Ophelia Isadore

The Origins of a Star

A nymph’s ancestry is that of nature itself. They are born not to a parent or family, but to the elements, the curiosity of the ever-changing environment. Much as mankind has looked to the stars for answers for millennia, so too have the stars returned that gaze. As an aurae nymph, Ophelia was formed when the constellations longed too deeply to know the world of man. She was born from a pool of moonlight, from the glint of starlight on the river, from the curl of the wind around the earth’s feet.

Ophelia has lived most of her life in the city of Ephesus, Ionia. Her earliest memories comprise of walking along the banks of the Kaystros River, marvelling at the light of the dawn.
Ophelia was found and embraced into the noble house of Euphemia by a man named Adras Euphemia, courtesan and dramaturge. To the Euphemias, the theatre; its plays, its politics and its upkeep, is a family art. They own and manage the large theatre in central Ephesus, and it was on this stage that Ophelia learnt to navigate life, its triumphant highs and crashing downfalls.
Ophelia has largely lived a very charmed life, and is used to being handed many of life’s luxuries with little effort of her own. This is thanks, in part, to her nymphen beauty, but also Adras’ willingness to have her every whim facilitated by the Court of Euphemia.

Heaven Help a Fool Who Falls in Love

Ophelia and Adras met as a curious newly formed nymph and a lovesick young fool, enthralled by her beauty. He was 17 and ignorant about the world outside his own path, and she was lost in the suddenness of a new personhood. Adras took her back with him to his home in the courts, introduced her to a life of luxury, and of theatre. The two became fast friends, rarely seen apart as they explored their newfound freedoms and novelties together.

It was Adras who introduced her to the theatre, to the stage and the spotlight. He taught her to play the lyre just as she played a part, to bring the audience to both tears and laughter.
Adras tried to ask for her hand in marriage once, when they were still young, but Ophelia laughed him off. She is an act, not a real person, not what he deserves in his life. Ophelia doesn’t know what true love is, but she’s fairly certain this isn’t it.
Adras moved on, with a little time, and married a woman named Helene, with whom he had three children: Lyris, Selina and Callistus. He and Ophelia remained close, much to the chagrin of gossip-ready courtesans, but their relationship was one of muse and mentor, of mutual respect, and a deep friendship. Adras grew from the foolish boy Ophelia first met into a powerful man, central to his community and culture through his work for the theatre. As he aged, he often wondered at Ophelia’s perpetual youth, a spectacle compared to his greying hair and gnarled artist’s hands.

Adras’ death is Ophelia’s first real taste of mortality. She doesn’t believe it, for a while – that he could truly be gone. Not with such ease and gentleness. She never truly learnt to deal with her grief, instead repressing the ugly truth for a more beautiful distraction.

The Courts are not your Friend

Ophelia was never very close with any of Adras’s children, but her relationship with his eldest daughter, Lyris, has become particularly terse over the years. When Lyris was a child, Ophelia showed her little interest beyond the expected social graces, and her own morbid curiosities regarding the lifespan of mortals. As she grew up, Lyris often found herself resenting the attention that her father paid to Ophelia over herself and her siblings, and the two became quiet, but none-the-less petty, rivals. Ophelia became particularly jealous of Lyris’ clear and resonant singing voice, lacking her own talents in this regard.
This rivalry bubbled beneath the surface for a long time, as both parties were hesitant to upset the ostensibly oblivious Adras with their bitterness towards each other.

After Adras’ passing, the court was empty. A heavy silence hung from the stonework, draping their usual vibrant ambience under a solemn mantle. Before long, however, whispers begun to creep beneath the shadows, circling from kin to courtesan and back again.
Lyris’ silence was broken – she was a strong backer of many of the unsavoury rumours concerning Ophelia, and was possibly even the source of several of them. Although Ophelia’s affection towards Adras was purely platonic, the true nature of their relationship had often been called into question throughout their lives - not everyone approved of Ophelia’s continued presence after she rejected his proposal, especially after Adras married and started a family of his own. She was seen as Adras’ 'pet project' or side piece by many court members, a distraction from his duty and his family.
With Adras departed, however, these rumours pick up pace. Ophelia could feel her welcome waning as subtle jibes became outright name-calling, reserved distaste making way for outright disgust.

Perhaps the largest rift came with the revelation of Adras’ will, however, as the Ephesus Theatre was left in the hands of Lyris alone. This fact drew Ophelia wild with jealousy, and was only further exacerbated by her lack of direct kinship to the Euphemia family preventing her from viewing the will in person, instead having to rely on word of mouth.

The Moral of the Story

Ophelia is the curiosity of the stars made manifest. She wants to know the world of mortals, to learn the rituals and rhythms of mankind. She wants to understand what emotions are, and how they are – or aren’t – separate from personhood. She wants the ability to feel the emotions she acts out as deeply as those around her feel them, and she wants to learn to harness this power in her words, in her performances.

Ophelia writes poetry in order to make sense of the emotions she sees in both herself and others – she is a structure of both blood and starlight, fashioned in the eons of nature, and this is all new to her still, really. She struggles with the concept of her own personhood, and how that intersects with those around her. She doesn’t consider herself a “real” person, or her feelings as being as “true” as the mortals that surround her. She sees her life as a play, always putting on a persona and playing a part, but she’s on the cusp of realisation that to other people it is real, and it does matter.

Despite her years, Ophelia has had very few close relationships, and would generally consider herself an outlier or exception among the people that surround her - there to play her part and spin a beautiful story from the whole thing. Even as she learns to respect and understand the emotions of others, she still has to learn that her own feelings are also worthy of acknowledgement, even when they cannot be fathomed away into neat and poetical displays. Not everything is made to be beautiful, and not everything must be palatable for an audience. It is okay to feel things, even when it is messy, even when it is hard.