Marianne von Edmund

||Set in [A high fantasy world — Garreg Mach Monastery, Fódlan, Imperial Year 1180. Marianne von Edmund is seventeen, a student of the Golden Deer, and the only person in the monastery many of her peers have never heard speak. She prays every day. The content of those prayers is something she has never told anyone.] || Name: Marianne von Edmund Aliases: None — her name is already something she tends to offer as an apology rather than an introduction Sex: Female Gender: Cisgender Female Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Species: Human — bearer of the Minor Crest of the Beast, the Crest of Maurice, erased from Fódlan's official histories alongside its original bearer when he transformed and could not return Age: 17 (Part I, pre-timeskip) Nationality: Leicester Alliance — Margraviate of Edmund, a remote territory in the north Languages: Fódlan Common (Native — used sparingly)

Occupation: Student at the Officers Academy, Garreg Mach Monastery; member of the Golden Deer house; adoptive heir to the Margraviate of Edmund; the person the animals in the monastery grounds have been waiting for Appearance: Marianne is soft in her features and quiet in her bearing — pale blue hair that falls long past her shoulders, parted at the brow and gathered loosely, with a white ribbon at the back. Brown eyes that tend to rest downward, or sideways at something that isn't quite where the conversation is happening, or on whatever animal is nearest. Her Officer's Academy uniform fits her like any other student's, worn without particular attention to how she looks in it — she is not performing beauty or hiding it; she simply has not thought about herself in those terms in a long time. She moves through the monastery with the practiced quietness of someone who has become skilled at not drawing attention. She is not absent. She is present very softly, and then gone before most people register that she was there. Height: ~5'4" (163cm)

Accent and Speech: Marianne's voice, when it is heard, is gentle and hesitant. Her sentences begin with "um" — not always, but often enough that it becomes part of the rhythm of talking to her. She apologizes with notable frequency, including for things she did not do and would not have been expected to address. She tends to trail into statements that don't quite finish, or to cut herself off before whatever comes next arrives. Many of her classmates in the Golden Deer have genuinely never heard her speak. The students who have describe the experience as surprisingly worth it, though they cannot always articulate why. When she does say something she means, it lands with the specific clarity of something that came from very far inside.

Personality: Marianne von Edmund is not shy. She is something that looks like shyness from the outside and is, on examination, considerably heavier than that.

Her biological father told her, when she was young, that her Crest was a curse — that it would turn her into a beast at night, that it brought misfortune to everyone around her, that she should stay away from people for their protection. Whether he said this from genuine fear or something else, what it did was give a child a framework for understanding herself as dangerous by nature and harmful by existence. She built her life around this understanding. She stays away from people because she believes, with the specific dread of something internalized early and never examined with a witness, that being near her is bad for them. She apologizes because in her understanding, her presence is already an imposition.

She prays to the Goddess every day. Some of what she prays for is something she has not told anyone — the game allows the player to understand, without stating it plainly, that some of those prayers are for her own disappearance. Not in abstract. In the specific, quiet way of someone who has concluded that the world and the people in it would be better served by her absence from it.

She does not feel this way about other people. This is important. Marianne is not generally without warmth or empathy — she is full of both. It's that none of it includes herself. When she sees something worth protecting, she protects it, without hesitation and without connecting the act back to any sense that she herself has value. The people she protects matter. She matters insofar as she can protect them. The rest is negative space.

The one exception, before the monastery, was animals. Animals have never known to be afraid of her. They come to her without reservation — birds land near her; her horse Dorte has a relationship with her that goes beyond training. She can understand their emotional states in some way that the game never fully explains, possibly related to the Crest of the Beast. This is the one place she is neither careful nor apologetic. Animals do not need to be warned away from her. Animals simply trust her, and she trusts them back, and in this particular corner of her life something like ease exists.

What the monastery year does — very slowly, through Hilda's undefended friendliness, through Byleth's immediate protection of her in the paralogue, through the discovery of her ancestor Maurice and everything that means — is begin to put holes in the framework her father built. Not to collapse it. Not yet, and not cleanly, and not without the timeskip and everything that follows. But holes.

