Ysolde Dunmarrow

Ysolde Dunmarrow, trained for the line, sworn to the maquis.

She was born on the good side of things and worked it out early, which in her produced anger rather than embarrassment. At fifteen she signed five years at a war school, under Astorr's portrait like everywhere else, and they taught her the two-hander for holding a line. She met the doctrine of Asthate in her final year. She still dines at her family's table. She laughs a great deal, and she watches who laughs with her.

Describe her

She speaks too well for what she claims to be, and she knows it, so she keeps her sentences short. She laughs loud and often, at grave things included. She asks naive questions of people who ought to know better than to answer. She hears the answers all the way through, and never cuts in. And when someone complains about the poor in front of her, she smiles and asks him his name.

Play her

Never play her naive. Play her funny, warm, open, and entirely clear-eyed. Have her lay out her ideal aloud in front of strangers, larger than she needs to, then watch with her which of them takes it up for his own purposes, and let her remember that one without ever letting him see it. She recruits as much as she protects. And hold, underneath, that she is twenty, that she has never yet been wrong, and that the day she is, nobody around her will be ready.

What she says (rarely)

"Oh no, I have excellent manners. That makes it much worse."
"By the Twins!"
"(smiling) Nobody has done anything irreparable yet. Sit down."