Sophie de France
Madame Sophie Élisabeth Louise de France
The world seems to have gone quite awry, hasn't it? I wonder how different life would be if you could have been queen. I think, my dear, that you would have done a better job than I.She was born into one of the most powerful families in Europe. Her eldest brother was the king of the largest empire in the world. Even without the crown herself, Sophie became a notable figure in the dying days of France's old regime due to both her political savvy and her breakthroughs in alzamastry research.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
She is a tall, willowy young woman with a thin face and pointed nose. Her strawberry blonde is wavy, and in life she typically let it hang loose past her shoulders whenever she was in private. Before her execution, it was cut short, above the nape of her neck, so as not to interfere with the guillotine.
Cat
Turkish Angora by Getty Images
Sophie's soul guide is a long-haired white and orange cat named Lunete.
Sophie was never too bothered by her cat's young, healthy age growing up. She knew it meant she wouldn't live to be elderly, but hoped she would make it to middle-age at least. This was part of her motivation to study hard and try to enter the academic world as young as possible, because she didn't know how much time she'd have left.
Lunete was a great comfort to Sophie. She always got her best work down when Lunete curled up in her lap. Sophie often claims that running her fingers through Lunete's hair helps get her brain working.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Early Life
Sophie was born in the palace of Versailles in 1769. At the time of her birth, her father was the Dauphin of France and the royal court eagerly awaited the birth of a son. Despite the disappointment of not securing an heir, Sophie was beloved by her parents. She spent her early years under the care of a governess, living in luxury in the finest palace in France.
When she was two years old, her mother died giving birth to a stillborn son. She became quite doted upon by her father after that, but he also died only two years later from tuberculosis. Orphaned at the age of four, she was adopted by her father's younger brother, Louis-August, and his wife, Marie Antoinette. The pair were themselves still teenagers, so the adoption was merely a formality and Sophie continued to be raised by her governess with no change to her living situation. A year later, her uncle became King Louis XVI of France.
Sophie grew up within the palace. Her adoption by her uncle made her legally his responsibility, but did not confer upon her the title fille-de-france, which the king's first biological daughter received. Sophie always referred to him as her uncle, but they did grow to be very close. They shared a quiet, introverted nature and as she got older, tended to seek each other out during lavish galas thrown by the extroverted Marie Antoinette.
Alzamastry
Sophie was an inquisitive child, who spent much of her time in the library. Her uncle encouraged her studies and supplied some of the best private tutors in France. She received a widespread education in history, languages, literature, and natural philosophy. What intrigued her the most was alzamastry, and began to teach herself the language used to control it when she was thirteen. When she was fifteen, her uncle hired an alzamatrist specifically to instruct her.
Sophie joined La Société Royale de l'Alzamastrie when she was eighteen to continue her studies. Her focus was on crystalogy, the branch of Alzamastry dealing with crystals and pathstones. She left Versailles to live and work at the Palais d'Or, where she worked alongside the renowned crystalogist Caroline Dujardin.
She joined Dujardin on a project trying to address the wraith problem in France. The goal was to create a pathstone formula that could destroy wraiths entirely, not simply fend them off. Also on the team was Gilles Tibacuy, an alzamatrist from French Muisca. Over the course of the project, Sophie and Gilles became quite close.
Sophie alternated her time between her home at Versailles and the Palais d'Or. She devoted herself to her research, and during the long nights of work, she and Gilles fell in love. Though Sophie knew that if she were to marry, it would need to be a strategically chosen match for the good of France, she enjoyed the days she could have with the man she chose as long as she could.
Revolution
Her ideal life was disrupted in 1789, when the Bastille prison was stormed in Paris. With French politics in an uproar, she returned home full-time to be with her family. Though she continued to work on the ghost project, she was often distracted by meetings and assemblies. She spoke at length to the National Assembly about her work, and how they were trying to solve the wraith problem, but with no concrete results, she could give them little reassurance.
In October, Versailles came under attack by an angry mob and the royal family were forced to relocate to the Tuileries Palace in the heart of Paris. Sophie worked hard to continue juggling her research - which she saw as essential to securing stability in France - and the increasingly dire political situation. King Louis XVI was famously indecisive, and was frequently at a complete loss of how to handle things. Sophie began to be called La voix du roi ("The king's voice") after the impression that all Louis' public statements were fed to him by his niece. The impression wasn't entirely incorrect.
She did speaking of her own, as well. With the revolution already gaining so much power, she doubted it would be possible to return to the old absolute monarchy and so became one of the most vocal advocates for a constitutional monarchy. By 1791, she was one of the most popular figures in France, respected by the nobility for her attempts at preserving the monarchy and by the masses for fighting for a constitution.
The Ghost Formula
Sophie continued working on her alzamastry project throughout the political turmoil. In 1791, she had breakthrough, but not a breakthrough she celebrated. She'd been working on a formula that would imprison a wraith in an energy field if it was impossible to destroy them. The formula she made was useless on wraiths, but worked perfectly on ordinary ghosts. Not only would the formula bind a ghost to a certain area, but control their actions as well.
