belle dame sans merci

Far past time, Morgan thinks.

She is nearly sixty, for all the glamours she casts to hide it: a slender black-haired woman, framed in the window though there's no one to see her, her dark silken gown elaborate and immaculate. It's time and past time, and she begins to think she may have missed her chance altogether.

Uriens is long gone, and good riddance to him; so are Guiomar and Hemison and poor devoted Accolon. Her own son is dead; Mordred, contrary to the last, is doing exactly what she always encouraged him to do in all the least sensible ways, courting his own destruction. According to half the rumors he's bedding the penitent Guenever, of all the poor taste; the other half claim he lives like a monk, sleeping on stone. When she looks in the glass to see for herself, all it shows her is storms.

Arthur, being Arthur, will no doubt graciously forgive his presumption, as he forgave all the others. Arthur is still more wilful than his son, as wilful as his father, though perhaps (she grants, caustically) less given to rape. Sometimes she would swear he was more stupid than either of them -- except that he still, still eludes her. If he were a fool he must have fallen by now, and he never has. Morgan showed him his own damnation, painted clear on the walls of this very castle, and all his answer was to smile.

So Arthur will forgive his own son of rank treason, and they'll all die of mere age before ever Morgan gains a hold on him; or he will not, and he will fall, as it was foretold, but not by any deed of hers. Mordred, if possible, pays even less heed to her than Arthur does. And what then?

An old woman, alone in her tower, without even the satisfaction of having won.

It's full night before Morgan rises from her seat, and goes down the winding stairs to the little walled garden, and dips her hands into the fountain there.

Character: Morgan le Fay
Alias: Faith Morgan / Margaret Cornish
Age: 30. As far as you know.
Occupation: Whatever she wants it to be.

Bio: Morgan was the daughter of Igraine by her first, assassinated husband. She spent much of her youth in a convent, where her penchant for mischief -- and her open resentment of her stepfather -- would cause as little trouble as possible. There she received moral guidance and the best education available to a gentlewoman of the time; she also -- no one ever quite knew how -- acquired an excellent grounding in sorcery. At eighteen she was married to Uriens, king of Rheged, and bore him a son and a daughter.

If she resented Uther Pendragon, she positively hated Uther's son, her half-brother. Almost from the moment of Arthur's accession, she laid plans to bring him down. It might be said that her sister, Anna called Morgause, managed this better than she did; but Morgan was not to be outdone. As Arthur lay dying, mortally wounded by Anna's son and his own, Morgan came, allying with three other women, to bear him away to Avalon. He would live, and would one day recover enough to return to the world. Morgan herself was unavoidably mortal... but there were ways around that.

Faith has always known who she is, and was. For how long is open to question -- she married, at some point, into considerable wealth, and since then the records have gotten a little confused -- but she's probably in her thirties; still young, still beautiful. Still with her life ahead of her, as they said after the funeral, and she did look lovely in mourning.

She knows what she wants. She knows everything she's set in motion over the centuries. And she knows that in upstate New York, things are coming to a head.

Personality: Morgan is selfish, manipulative, ambitious, and vengeful. She's also capable of passionate attachment -- she's never forgiven the death of Accolon, her utterly ordinary but much cherished lover, let alone what happened to her father -- and her whims are as often charitable as they are malicious. She is intelligent and cunning, but has a tendency to see things in black and white, resolving the moral gray areas to suit her convenience, which sometimes backfires.


Journal: feyqueen
Played By: Shannyn Sossamon