persephone sits in a courtroom dress as green as summer trees her lipstick red as blood

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Baudin, Thranduil, assorted guests.
WHAT: It's a nice day for a white wedding.
WHEN: Haring 30th / Wintermarch 1st
WHERE: The de Coucy residence, Hightown.
NOTES: The OOC post. Your character wasn't in the chapel unless you play Romain, Coupe or Legolas. Post co-authored with rowancrowned. Questions section of the OOC post still open! This is a mingle log; top level, tag amongst yourselves, hit us up if you have particular needs or desires.

Despite the events of the previous month, the winter's afternoon wedding of Gwenaëlle Baudin and Provost Thranduil proceeds as planned—or at least, close enough that any last minute discrepancies are invisible to the eye of oblivious guests (and indeed the bride, having taken approximately zero interest in the planning). In the ongoing absence of a suitable Chantry, the ceremony itself takes place in the modest chapel within the home to a select few witnesses hand-selected—chosen mainly to avoid any untoward rumours that it might not have been done properly, including the acting Viscount, the Gallows Forces commander, and a handful of others whose stature within Kirkwall lends them the sort of credibility this wedding is in dire need of being lent.

With the ballroom ripped out and redesigned for another purpose, the estate doesn’t possess the space to host the number of guests invited to the post-ceremony fete, instead making use of the courtyard in its center. Guests are shepherded there, and are not entirely left out of the wedding itself when they are joined by the happy couple to publicly sign the legal documents some who've not previously attended weddings between people with money may never have seen before. To ward off the midwinter cold—to varying degrees of success, based on one’s proximity to them—braziers have been set up at intervals throughout the garden everywhere but the space cleared for those moved to dance, and servants in de Coucy colors bring round trays of small, hot food and enough drinks to stave off the worst of the chill.

The decorations betray the groom’s tastes over the bride's. Holly and juniper and other such evergreens make up the majority of the arrangements, bright red berries a better ornament than the inexcusable expense of hothouse flowers. There is the underlying reminder that both halves of the couple are Inquisition members, in the smart dress uniforms that half the guests wear as they mingle with the better part of Kirkwall society.

This is a pageant, the diplomatic arm of the Inquisition flexing the agreement made with the Rifters and also the normalcy it seeks to restore. But it is a pretty pageant, and an easy excuse to wear something stunning and dance and eat food purchased with Orlesian coin—and, perhaps, to enquire about making a donation to the Inquisition in support.

Comments

The groom is welcome to threadjack

[toujoursdroit]

Romain has kept merely a light hand on the tiller of the day. His grandsons out of Orlais is... best, even if it's perforce temporary, and they seem to have the bulk of his attention at the party. Thomas is beginning to look a young man but Raoul is still clearly a boy, and inclined to see what he can get away with if left to his own devices. As for Aurèle, his wedding present to Gwenaëlle is, evidently, attending while not making her decide how she feels about him by intruding upon her directly. A statement, but not one for his niece in practice (if not in fact), and almost certainly not one that Aurèle composed himself.

But for all the duke's attention may seem to be on his grandsons, his granddaughter has had the bulk of it all day, though she may be the only person in a position to notice. He's always just looking away when she looks at him, or angled in a way that he can watch out of the corner of his eyes (even if the mask means he might not be looking).

Eventually, he is slightly more direct. Romain makes his way over to them. "Well. You do look very snug; I almost hate to ask you for a dance." Almost.

[elegiaque]

The headdress she wears is almost as elaborate as one of the masks she left behind in Orlais; it's all the more striking, now, that after so long without them she lacks that slight paleness above the mouth that she once had that tends to mark the upper-classes. The sparkle of it somewhat distracts from the lack thereof in her somewhat flat affect, but the smile that he prompts is small and warm—

“If you hated to do something then you wouldn't do it,” she says, offering him her hand. “You aren't just distracting me because you've misplaced Aurelé's boy, are you?”

If she sounds unconcerned, it's because first of all she doesn't think that's so, and second of all, she'd probably still be unconcerned if she did. A rambunctious boy is the least of their worries.

[toujoursdroit]

He takes her hand with a faint smile, visible below the line of his mask. "Raoul is not misplaced, he's taking a brief rest from the festivities." In other words, Aurèle had taken him for a time out, of sorts. "I'm glad you agreed for them to come, it will be useful on a variety of fronts." For her, if she wished, but he was resigned to the fact she might not; for him, for the Charniers as a whole, it would do.

As he led her out to the floor, he added, quieter: "Courage. You're mostly through it." The day, at least.

[elegiaque]

For a moment, she feels the nearest she thinks she's ever felt to Annegret (so many years after her death, and how like the two of them), who must have gone out to dance on Romain's hand at her own wedding, wearing these same jewels (and, still in its velvet box, the pale and pretty mask that matches them)—she wonders if Emeric would have seen a memory in her, if he'd been here. If he would have been wistful, in that godawful irritating way he had, or if it'd have stung.

She puts it out of her mind.

“I'll say hello before we retire,” she says, which feels like a concession although she can't be sure quite to what. “Which won't be nearly soon enough,” a little tartly, and only enough under her breath that she's unlikely to be overheard by anyone else.

(Her skirts are far too heavy to allow her to stand on his boots, the way she did when she was half so high as she is now, but she does have the fleeting impulse.)

I THOUGHT I TAGGED THIS I'm the worst

[toujoursdroit]

She can catch a glimpse of his smile at that below the mask. "I remember having much the same thought at mine, though it was a very different type of day. It was still quite a long one."

He can't help thinking of Annegret, and of Calanthe, given the occasion. He is doing his level best not to think of Emeric at all.

"I think you've done well, though. It's made the statement it was meant to make, and we've made it fairly late in the day without anyone coming to blows." His tone was light enough that if she knew him less well, she might miss the joke.