Sophie couldn't stop Dujardin from announcing the amazing discovery, which became known as the Ghost Formula, but Sophie was so horrified at the prospect of enslaving a person's very soul that she burned her research and refused to divulge the formula. The Provost Philosopher, head of the Society, personally demanded she give it to him or resign from the Society, and so she resigned.
Flight to Montmédy
Later that year, the royal family planned to escape Paris and travel to allies in Montmédy, on the border with the Holy Roman Empire. Ideally, the king would negotiate the new constitution with more freedom, but with 10,000 troops stationed at Montmédy to begin a counter-revolution if necessary.
The family decided to travel separately, in two small carriages to avoid notice. Antoinette took the children and their governess in one, while Louis and his sister rode in another. Sophie elected to stay behind, to maintain a royal presence to keep the Assembly from believing Louis had abdicated. She would stand-in for the king in Paris to attend councils in person while he worked from Montmédy to keep his family out of danger.
Although Sophie fought to assure the populace that Louis had simply relocated, not run away, and her remaining behind was proof that he wasn't cutting ties with the National Assembly, public opinion turned sharply against the monarchy after the flight. Word of the Ghost Formula reached the public, presumably from a Society member with revolutionary sympathies, and the story was spun as Sophie attempting to enslave and control ghosts.
It is not enough that she puppeteers the weak-willed king to seize control of the French - now she has attempted control over the dead.
The Vanishing of Fresnes
Tensions in Paris were high. Negotiations over a constitution were time consuming and every detail required days of debate. All that tension erupted after the village of Fresnes, south of Paris, became victim to the largest wraith attack yet recorded in July of 1792. In the course of one afternoon, all 1,867 residents were turned to ash.
Not only was it a devastating attack, but it had taken place not too far from Paris. In the outpouring of fear and anger, the rumour circulated that Sophie's Ghost Formula controlled not just ghosts, but wraiths as well, and that the attack had been orchestrated by the monarchy. Only a few days after the attack, a mob stormed the Tuileries Palace, massacring the residents. During the massacre, Sophie's lover, Gilles, was killed and Sophie herself was arrested.
From Montmédy, Louis took the assault on the Tuileries as an offensive action and mobilized his troops to move against the revolutionaries. They were backed up by troops from the Habsbrug Netherlands, negotiated by Antoinette. Sophie did not take direct part in the Revolutionary War. She was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, during which time the National Convention attempted to get her to divulge the Ghost Formula. Fearing what they would do with the power, she refused.
The Revolutionary War lasted about one and a half years, and ended in victory for the revolutionaries. Although Antoinette and the children remained safe in the Habsburg Netherlands, Louis had been captured and transported to the Conciergerie to await trial. He was executed in January of 1794.
Sophie was never formally charged with using pathstones to sic wraiths on the populace. That part of her guilt was entirely rumour, although it was a persistent one among the lower classes. She was, however, charged with treason for her role in the Flight to Montmédy.
In reality, the exact charges against her didn't matter, as the new revolutionary government wanted to get rid of her influence. In March of 1794, she was executed by guillotine.
She has not yet moved on to the afterlife, and currently remains in Paris as a ghost.
Social
Family Ties
She has only vague memories of her parents. Her mother died when she was still a toddler and her father when she was 4. She remembers being loved, and spent a long time over her childhood gazing at the portrait of the family that had been commissioned shortly after she was born.
She was very close with her uncle, Louis XVI, especially as she became older. Only 13 years his junior, their relationship was at time more friendly than paternal. They frequently enjoyed long conversations in the evening, and in the final years of his reign, she was one of his favourite confidantes. The king once described his niece as his "common sense filter".
Sophie was less close with her aunt, Marie Antoinette, though they still shared affection for each other. Sophie was closer with her when she was a young child, when Antoinette doted upon her. After the age of ten or so, Sophie began to grow into her more intellectual personality and drifted closer with her uncle. Meanwhile, her first cousin had just been born to give Antoinette a new small girl to lavish affection on.
Her cousins were all much younger than her, but Sophie looked after them as a big sister.
Religious Views
She was raised in the Arbitrium Church, but her piety is at the bare minimum. She believes the basic tenants of the faith, but she stopped regularly attending mass after leaving home for the Palais d'Or and at the time of the death, she hadn't attended a priest for confession in over two years.
Relationships
History
Thomas and Sophie met when Thomas attempted to run a con on Sophie's friend, Anne. Sophie was the one to call him out on it, and proceeded to scold him and accuse him of faking his disability. When he proved to her that his disability was real, she apologized for the accusation and continued scolding him. This frank, unsympathetic attitude to his disability impressed Thomas, and he ended up spending the evening with them.
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Petit-fille-de-france
Life
1769 AD
1794 AD
25 years old
Birthplace
Palace of Versailles, France
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Gender
Female
Eyes
Light blue
Hair
Strawberry blonde, wavy
Height
5'6"
Weight
130 lbs
French
Babelian
Latin
Knowledge of
German
English
