Sarlotta Ruzenia

Sarlotta is always looking her best - a full face of very light and natural makeup, a perfect skincare routine, painted nails, everything you can imagine. Other than that, though, she's naturally quite beautiful as well - She has warm olive eyes and wavy orange hair. The only thing that might be considered a flaw is covered up - go to secrets for details.

Sarlotta's wardrobe is incredibly varied. She will wear dresses in about every style and color, assuming that they are fashionable enough and that they cover up her neck. In particular, her favorite dresses are pink, orange and green. She wears anything from flats to high heels, presuming they're formal enough. She can atually run in heels.. terrifying.

Sarlotta isn't a very hard person to read. She's sweet and a bit naive, unaware about many things beyond her very pampered life but caring very much when introduced to it. By nature she always tries to approach things with barely cautious optimism. In the face of conflict she tends to emotionally shy away, but has the natural resilience of a public figure to speak up for herself and become more graceful when the time calls for it. In such situations, Sarlotta commands a surprisingly strong presence. Sarlotta is very thoughtful and caring, especially with her friends - she's known to give overly expensive gifts, unaware of how much pressure she can put on people with them. Gifts are her love language.

Sarlotta loves many things a perfect countess would - tea, small handcrafts like embroidery, and all things in the American 50 and 60s. She loves retro things in general, but very specifically that era - in particular she's head over heels for Frank Sinatra. She often reads fiction, particularly romance or period dramas. This makes a lot of sense, given her upbringing. Roses are her favorite flower. Sarlotta has a long history of engagements but is currently free after her last husband-to-be left the country with a commoner mistress. Despite loving dreamy, sappy romance, she has a pretty troubled history with falling for bad types. She also has a decent head for numbers. Sarlotta often jokes that, had she not been of noble blood, she may have attended Hope's Peak as the Ultimate Accountant for all the work she's had to put into her business.

Best of the 60s - An album with only the best swing and jazz of the decade. It’s not outdated, YOU’RE outdated.

Everlasting Rose Ring - A beautiful rose gold ring topped with a rose shaped arrangement of rose quartz. Woah.. that’s a lot of roses!

Art Deco Coloring Book - Nothing’s more relaxing than reliving the good ol’ days. Comes with a small pack of colored pencils.

Huggables™ Plush Pillow - Animal tube pillows for resting your head on and hugging. Collect all.. One of them? They’re all shaped like Usane.

Fashion Collar - It’s a statement! However, the fasteners seem to ensure it’s always just a bit tight..

Knockoff Shirt - Ew.. what IS this? The logo is all wrong, and you don’t think the brand name is spelled like that. Smells like labor exploitation.

Sarlotta has a scar around her neck that looks like barbed wire. She gained this scar when someone attempted to kill her as a child. She does feel pride over her scar as something that taught her to live, but is compulsed to cover it up because scars are seen as a sign of weakness that could engender more danger in Alerstad.

MAJOR CHARACTER SPOILERS AHEAD!

Outside of her incredibly polite and kind appearance, Sarlotta actually has a pretty rotten personality - she just hides it because she's aware it will bring her consequences. As a child she grew up fairly spoiled and bratty, until she was almost killed by a butler who explained that no one would help or even miss someone as unkind as her. Sarlotta survived, but took the message to heart.. in the wrong way. She spent the next few years shoring up her reputation in the form of a face turn. This was.. a challenge, less because of her abilities to act and more because Alerstad is like a living TV drama where everyone wants everyone else either dead or subservient.

Sarlotta had a lot of success with a particular strategy, which earned her the title of the Untouchable Rose - that she was seemingly innocent to the point of being an easy target, but that her 'genuine nature' had gained her enough support in the community that going for her was a death sentence. Sarlotta seeked out support specifically from talented peers her age, who were still young enough to not be engrained in the awful nature of Alerstad - oftentimes black sheep, or those who had particular eccentricities that drove away any other social connections they needed. By being kind even in the face of rejection and occasionally threats, she managed to win over a very close and surprisingly genuine friend group. This includes a swordswoman, an illegitimate child, daughters of dukes and so on.

On that topic - Sarlotta is actually a very good friend! All of the loyalty she has from these people is well-earned, and she works her ass off to prevent them from being hurt by the various continuous schemes of the aristocracy at large. However, Sarlotta has a bit of a weird complex. She's convinced herself that she's basically all evil and to be fair she sucks a lot - to the point where anything she does that is kind, genuine or not, is actually a scheme or trick and that anyone who takes it seriously is a fool. Truthfully, she's deathly afraid of vulnerability, to the point of thinking that if even one person knew who she really was her social and possibly actual life would be over. Being 'fake' all the time has made her pretty lonely, not that she would ever admit that to herself.

Sarlotta's real personality is by and large very flawed. Aside from the above fears, she's kind of catty, and she mentally mocks pretty much everyone as being less intelligent than her to shore up her poor self-esteem. She thrives in drama, of which there is plenty in Alerstad, and conversely hates peaceful slice of life happiness. When things get too quiet, she's prone to quietly provoking something simply because when nothing is happen it means she has nothing to distract her from the existential emptiness she often feels. When she has the opportunity, she watches reality TV for this purpose. Altogether, she's just.. pathetic. Sarlotta isn't happy and likely never will be until she confronts the fact that she often doesn't feel like she should even be alive and that everything she does to survive is inherantly evil. Yeah I'm humanizing my fucked up evil villain. So sue me.

Finally, her home situation is a whole ass mess and definitely didn't help her emotional development. Her parents want nothing more than for her to marry up so they can live well - they were some of the lowest possible aristocracy, and while they still lived in comfort, the condition of their mansion was considered a disgrace. After Sarlotta began her gem and jewelry business in an attempt to gain independance from her household, their eyes turned towards that, too. She busted her ass especially for that - including not so pleasant methods to gain the land for the first mine and initial labor, though all of that has now been reformed to industry standards. Similarly, her brother is a leech who cheated on his fiance. Sarlotta's particularly pissed at him because she was fond of her, though she frames it as finding her 'entertaining'. He's hoping to take any money he can for gambling. And finally, her sister, the middle sibling, has always hated Sarlotta as competition and always bullied her even as a child. She's stolen grooms from her (not that she minds), tried to sabotage her business and social life, and eventually got arrested for making an attempt on her life. Shockingly, Sarlotta is not fond of her family but has no true way to escape the estate outside of marraige. After a particularly nasty send off to her last fiance, her parents had enough and isolated her in a small mansion away from everything while they looked for a suitor who could control her 'outrageous luck'. For her this was a win - she didn't have to deal with her family at all, and within a month she had control over the household and staff. aside from ousting a particularly stubborn spy. Even then, though, she could never relax.. in a house fille with allies, she still believes that showing weakness for even a second would have her ruined.