Orsino
Character Details
Raphael Personnaz
Raphael Personnaz as Orsino Flowers
Name: Orsino Flowers
Aliases: {$nicknames}
Faction: The Reach
Organization: Florent
Occupation: Tailor
Rank: Bastard
Age: Sep 17 88 (35)

Description

It's the clothing. Of course, some people take note that this man is somewhere around average height, perhaps an inch or two taller, that his eyes are gray-blue, that his hair is thick and brown, cut relatively short. Some notice his neatly-trimmed mustache and accompanying patch of beard under his lower lip. His jaw that narrows to a pointed chin. Mild lines across his forehead and near his eyes that mark him well into his thirties. But for most, it is the clothes.

The man keeps multiple ensembles in rotation, but the unifying factor is always the finest quality. Indeed, his clothes are of such fine craftsmanship that one might at first mistake him for noble, but he wears no heraldry, no sign of association with any noble house. The design, too, makes some concession to practicality: his clothes can be worked in, provided the work is not excessively physical. His shirt, cream linen with a supple hand, is covered over by a doublet worked in chocolate brown brocade and cream, and accented with fine gold embroidery, laced up the front, the gold-accented seams fitted with great care to the lean shape of his body. The belt he wears at his middle is perhaps the most understated part of his ensemble: where a nobleman might wear a jeweled buckle, his is only iron. The trunkhose he wears are brown velvet slashed to reveal cream panels underneath, the colors very closely matched to his doublet though the fabrics are different. The pants gather below the knee over cream hose. His shoes, like his belt, are simple in contrast to the rest.

Background

Orsino Flowers, a man of thirty-five with an improbable name and a prosperous shop, is known to both his neighbors and his clients as a man of humor and creativity (even if at times he appears a bit high-strung) always ready with a sympathetic ear and a glass of wine or a cup of tea. His outer trappings, from the fancy clothes to the pet salamander, are perhaps an expression of a vivacious personality, but on the other hand, they may be intended as a distraction from the dramatics of his past, which would otherwise be in danger of defining him entirely.

Orsino's mother, Delena Florent, was known as one of the loveliest flowers on the branch. There are those who said she was plucked before her time, and those who said that rotten fruit falls earliest. The facts, as far as they are understood, are that Delena dallied with a man at a masque dance given in honor of the Dolphin Festival. The identity of the man has never been known for certain. There were any number of local noblemen at the event, as well as dashing strangers visiting from other lands. Some presume that, given Orsino's outlandish name, the father could perhaps have been a Braavosi banker, but Delena always adamantly refused to speak a name, even when threatened by her father with expulsion from the house when her belly began to show. And so it transpired that she was turned out, to seek her fortune alone as a disgrace.

Delena was always known for her fine hand with a needle. It is unknown whether her shop was financed by money from a secretly worried father, or from a concealed lover, but she came into enough money to open a small shop. At first she sewed only embellishments and embroidery, but over time she began to make gowns, and her former friends gave her custom from a mixture of sympathy and condescension, trading knowing glances when the squalling of a baby sounded from behind a curtain. Orsino thus grew up fatherless, passed from lap to lap among seamstresses, surrounded by the gossip that flowed as fluidly as stitching fingers. As he was his mother's only resource besides a growing shop, needle was put in his hand, too, from the time when he could hold it. From doing temporary basting and cutting patterns to final construction and finishing stitches, he became increasingly helpful to his mother in the trade. She did her best to train him, as she had no other legacy to leave him than a repertoire of stitches and silhouettes. Although her shop had always been devoted to ladies' dresses, he learned to make his own clothes, and began taking in lords' clothes for repair in order to study their construction.

His mother taught him music, as well, to help to brighten evenings spent sewing by candlelight, and imparted as much of etiquette, dance, and noble manners as she could bear to think on, knowing that one day, Orsino's polish could make or break his livelihood. Mother and son had a stronger bond than most, relying on one another as support in the scandal of Orsino's mere existence. When he became a man, his skills were such that he could serve as a near-partner in his mother's business. With two skilled craftspeople overseeing the shop, it was able to expand. They moved to Kettlebelly Lane and began offering clothing for men as well as for women.

It was soon after their move that he met the daughter of a merchant with a jewelry shop nearby. Although the girl was prone to sickness, Orsino was soon set on wooing and marrying the jeweler's daughter. The merchant worried about the association with scandal, with pregnancy before its time, but on the other hand considered the attraction of noble blood (though the boy could reliably claim only half), and the trade possibilities for a strong alliance between jeweler and dressmaker. However, the jeweler hesitated somewhat at Orsino's youth and the shop's status. Though they made fine clothes, noble fashions changed so rapidly that it seemed any shop could fail or flourish at any momen.

Orsino's mother advised patience, and that he should look for the opportunity to make a true work of art in order to prove himself worthy of the girl he would court. It was at that point that a strange opportunity came to them, the chance to design a dress for the queen herself. Of course Orsino could not, as a man, be present at the fittings on the queen's person, but his ambitious ideas fueled the design he crafted together with his mother. The two worked tirelessly on the garment together, and at last when Queen Alicent wore it to the tournament at King's Landing, the gown became the stuff of legend, to symbolize an entire political faction.

Association with the famous dress propelled the shop from precarity to prosperity as orders from other ambitious nobles whose egos burned for clothes so fine they could inspire loyalties poured in. At last Orsino was given permission to wed Celestine, the jeweler's daughter. But the girl's health was already declining. Some friends suggested that perhaps Orsino should look elsewhere for a wife, or wait until her health should be restored, but he remained firm in his commitment to marry Celestine. They were wed, but no miraculous recovery was to come. She would bear him no children, and die just a few years later, when Orsino was twenty-eight and she was twenty-two.

Having had few boyhood friends due to his illegitimate birth and uncertain social status amongst other merchants, it was to his mother that Orsino turned for comfort. She counseled him to find solace in work, to distract himself from pain with striving, to seek to learn to make something that could capture the beauty of his wife's spirit in the medium he could control better than any other. So the two continued to toil with fresh vigor in the now-prosperous shop. But Delena, too, met her end a few years later. The illness that took her was much swifter than the sickness that had followed Celestine from childhood. Orsino was thirty-two.

The shop passed to him, and he went on as both dressmaker and tailor, his staff mostly female in order to preserve the modesty of shy female clients who would not dream of being measured by a man. He has (at least publicly) taken no other lover after his dear Celestine, of whom he still speaks as of a saint. He carefully cultivates an image of someone who is /near/ to the status of noble without taking too many liberties, who is a safe confidant for nobleman and noblewoman alike, who is no threat of causing romantic impropriety, and who, above all, focuses himself heart and soul upon creating the finest garments ever to touch skin.

RP Hooks

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Quirks

IC Events

Orsino Logs

Related Logs

Logs featuring Orsino.

Logs that refer to Orsino.

Relationships

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Gallery

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