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

[elegiaque]

It's difficult not to think of those whose absence she feels as keenly as she might have done Coupe's when it's underscored that way—all of her parents. Morrigan, who she had wanted to stand in their place.

“I wouldn't have blamed you,” she says, dry. “I'd have liked to.”

Miss it, she means, but—

that she wouldn't have grudged it wouldn't have made it easier to bear.

[limier]

"I know." She does, most of them do, its own small miracle if their distinguished guests haven't clued in (too caught up in the scandal of it). "You did not do this for each other."

The slight twist of her mouth aside; the precursor to a smile.

"But for a future, perhaps." Too uncertain a thing, always — if it isn't the war, or the whims of the Fade to separate them both. They've spoken around it before. Around, and little more. For a future, and its constants, "That is what they all want."

Those guests. A future, or a piece of it; to stay ahead of a problem, to not be taken for surprise. To own the day's gossip before it might be turned aside. Or,

A bit of hope, too. You're allowed that, at weddings.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle's lip curls, involuntary, before she stops herself; arranges her features into a studied neutrality. It would be better if she could look more the blushing bride—a little sweetness about her would suit that, the implicit promise of a future where things like this will still matter—but a lot of things would probably be better if someone else were doing this. In a perfect world, it wouldn't be necessary.

A server appears, discreetly, at her elbow; she strongly suspects that they, at least, are paying close attention to her expressions, and she warms her hands around the wine that she takes with rather more enthusiasm than she had morsels of food.

“Would that they were prepared to do a little more to get it,” is all she says, eventually, instead of perhaps fuck them or do they deserve it? which is, she knows, no sort of metric.

It isn't as if she does.