hrj

Hey, who says I’m limited to only one Alpennia blog per week?

When I identified Saint Mauriz (i.e., Maurice) as the patron saint of Rotenek, it was primarily on the basis of his association with the alpine region. Having chosen him, his characteristics as a military figure got worked into various details, e.g., as the basis of the “lorica” protection that’s Margerit’s first newly created mystery. But when I first started developing the secondary character of Celeste, the teenage daughter of the high-society dressmaker Dominique who makes periodic appearances, the significance of Saint Mauriz took on a different flavor.

Celeste is planned to be a very significant secondary character in the book Floodtide (which will overlap chronologically with the end of Mother of Souls). She has a talent for performing effective mysteries—not the brilliant talent of someone like Margerit, but more like Antuniet’s skills: enough to tell when things are working or not, and to provide barely enough feedback for minor experimentation. But Celeste isn’t operating at anything resembling the level of our favorite scholars. She’s learned her ceremonies from an old woman in the marketplace who sold charms and cures, and who had faith—but not knowledge—that she was helping people. Celeste has also learned some traditions from her mother, who was born somewhere in the French West Indies, probably as a slave though this has not been mentioned explicitly, and who worked her way via unknown adventures to become a fashionable dressmaker in Paris before fleeing with other French emigres to Alpennia during the Revolution. Most of the emigres have long since returned to France, but some have settled in for various reasons. Celeste was born in Rotenek and has a definite chip on her shoulder about being as Alpennian as any of her neighbors. Her father was local (and white) but is no longer in the picture (dead--I’m not entirely sure when or under what circumstances but she has no clear memories of him).

But at any rate, Celeste operates very much on the “folk magic” side of the religious mysteries and though she’s aware of “high magic” practices, she knows they’re not for the likes of her. But she has a special personal affinity for Rotenek’s patron saint, Mauriz, in large part because Saint Mauriz is typically portrayed as Black—and often with clearly sub-Saharan features—and she takes him as a symbol of her own right to Alpennian identity. And so, although Saint Mauriz is not typically considered the patron of the sorts of healing miracles that Celeste specializes in, she has developed her own ceremonies that tap into that personal connection and use him as a focus for her work.

As her mother’s assistant in the dress shop, Celeste has come in contact with Margerit and Antuniet and others who work with academic thaumaturgy, but it isn’t until Serafina comes into the shop to order a gown for her first terrifying entrance into Rotenek Society that Celeste is bold enough to exploit that connection and ask Serafina if she could bring her a candle that had burned at Saint Mauriz’s shrine in the cathedral to use in her own rituals. And that request draws Serafina’s attention to an entirely different flavor of magic than what she’s learning with Margerit.

We won’t get to see a great deal of Celeste in Mother of Souls (for goodness’ sake, the book is crowded enough already!) but there will be some space for me to develop a solid sense of her as a character. And in Floodtide she stands second in importance only to the point-of-view character, Rozild.