senatore Caecina Tusca

[Echo]

CAECINA TUSCA

18 | 10 april 57CE | Senatore | Lady | Heterosexual | Canon | Bridget Satterlee

 

 

Personality.

Caecina is something of an enigma. Able to change her personality at will to fit certain situations, she can be a social butterfly, a drama queen, a quiet, obedient child, and a polite, proper young lady; it all depends on the context. Generally, she defaults to the proper young lady persona when around her elders but immediately switches back to the social butterfly when among her contemporaries. To her family, though, she is known as something of a handful, especially with her father, which owes to her distant relationship with the man. Since childhood, she has wanted his attention, but it was never given to her; he was always a very busy man with his career, so instead of getting his attention in a more constructive manner, Caecina learned that getting into trouble was the best way for him to pay attention to her. 

However, to other members of her family, Caecina is nicer; for instance, she loves spending time with her step-siblings and her step-mother has become her favorite confidante. Despite her occasionally bratty and immature ways, she still cares deeply for her family and she wants the best for all of them. 

Caecina enjoys many things, including reading, spending time with her friends, riding horses, and playing with her pet cat. She hates feeling dirty and is almost obsessive about smelling nice; her few interactions with peasants have shown her that the lives of peasants include many nasty scents, and she wishes to remain smelling as nice as a bouquet of flowers. 

The young woman fears many things. Her greatest fear is death, and specifically death in childbirth. When she was young, her mother perished while trying to bring her father another child, and since hearing her mother's anguished screams, she fears for the day she is married and is expected to bear her husband children. She also fears becoming an outcast in society in some way; her childish, under-analytical mind has not told her exactly what would make her such a pariah. 

Caecina's dreams are much in line with the dreams of her friends: she wishes to marry a handsome, preferably wealthy man with influence and to increase her family's standing. She hopes that through her good looks and her ability to assess a situation for the correct personality needed, she will be able to catch a husband and honor her family.

 

Appearance

Caecina is an attractive young woman, with long, shiny brown hair. Her deep brown eyes flash intelligently from under dark eyebrows and are fringed by thick eyelashes. Her long, straight nose shadows inviting pink lips and a slightly clefted chin. The young woman's teeth are straight and white, though her smile is often not forthcoming. Her carefully maintained skin shows no blemishes and is creamy and pale, with rosy cheeks. 

Caecina, being part of a wealthy, old family, has always been taught to put her best dress forward, so she is perpetually following trends in clothing, hair, and cosmetics, and generally being fashion-forward. To her, comfort is an added benefit to clothes, but she doesn't actively seek it out; she prefers to be considered fashionable, and if comfort happens to be part of the ensemble, great.

 

Family

Father: Quintus Caecina Tusca

Mother: Furia Camilla

Siblings: Quintus Caecina Tuscus Minor, Caecina Tuscus Minor, Caecina Laelia

Spouse: None 

Children: None

Extended family: Flavia Juliana (Step-mother) 

Other:

 

History

CHILDHOOD [57-68]:
Caceina Tusca was born in the year 57 AD to Quintus Caecina Tuscus and Furia Camilla. Two more different parenting styles have never been used on one child before. Where Tuscus all but ignored his new daughter and rarely spoke about her by name, Camilla was doting, giving the child anything she ever wanted and treating her more like a contemporary than a daughter. Camilla, a great lady herself, attempted to teach Caecina the many things that a Roman woman should know, but the child displayed a strong stubbornness and unwillingness to sit down and be still, preferring to play with the slave children and run amok. Rather than testing herself against the child's willfulness, Camilla relented and let the child do as she pleased. 

The girl barely remembers the civil war now, but vague snapshots of it come to mind from time to time. She was five when it broke out, and she and her mother went with her father East, following Quintus Alexander. For the six months of fighting, Caecina and Camilla stayed in Syria, where it was safer. Eventually, however, they returned to Rome when it became safe once again. 

For the first several years of her life, Caecina didn't realize the absence of a father figure, as she spent the vast majority of her time with her mother, and regarded Tuscus as the looming master of the house that only acknowledged her to dole out punishment when she was naughty. But that all changed when Caecina was seven years old. 

The child had some vague idea that something was different with her mother, but she wasn't sure what it was for some time. Eventually, Camilla explained that she was going to have a baby. In her childish mind, Caecina thought this meant that the new baby was going to be delivered to them, perhaps by the city guards she saw when she went out with Camilla. But it soon became clear that this was not the case. One of her earliest and clearest memories is of that night in 64 AD. Servants running to and fro, panicked, and her mother's anguished screams of pain as though she were being burned alive. 

Camilla died, along with the little boy she had fought so hard to bring forth. For several days, the family's home in Rome lay quiet, stunned at the death of its mistress. A darkness had fallen over the house, felt deeply by everyone there. Caecina was ignored by everyone in the house during that time. She was alone, confused, and sad, wandering aimlessly in the house. Eventually, the girl accidentally tipped over a piece of Greek pottery, shattering it on the floor. This prompted her father to finally pay attention to her- by ordering her to be whipped for her indiscretion. But in Caecina's mind, any kind of attention was better than the silence of the days after Camilla's death. She learned that if she did something to irk her father, she would either be yelled at or whipped, which began the girl's long campaign to get father's attention.

After a year of battling with the child's attempts to get his attention, Tuscus assigns one of his oldest and most trusted slaves, a woman from Greece, to care for the child as well as curb her rebellious ways. At the age of eight, Caecina begins her education in the ways of Roman women, much to her chagrin. The Greek woman had as iron a will as the child did, and so forced her to comply with the new regimen of education. Manipulative as always, though, Caecina heard the lessons and applied them to her life, while maintaining her man-like willfulness and rebelliousness when she was able to escape the inscrutable eye of Astraea.

Tuscus had been surprisingly saddened by the death of his young wife, and it was two years until he remarried, to a woman named Flavia Juliana. Caecina had been reined in for the most part, only acting out when her father was particularly flippant towards her, but the girl wasn't sure of this newcomer into their household. For the first year, Caecina was distant towards Juliana, rarely speaking to her and spending time by herself. Eventually, though, the girl began to see the older woman as something of a mother figure, and began to confide in her and learn from her. She was even inspired to become a great lady like Juliana, at least so that she could get a good marriage. Thus went Caecina's life for several more years.

TEENAGE TO EARLY ADULT [69-73]:
With Caecina's eleventh birthday came her first blood, and she became eligible for marriage. However, as much of a headache she was to her father, Tuscus didn't want to settle for just any marriage partner for his daughter, and so her training to be a matron intensified. Astraea was largely the teacher, but Caecina began to look even more to her step-mother for guidance, and their relationship became something of a mix between a mother and a friend. Caecina is now sixteen years old and anxiously awaiting the day she is married, though she dreads the idea of childbirth. Her thin veneer of respectable behavior masks a sharp wit and an ambition matched by few. Caecina still acts out occasionally to get her father's attention, but she has tried to stop in order to be a better role model for her three younger half-siblings. Instead, she looks to Juliana to be her friend and confidante and keep her from getting into too much trouble.

 

 

ECHO | EST | PM OR DISCORD

Edited April 25, 2020 by Echo

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