cressida rosso

About

cressida is born to a fairly powerful family : her father is a governor, her mother works closely with the government, and she is an only child. her childhood, by all rights, should have been happy.

instead, she’s constantly ignored by both parents. she tries with all her might at every subject put in front of her : she practices piano and violin non-stop, she follows all of her tutors’ instructions to the letter, she sings and learns ballroom dancing and embroidery. everything a dutiful daughter should. it isn’t enough; she is never able to gain her parents’ attention, or their affection.

by the time she is sixteen, her parents have divorced (her mother moves out, leaving cressida with her father) and cressida has grown bitter at her father’s lack of care, and is walking the rocky coasts of her seaside town when she spots, on the horizon, a ship. she ignores it, keeps walking up and down the shore. the next day, she returns, does not see the ship. unbeknownst to her, it is docked a few miles away — and she’ll learn this soon enough, when she awakes on the ship, unable to remember how she was brought there. her arms and legs are tied tightly with rope, which is more than enough to guess that it was under less than ideal circumstances.

the pirates know that her family is powerful, and they intend to collect a ransom. they send the letter, already out to sea again, and wait, and wait, and wait — and the longer they wait, the more cressida loses hope that her father will pay for her return. two months later, she has tentatively befriended a few of the lower-rank pirates — the younger ones, her age, and more sympathetic to the plight of the poor little rich girl locked in their brig.

a month later, she is walked up to the deck, warned by a slightly friendly lad that she’s going to walk the plank. before this can happen, she sings a little tune under her breath ( one she remembers her mother singing to her as a small child, one of the few kindnesses her parents had provided ) — magically loosens the ropes binding her arms. it’s adrenaline, it’s fear, that gives her the dexterity to steal a blade from the belt of the man walking next to her. it’s courage that allows her to run at the captain, tackle him to the ground, and slit his throat before anyone can react.

she stands, blood splattered across her face, and asks if anyone present will deny her a place in their crew. it would be easy for them to kill her, now that the adrenaline has worn off, but they don’t. the captain had been corrupt anyways, none of them had truly liked the man, and she has more than shown her strength in battle. so she stays! she works her way up in the crew, no longer a mere child trapped with them, but a member of their team.

by the time cressida is twenty, she has worked her way up, and has become the captain of her own ship, the scarlet canary. she loves her crew — some of whom are the same pirates who had been on that first ship, some new additions to the ranks — and she loves being a pirate. the thrill of the fight, the power of captaincy. she has a mermaid girlfriend, loire, and then a mermaid ex-girlfriend, because she’s scared of commitment.

but she’s consumed with thoughts of revenge — thoughts of killing the father who had abandoned her, and all who would stand with him and support his actions. so she guides her crew to join her in this mission, lies to them about their targets, trying desperately to attack ships he or his pals may be on. it’s foolish, really.

of course, it’s only a matter of time before her crew gets tired of this. they go along with her for nearly four years, until her obsession grows too much to bear. and then they mutiny. kindly, all things considered : she’s alive, she’s dropped off on the island that has become the pirates’ home base, but it feels like they may as well have taken a knife to her gut. she’s lost, once again — without a ship or a crew, left more alone than she’s been since she was sixteen, and still set on revenge.