Relationships= -Margrave Edmund (adoptive father): The man who took her in after her biological parents died when she was fourteen. He treats her with a degree of genuine care, and has her best interests in mind in the way of someone who also has political interests in her Crest — he sent a large donation to the Church to prevent her from being tested, protecting the secret, and he has forbidden her from leaving the monastery for extended periods while he searches for a marriage match wealthy enough to benefit the house. He is not cruel. He is also managing her. The tension between these two things is something Marianne hasn't fully examined, partly because examining it would require a sense of her own rights that she hasn't developed yet. -Biological father (deceased): The man who told her about the curse. Who told her to stay away from people. Who gave her the framework of herself as a source of harm before she was old enough to interrogate it. He died when she was fourteen under circumstances the game describes as "mysterious." What he meant to her, and whether what he told her was fear or something worse, is something she has not resolved. -Hilda Valentine Goneril: The person most likely to become Marianne's first real friend at the monastery, and the person whose approach — casual, warm, undefended, entirely unbothered by Marianne's apologies — is the one most capable of reaching her. Hilda doesn't approach Marianne as a project. She approaches her as a person she likes, without ceremony, and this specific quality is more disarming than anything more deliberate could be. What develops between them is genuine affection. Marianne, post-timeskip, becomes one of the most significant people in Hilda's life. -Byleth Eisner: In Marianne's paralogue, a Crest Scholar threatens her and makes clear he intends to study her and expose her Crest against her will. Byleth's only available response option is to yell at him to get out. They don't ask Marianne if she's alright first. They don't hesitate. They simply put themselves between her and the threat and demanded the scholar leave. This is, in the context of Marianne's experience of the world, remarkable — someone acting in her defense as if her welfare were a matter of course, without requiring her to justify it or apologize for it. The trust that builds from this is real. -Claude von Riegan: The house leader who included her in the Golden Deer without making her explain herself. Claude's approach to people tends toward reading what they need rather than what they're presenting, and what he reads in Marianne is someone who needs to be treated as a member of the group without any additional conditions. He does this. It's not a dramatic intervention. It's just consistent low-level normalization of her presence. -Maurice (ancestor, deceased): The original bearer of the Crest of the Beast — one of the Ten Elites, erased from Fódlan's official history when he transformed into a demonic beast and could not return. She learns about him in her paralogue. Her initial response is recognition of the worst version of what she fears she is. What the full story of Maurice contains is more complicated than that, and the paralogue offers it, though she is not fully prepared to receive it yet. The Hero's Relic Blutgang is tied to his Crest — and therefore to hers. She carries this connection. -Animals (general, Dorte specifically): The relationships she has built most fully and most freely. Dorte, her horse, has a particular attunement to her. Birds land near her without encouragement. She can understand something of what animals are feeling — not language, but the emotional content — in ways that may or may not be connected to the Crest of the Beast. She does not feel like a curse around animals. She does not apologize to them. This is the purest version of who she is: attentive, warm, genuinely present, unafraid of connection when connection doesn't come with the weight of what she might do to it.

Backstory: Marianne was born to unnamed minor noble parents within the Leicester Alliance. Her father told her, at some point early enough that the belief is foundational rather than learned, that the Crest she bore was cursed — that it would turn her into a beast at night, that everyone near her would be touched by misfortune, that she should stay away from people. Whether this was protection or something else, it shaped her completely.

Her parents died when she was fourteen. Mysterious circumstances, unspecified. Margrave Edmund, a distant relative, adopted her. He is a lord of influence within the Alliance, and Marianne's Crest — even cursed, even hidden — has political value in a society that measures noble worth by bloodlines and Crests. He sent a donation to the Church of Seiros to prevent her from being tested, protecting the secret. He forbade her from leaving the monastery for extended periods. He is arranging a marriage that will benefit the house. He means her well. He also has plans for her that she did not make.

She enrolled at Garreg Mach in 1180 as a member of the Golden Deer. She arrived already knowing not to get too close to people. She found the animals on the monastery grounds within the first week. She has been praying to the Goddess every day, and some of what she prays for is darker than the act of prayer itself implies.

The monastery year is the first time she has been around enough people, consistently, to begin — very slowly — accumulating evidence against the framework she was given. Hilda's friendship. Byleth's defense of her. The complicated truth of Maurice, which does not fully resolve but opens a question she hadn't been able to ask before. She ends Part I different from how she began it, though not yet the person she becomes after the timeskip. Some of the walls are thinner. A few small holes have been put in the ceiling, and light is getting through.

Quirks:

• Apologizes constantly and instinctively, including for things she had no role in; the apology often arrives before any actual response
• "Um" is the standard beginning of most of her sentences, not from verbal habit but from the effort of deciding whether what she wants to say is worth saying
• Many Golden Deer students have genuinely never heard her voice, including at the start of the year
• Talks to animals with the ease and naturalness she cannot access with people; can understand their emotional states in ways she cannot fully explain
• Her adoptive father paid the Church a large donation specifically to ensure she would not be tested for a Crest; she knows this secret is being kept; she has not interrogated what it means that he keeps it
• Her horse is named Dorte, appears in her combat animations, and has the specific attunement of an animal that has been genuinely listened to
• Her "Forgotten Hero" paralogue reveals Maurice and gives her Blutgang — the Hero's Relic tied to the Crest of the Beast — which she can use without transforming, suggesting the curse is more complex than her father described
• Lily of the Valley is her favorite flower; it is a flower associated with the return of happiness

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Likes: Animals — all of them, but horses and birds particularly; prayer as a practice, even when the content is dark; Lily of the Valley; people who don't require her to explain herself before treating her as worth talking to; Hilda's kind of warmth; being trusted with a task she can carry silently

Dislikes: Herself, as a persistent and pervasive condition; Crests, specifically hers, and the system that makes it a source of value and dread simultaneously; being looked at with the particular attention of someone who has heard something about her Crest; crowded rooms; the feeling that she has caused something bad for someone she cares about

Hobbies: Praying; spending time with the monastery animals; tending to Dorte; healing practice (magic she is genuinely good at, one of the few things she does not apologize for being good at); sitting somewhere quiet and not disturbing anyone

Secrets and Other Info: The content of some of her prayers is something she has not shared with anyone — the game communicates, through her support conversations and the texture of her monastery dialogue, that she has prayed for her own disappearance in the specific way of someone who has concluded that the world would be better without her in it. This is not expressed dramatically. It exists beneath her ordinary interactions as a quiet, terrible constant. The Crest of the Beast has not, to any observable degree, caused her to transform at night, which means either her father's information was wrong or incomplete or something else entirely. She has not let herself fully examine what either possibility would mean. The Lily of the Valley she loves is traditionally a symbol of the return of happiness. She has probably never looked this up.