Countess Odessa Blanchard du Rachetisse

Countess Odessa Blanchard du Rachetisse is a favored courtier in the court of l'Empeurer Leon Alexandre du Montaigne. Lady Jamais Sices du Sices is applauded as Court Wit; Cardinal Durkheim suffers l'Empeurer's favor because of her beauty and purity; Odessa Blanchard amuses His Imperial Majesty with her outre scandalous behavior. She likes to boast that she tries to indulge in each of the Seven Deadly Sins daily, encourages all manner of salacious rumor concering her bedroom activities, and generally works toward maintaining a reputation as the Wickedest Woman in Theah. Odessa was not raised Vaticine and doesn't have even the slightest lingering respect for the church's institutions or officials; this only further endears her to l'Empeurer.

She is rather more dangerous than her reputation as a debauched jade would lead one to believe. Born into the St-Laurent family, Odessa eagerly adopted her father's doctrine of their family's imperial destiny. She studied abroad as a young woman, and the possibility of a match with Prince Piram of Breg was floated, but in the end, her father required a firmer hand on the Blanchard family. She married Count Charles in 1648, but the marriage only lasted three years. After Charles died, she never remarried. Charles's brother Francois occassionally pesters her to return the family lands and county title to him; the matter has never gone to court and she generally turns a deaf ear to Francois.

Her brother Jean-Paul was the acting Lord St-Laurent after their father retired to his genealogy studies, but he was more interested in women than in scheming. Odessa helpfully "guided" her brother's policies to the family's better interest. She made especially good headway with Vittorio Donati, yoking their two families into a stronger alliance which continued when his son Antonio succeeded him as Lord Donati eight years ago. Jean-Paul was unfortunately killed in a duel three years ago and his son Adrien has ascended to Lord St-Laurent; he is less tolerant of his aunt's "meddling" than his father was.

Odessa currently heads the Lorenzo efforts to undermine and eliminate the scions of Octavius Montanus - the du Montaigne royal family. She is a font of wicked advice for l'Empeurer, suggesting that he do things that typically delight him but cause ever-increased resentment among his people.

Gabrielle has gossipped that her aunt was once said to have a bit of a liason with Tigran Mondavi which apparently ended spectacularly badly.

Odessa's dalliance with Salvador has lasted longer than most; speculation around le Chateau is that she doesn't see enough of him to grow tired of him. Charouse is growing uglier and uglier as the summer wears on, much to her delight. She isn't especially worried for herself: if anything starts to go very wrong, she'll Walk to one of her travel tokens. And she's watching for something to go wrong.

Her Donati allies have given her a few surprising turns, both Salvador's renunciation of the family name and Angelo's brutal treatment of Mateo Bianco. (Not that she disapproved of either manuever.) The countess hates to be surprised by people and is re-evaluating her opinions of all of the Donati as a result. The Bianco also troubled her; the idiot Legion-worshippers always managed to bring fire and the sword down on the family at the worst possible times. It was a bad sign for one to crop up just now.

Odessa Blanchard has the Self-Controlled Arcana. Her most important strand is a Swords that heads north, toward Montaigne.

Photo Credit:"La femme � la perle," Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, c. 1868-70

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