history

[noblesunspot]

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Why should I? Books are more interesting than people, after all.

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CW: DOMESTIC ABUSE, MURDER

Aestinia was born into the prestigious Csillata family -- a noble family well known for their immense riches, as well as their love for the stars and astronomy. Aestinia is by far the youngest of her five siblings -- hundreds of years, in fact, thanks to their elven lifespan -- and due to her family's lifestyle of riches, excess, and bureaucracy, she was raised by maids rather than her own parents or siblings.

Growing up, Aestinia spent a great deal of time in the family library, reading everything she could and finding company only in books and the worlds she could get lost in contained within. Knowledge was her only friend, as her siblings treated her coldly due to her lineage from a different mother, and the maids often had more than they could handle on their plates due to the many demands of the family. They could not find a way to get past her walls and forge a friendship, so they left her alone to her books.

By the time Aestinia came of age, she had read more than enough to know that she was unhappy with the way her life had been led thus far. She was tired of being cooped up in a castle, tired of being told what to do constantly, and tired of her siblings neglect and sometimes even abuse. Acting out did her little good, as it only spurred on further physical and verbal abuse from her parents, isolating her further from others and the outside world.

However, she could not fathom truly defying the will of her father, so she remained in the Csillata house. In the interest of generating more revenue and connections for the household, eventually she was (against her will) betrothed to a man she had never met. Naturally, she was against the idea, seeing that she was only being used as a tool for negotiation rather than being allowed to meet someone of her own accord -- but she was forced to comply, leaving the Csillata home (much to her family's relief) to live with her new husband.

Although initially her new husband was kind, hoping to win her favor as he had been interested in her for a long time ... eventually he became more and more cruel and controlling as he found her to be a less than pliant bride. There came a point where he forbade her even from reading as he felt as though he had to compete for attention from her books. He took to physically and verbally abusing her in various ways to compensate for his own insecurities and in order to mold her into the "perfect" wife he had wanted.

Having the only thing that had helped her through the previous years of neglect and abuse taken away from her spurred something new in her, and she took to sneaking out at night in order to read ... only this time, she was not just reading for fun. She began researching a powerful being she had heard brief mention of in some research in her family home, making preparations and efforts in secret over time in an effort to contact the being to propose a deal. That being was known as Celesticus. Celesticus struck a bargain with her: in exchange for information and her researching skills, they would grant her the power to be free from the living hell she found herself in.

As soon as the pact was made, Aestinia gradually began to act out against her husband once more, knowing that she now had the power to fight back. In the midst of a rather horrifying physical altercation, she murdered her husband in self-defense, stole as much as she could from their home to live off of, and ran for it.

Since then, she's been trying to navigate the world outside undetected by the authorities without looking too much like a tourist who's spent her whole life inside an ivory tower.

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