Blancheflor
Name: Blancheflor de Canteleu
Aliases: Blanche Cantlowe; later, Blanche duMont
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: French (Norman)
Age: 12 (after becoming a vampire, she appears as a young woman of 18 or 19)
Occupation: Former noble, former ghoul, vampire
Height: 4'8"; after her Embrace, 5'5".
Build: Like a child's: thin, very little hip and limb definition, with the smallest beginning of a bust. After her Embrace, she is shapely but slim.
Hair: White-blonde, straight. Often worn in plaits, or whatever's most befitting the style of the day.
Eyes: Blue-gray
Skin: Very fair; after her Embrace it's bloodless and pallid.
Tattoos/Piercings: None
Clothing: Blancheflor is most used to rich, fashionable clothing, although she's comfortable in a variety of garb ranging from her own elaborately embroidered and accessorized gowns to the simple, drab clothes favored by nuns. Her own sensibilities tend toward the simple, but as with Rose, Claris delights in dressing her up. This tendency became very pronounced after Claris, Blanche and sister ghoul Saffron departed for decadent, fashionable Paris in the 1550s.
Personality / Backstory: Reserved, quiet, and pious, Blancheflor is the daughter of a widower nobleman from Normandy who insisted she be raised by her nurses rather than himself. She has had little contact with men, and finds them boorish and distressing in manner. She matured physically rather early, and as soon as she "became a woman", a marriage to a much older English lord was arranged for her, and she was terrified of being sent far afield to perform her "wifely duty" when she would much rather retreat to the cloistered life of being a nun.
En route to London, her entourage stopped to rest at the nearby village of Abingdon, the home of the Sisters of the Holy Chalice under Sister Saint Clair- the assumed name of the vampire Claris of Reidona. The abbess's personal handmaid, Rose, made an effort to befriend Blancheflor, and the younger girl confessed her fears about marriage and growing up. Shortly after, Sister Saint Clair presented her with a way out: if she stayed in the abbey and told her father and future husband she was taking vows, she wouldn't have to marry; and if she chose to drink the abbess's blood as she drinks the blood of Christ during communion, she would remain a child as long as she wished, whole in body and pure in soul.
As the abbess's second handmaid, or ghoul, Blancheflor is free to pursue the life she wished for herself before she was promised in marriage. Much of her time is spent in prayer or study. When the Sisters of the Holy Chalice relocated to her home province of Normandy, France, in 1537, Blanche went along with them, and joined Claris and Saffron when Claris chose to leave the abbey behind and live in Paris several years later. Living with Claris and Saffron in Paris, however, Blanche became conflicted; while her life in the abbey was simple and sheltered, Paris is a huge city with unique temptations. As Claris is favored by the vampire Princess of France and has her own nest egg of resources, their lives together were very comfortable, secure, wealthy, and becoming decadent. Blanche, though entranced by living in more luxury and beautiful surroundings than she ever has, feared that Claris may have been losing interest in her, and in her morality.
After Claris embraced Simon duMont, her first childe, and he came to live with the girls, Blanche over the course of several decades grew sullen and displeased with her role as Claris's permanent "daughter doll". While traveling in Hungary, she took one of the group's horses and was captured before she could be fed again. When Claris and Simon found her, she was already dying, and Simon, being at hand, Embraced her to save her from withering away. She didn't take the transition to vampirism well, and blamed Claris for her moral suffering even as she forgave her sire for, in a sense, saving her life. After leaving Claris, Blanche and Simon embark on many journeys together to hunt down rogue evil Cainites, and eventually the two are "married" in the same sense that Claris and Leland are: by blood bond.
Relationships
Sire / Husband: Simon duMont
Claris's first and only vampire childe, Simon lived with Claris and her two ghouls, Saffron and Blanche, after his Embrace in 1572, and initially was wary of Blanche as a most peculiar child, and treated her like a younger sister. Although she's physically very young, Blanche develops an infatuation with the handsome, gentle and nonthreatening vampire, and grows frustrated and angry that her affection toward him will never be truly returned as long as she remains childlike in body. After his eventual vampiric Embrace of her in a desperate life-saving instance, Simon takes responsibility for the new "adult"'s education and upbringing, and finds that the patience and maturity of outlook that come with physical adulthood complement her already-agile mind and become her splendidly. After several centuries as his traveling companion, Simon and Blanche were blood-bound and became, effectively, husband and wife.
Former domitor: Clara de Roydon (alias of Claris of Reidona)
Blanche's relationship with Claris was once very close. Blanche, lacking a true mother figure in her upbringing, eagerly seized onto the mother-daughter relationship offered by the vampire, who never feeds on her. Though Blanche is several centuries old in her true age, she feels her role as Claris's surrogate "daughter" is important enough to retain and not question. At the abbey, she was thought of as a resident orphaned novice by the other Sisters; even though everyone was aware of her position as a handmaid of the abbess, her eternal childlike appearance and mannerisms brought out the maternal instincts of the other women, and Blanche essentially had a flock of caretakers at her disposal, contributing to her holding on to her childishness. After her Embrace, Blanche is disgusted by Claris and resentful of the centuries she spent in her thrall, and refuses to have any contact with her. It takes two centuries for the two to establish friendly contact again.
Former Sister Ghoul: Saffron
Saffron takes care of Blanche in much the same way that all the other Sisters at the abbey would. Saffron, however, is absent any genuine maternal instincts, and cares for Blanche simply because it's asked of her by their mistress. Blanche trusts Saffron because of the nature of their relationship as sister ghouls and because of Saffron's doting care of her, but she is occasionally uneasy around the older girl, who displays a troubling lack of conscience.
Former Sister Ghoul: Rose
Rose was the first true friend Blanche made at the abbey of the Holy Chalice, even before Sister Saint Clair. Rose, at first, adopted her as a little sister, but the younger girl's serious demeanor and closeness to their mistress slowly drove a wedge between Blanche and Rose. Claris's willingness to cater to Blancheflor and Saffron at the expense of her relationship with Rose, her inability to speak or think about their lives before the abbey, and her obvious favoritism of Blanche as a surrogate daughter eventually spurred Rose to abandon life with the Sisters and return to London as the ghoul of Gregory, another vampire. Blancheflor considers Rose an ungrateful "prodigal son".
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