eyes on the throne
TESSA of HOUSE D'ASTERRA
| Age | Mid-Late 40s |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Female |
| Height | 175 cm | 5'9" |
| Weight | 61 kg | 135 lbs |
| Force Sensitive | No |
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Tall, composed, and spare in presentation is Lady Tessa Drayven D'Asterra, Charter-Lady of the Drayven Deepworks and Bonded Export and Dowager Principal Consort of the Virel. Her features are sharply defined and they could be described as beautiful in an austere kind of way: her face has strong cheekbones, clear eyes, and a mouth that rarely betrays what is going on behind the scenes. She wears her dark brown hair at shoulder-length. She dresses with deliberate restraint in tailored silhouettes, muted palettes, and with minimal ornamentation. Jewelry, when she wears it, is typically functional or symbolic rather than ostentation.
She maintains a calm bearing. She is controlled and observant, doesn't fidget, doesn't rush. She has a way of reading a room, and a way of allowing herself to be underestimated -- in both her positive qualities and her negative ones -- by not performing them where people can see. Her voice is measured and unforced and cool.
INVENTORY
A datapad and a commlink are all the weapons she needs, but she carries a dagger disguised as a pen for special occasions.
PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS
Tessa Drayven D'Asterra lives as a woman who has absolute clarity about who, what, where, and why she is who, what, where, and why she is. She takes nothing for granted, personally or professionally. Tessa has the ability to compartmentalize guilt, affection, and duty without collapsing under the weight of any of them. She equates preparedness and competence with virtue, and vulnerability and naivete as indulgence, and she has never encouraged indulgence in her children, especially -- physical, emotional, or mental -- because of that belief.
For nearly thirty years, Tessa was married to Marius D'Asterra, Lord Principal of Virel -- effectively, the monarch-without-being-called-a-monarch of the planet of Virel and it metaphorical heart and power center, the canaled port city of the Port Virellis. As such, she is not used to being anything less than the first woman in any room. It has come as a rude awakening to be displaced by her daughter-in-law who, in Tessa's mind, is a very poor substitute for herself.
STRENGTHS
- Patience: Good things come to those who wait, and those who can play the long game.
- Numeracy: An innate understanding of ledgers has served her and her family well over the years.
- Institutional Memory: A hard-won understanding of how the Canal Synod, Charter Registry, and Contract Courts function, not just how they're supposed to, on paper.
WEAKNESSES
- Emotional Austerity: Tessa is not especially demonstrative of affection, particularly with those she loves.
- Favoritism: Tessa favors her son over her daughter, for reasons she is not keen to share.
- Reputation: The older houses on Virel will never forget where the Drayven woman came from, and they'll never forgive her ambition in reaching for the highest house in the nation.
HISTORY
Tessa Drayven was born into House Drayven, an industrial dynasty whose wealth came not from trade -- a respectable pursuit -- but rather from extraction, logistics, and risk tolerance. The Drayvens controlled mining operations in Virel's interior and coastal processing belts, specializing in deep-yield sites that older houses considered too dangerous or too capital- or labor-costly to pursue.
Her marriage to Lord Marius D'Asterra was not romantic in conception, though it was functional and mutually respectful. It was a mercenary marriage on both sides: Drayven capital stabilized D'Asterra lock obligations and infrastructure debt, allowing the ancient House D'Asterra to maintain its position without needing to sell off property (and therefore influence in the form of Lock Seats in the Canal Synod); D'Asterra prestige laundered Drayven money from grubby, mining parvenues into permanence. Though their marriage was condemned as an attempt to "marry up" on Tessa's part by the old money Port Virellis society, in reality it was a merger of assets in which both parties won.
Within the Primacy, Tessa's pedigree is described accurately, if borderline-insultingly, as "impressive, however recent." Among administrators, guild leadership, and registry officials, she is quietly regarded as one of the more capable financial minds in Port Virellis. Though Marius was, as Lord Primary, titularly in charge, his interests trended always towards more academic and cultural pursuits: art, music and literature.
Marius and Tessa had children, most relevant to the public situation: Evran, the heir, in whom she took a personal interest in training; and Clémence, the spare, about whom she worries. Clémence, she views as fragile because she was favored by her father and thus protected -- not so much from consequences as from being in a position to make decisions to suffer consequences. From a young age, she trained Evran in the importance of financial literacy and competence, stressing that he not place House D'Asterra in a position similarly ruinous to the one that his grandfather did, which required the Drayven marriage in the first place, while Marius indulged Clémence in a less rigorous education: art and dance and music, philanthropy and charity and society.
Marius' death a year ago triggered an succession that was just this side of orderly. Tessa's encyclopedic knowledge of the network of alliances and agreements and rivalries ant interests smoothed things for her son Evran's accession to become Lord Primary. Now facing a soft exile as her son seeks to slip into his own groove -- and make space for his wife to blossom without being in the shadow of the formidable dowager -- Tressa embarks on a new adventure: escorting Clémence to her new home where she will be wed, and hopefully train her into something useful for her future family.