I see myself. And all the horror and discourtesy and impropriety I hide within me. I see the thief, the scoundrel, the liar glaring back at me in those thousand jagged fragments.
Should I pray to the gods for a solution? I should at least apologize, though I fear he may not want to even look at me--at the very least not me in my natural state. I shall try. The only thing I can do is try. It is on him to decide if he wants to accept.
Gods, what a bloody mess.
In the end, it always falls back to doubt, doesn't it?
27th of November, 1882
I've often found that I, as a being who walks the path between humanity and faerie, have been prone to passion and a depth of emotion that those not of fae blood likely will not understand. While it seems I have avoided the worst of the capriciousness that those of my blood may possess, I nonetheless worry that I am swayed too easily by dreams, ideals, emotions, and those things and individuals that inspire such emotions and surging feelings.
I hadn't felt a fear as powerful as I had the other week in a very long time. She had returned. She was here to plague me again. I wanted to run. I wanted to escape. But that is no longer an option. Not when I have people who rely on me. Manny, Icky, Lolly, Noodles and Dr. Tinkles, Lilly and Zoltan and Henri and all the others in the circus. Not when I have people I want to protect. The bard and the thief--like two aspects of myself in broad strokes, coming into my life at the same time and throwing the stability I thought I had, the calm, collected, calculating nature I had tried so long to cultivate, completely out of sync, out of whack, that I began to question my own future from here on.
I was enraptured by the bard's songs, her violin moved my heart the instant I'd listened to it. I was entranced, I was enthralled. Her ginger hair and freckled skin, how she positively glowed when she played, so passionately dedicated to her chosen craft that she was... everything about her held my heart captive in an instant. I felt like I wanted to be beside her all the time, as imposing and impractical as that is; to be able to wake up beside her and hear that sweet music any day and every day. I found myself attempting to court her, flirt with her, before I even had the good sense to stop and consider what I was doing. Was it right, to desire her to be in my life, a life whose ways and circumstances may one day jeopardize her dreams because of my own tendencies for working the shadows of society? She, who aspires to greatness, could only be dragged down were her association with me--the real me, the scoundrel--to come to light. Is that right of me to dream of her, or is that selfishness?
The thief though, she and I (in my own personal opinion) have a close, greater and immediate understanding of one another. We both walk the shadows of the city streets, both dabble in the sub-legal activities of the night. And we got along instantly. I'd thought her a friend, a close confidant that I could speak to when I felt uncertain or even when simply bored. She is stunning in ways those of elvenkind tend to be, though I could not let such things as beauty and allure override the good sense of propriety needed in a civilized society. I aspired to be a gentleman and not a cad, for I valued what she had to offer, as a friend and as a person. Those flighty, promiscuous days of mine are (I'd like to think) long since past me, as every boy must become an adult some day. But then Mother arrived, her minions spirited the thief away. There was no choice, no alternative thought--and indeed, I would not have chosen to ignore her plight in the first place--but to save her. Even if she was tough and independent. Even if she might not need saving. It is an odd thing, how emotions toward someone can grow deeper in an instant. And when she kissed me after I had saved her, I knew it was over for me. Was this right, though? Should she involve herself with me, even though our lives and security may both be at risk due to the nature of our work? How one or both of us might simply not come home the next day, having been arrested or killed the night before? Then again, the life of an adventurer (as she and I both sign up for adventuring contracts) provides the same degree of risk.
Mr. Skullthorn, my old theater troupe leader, always said that I questioned myself too much. That beneath my exterior was a boy without confidence, without guidance, without certainty, and that if I wanted to succeed I needed to fix that. To fake it until I believed it.And so I did, for what other choice was there? It was literally a matter of life or death; to fail was to be without shelter, food, or any other comforts that most take for granted. To fail was to lose the dream of a life on the stage, a life of happiness, recognition, prestige, and security. And here I am once more, Donatien Leblanc, once again feeling like he is 14. All full of doubt, insecurity, desperation, and uncertainty.
I've never been one to pray to Peitho--hells, I scarcely pay tribute to Steyfano as regularly as I 'should'--but perhaps this one time... Ah wait, there it is. That sensation in my gut that I now recognize. Fear. Fear that I will lose them both, not to my own failings (though that is always a significant possibility, and I've never been one to have a track record for stability), but because of Her. Mother, the ever-looming threat in my life. The bitch who won't take 'no' for an answer. The solipsistic, selfish, cruel creature that killed Pierre and Clarice simply because they loved me. But still... do I fear Mother, or do I fear ruining the blossoming, dizzying intimacies that have come into my life? Am I moving too fast, baring my emotions and pouring my heart out to these two amazing women too quickly? Will they draw away, like pulling one's hand from the fire of a candle, if I open up fully? Perhaps, but--and here me out here, old boy--perhaps not?
There's no turning back now. The evolving path of life does not stop for anyone. I only hope I am not consumed by it in the end.