Chapter Text
Beauregard Lionett was an accident baby. Not like that, not like Clara and Thoreau Lionett didn’t mean to have a child, but like they didn’t mean to have her, specifically. They meant to have a smart, calculating, business-savvy, heir-to-the-Lionett-wine-throne little boy, and instead they got a smart, savvy little girl. Later, later she would become stubborn, and strong-willed, and calculating, and guarded, but for now, she’s just… a little girl. She likes the teddy bear some random business partner of her father’s got for her, likes pulling at the elaborate, sewned-on pirate’s hat and eyepatch. She likes mashed peas, likes squash, can’t stand grapes. That one’s a bit unfortunate, given the whole “heir-to-the-Lionett-wine-throne” situation, but no more so than everything else about this little girl.
If the Lionetts cannot have the perfect business owner son by blood, then, Thoreau postulates, they should be able to find one by marriage. And so tiny child Beauregard should have the very best instructions and lessons on how to be the very best wife for the very best business-owner son, sorry, son-in-law, they’ll someday have. Even if she is not what they meant to have, not that we’re unhappy to have her! (said with a wide, and widely forced smile, every time), she should still receive the best of what her family’s substantial wealth can offer. She is, after all, a Lionett.
She is, after all, a little girl.
And so Beauregard learns her numbers, and her letters, and which fork to use when. She develops a knack for history, a skill for language, and the ability to climb a tree in kitten heels, appropriate- her mother informs her- for a young woman of her age and status (the heels, not the trees). Her tutors spend the first ten or so years of her life teaching her to speak and think and write eloquently, to be persuasive, to understand rhetoric. These are, after all, important skills for the wife of a successful business owner. She must be able to sound like she understands what she says when she talks on the profits of the company to her husband’s friends. It’ll be impressive, they tell her, that she can hold her own in a conversation. Her eloquence will reflect kindly on her husband’s intelligence, see how well he teaches his wife! He must really know his business!
Her tutors, and her parents, spend the next eight years until college regretting every rhetoric lesson Beauregard ever had. She argues, everything, all the time. By the time she is 11, she can tell her father to go fuck himself so eloquently he doesn’t realize she’s insulted him until several hours later. At age 13, she goes through a phase where she refuses to speak Common for nearly 3 months, until her father, out of other disciplinary actions, hires an enchanter to put Comprehend Languages on the heavy signet ring he wears on his pinky finger, bearing, of course, the Lionett crest. That takes the fun out of the game for Beauregard, so she resorts to not speaking at all. She writes exactingly formal treatises on how stupid she thinks owning a vineyard is, formulaically perfect poetry on how dusty and arid and disgusting she finds Kamorda, and letters upon letters upon letters begging someone, anyone, to take her away from this place. None of them are addressed. She has no one to send them to, but she writes them all the same.
There is very little to do for a young girl in Kamorda. There is little to no cell service this far out in the country. Her father had a landline put in their house and he carries the newest smartphone for work trips, but she is not allowed to use either. She has no one to talk to, anyway. There are her lessons, there is the big house where her mother does whatever mothers do all day, and there are the never ending, terrible fields of grapes. The one thing they have to offer her is an escape. She can run through the neat rows and pretend she is anywhere other than where she is. And they have built in snacks; Beauregard, aged 13, still does not like grapes. And she does not like the dust of the land, does not like the way her mother scolds her quietly, meekly for scuffing up her shoes, does not like the way her father glares at both her and her mother like they are disappointments when she shows up to dinner with smudges of dirt on her face. She doesn’t go in the fields much, any more. Their bastardization of freedom is not worth it.
And so Beauregard Lionett pours herself further into her lessons. She learns the history of Kamordah, of the Empire, of Wildemount, of Exandria. She learns of powerful rulers and rotten ones, many of those the same. She learns about war and politics and social conflict. She learns her current events, studies the war with the Kryn Dynasty and what little her tutors can tell her about their people and politics. Her Google results for the Dynasty bring up even less, and the next time she goes to use the computer she finds her father has blacklisted any site mentioning the word Kryn. He tells her he doesn’t want to end up on a list somewhere. She believes him. Her tutors bring her more history of the Empire. She writes dossiers about the members of the Cerberus Assembly, essays about King Dwendal and his lineage. She knows the laws of her country better than probably any other citizen she knows, much less one her age. Not that she really knows anyone her age.
When she is just barely 14, her father has her wrangled into a deep purple dress, not flattering, but the color of wine. Her long hair is artfully arranged around her shoulders and her makeup painstakingly applied by her mother. Clara gives her no information about why she’s getting so done up today, she simply lines her eyes and smudges a waxy, sticky lipstick on her daughter’s scowl. When she’s finished, Thoreau whisks her away into his office, where a strange human man in his late 40s is finishing setting up white cloths centered around the bay window that looks out over the fields. Beauregard is a smart young girl. She has barely seen the cameras and lighting before she turns and bolts for the door, which her father has just finished locking. Several hours and much cursing later, a large portrait of her hangs on the wall along the stairs, next to the ones of her mother and father on their wedding day and several smaller ones of her at younger ages. Even worse, she knows a selection of images from this shoot have gone onto her father’s work Facebook, the one he uses with clients. She’s already seen some of the comments. They’re a healthy mix of disgusting toward her and disgustingly congratulatory toward her father. She knows her father has already heard from multiple business associates about their sons that are around her age, ranging anywhere from 9 to 22. Her father laughs at that, tells her she always was mature for her age.
She is just a little girl.