Accepted: Mai

About You, the Writer:

Your Nickname: Morgan
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: Most certainly
How did you find us and decide to write with us? I followed the breadcrumbs
If you have written other characters here, list them all: Vienna Pascal, Sebastian Pascal

Full Character Name: Desdemona Vonderheide
Character Birthday & Age: December 2, 1982 / 25
City & Country of Birth: Gloucester, UK
Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn?: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts, Ravenclaw Alumna
Job: Novelist

Wand: Hazel, 10 ¼,  Springy, Unicorn Hair

Physical Description:

Petite with delicate features, Desdemona is the very picture of frailty. She stands at a height of 5’5 but often seems smaller due to her unimpressive and timid body language. From her aristocratic father, she inherited his serious blue eyes, platinum-blonde hair and aquiline nose. From her mother: dimpled cheeks and a sweet and beguiling smile. Her complexion is naturally fair and dotted with freckles, of which she takes great pains to conceal using potions and enchantments.

An expressive creature by birth, she displays her emotions openly for all to see. Whether it is anger or sadness, pleasure or pain, whatever she’s feeling can be easily discerned just by looking at her expression. The more Desdemona tries to hide her feelings, the more obvious they become. Her face is an open book of telltale signs, which renders her incapable of skilful deception.

Desdemona has very simple tastes when it comes to fashion, a fan of loose blouses, plain cardigans and denim jeans. Her outfits are chosen to deflect attention, rather than to attract it. She almost never wears jewellery with the exception of an engraved silver band around her left index finger, an heirloom which had once belonged to her mother, and her mother before that.

Personality Description:

Desdemona is the classic introvert. Quiet and reserved, she likes to be left alone to her own devices. In large crowds, she has a tendency to retreat into the background. Despite her prolific writing career, Desdemona does not deal well with public scrutiny and lacks the social grace to withstand immense attention. She values her privacy and will do anything to protect it. When interacting with people who are not afraid to assert their physical beauty or social prowess, she can become very shy and timid. Although she makes a living off words, Desdemona is not the most eloquent of speakers and often has trouble verbally expressing her thoughts in a manner coherent to others. Her soft and unremarkable voice is a further hindrance in this regard. 

True to the nature of her work, Desdemona has a very fanciful imagination. Reality, facts and figures do not interest her as opposed to swashbuckling rogues and fairytale endings. In every way, she lives in a world of her own making. When she is not writing or dealing with mundane everyday tasks, Desdemona retreats into the comfort of her daydreams. Fantasy provides her with the means of escaping from her problems. In this sense, she can be described as a sufferer of the Ostrich Syndrome, whereby she ducks her head under the sand whenever problems arise under the expectation that they will blow away eventually.

Desdemona is a writer, not a fighter. She fears direct confrontations and will do almost anything to avoid them, even at the expense of compromising her own wants and needs.  That is not to say Desdemona is a doormat, she has a well-defined sense of right and wrong and when her principles and beliefs are challenged, she is capable of putting up a decent fight.
   
A romantic at heart and hopelessly naive, Desdemona dreams of one day being swept of her feet. She is a sucker for poetry, candlelit dinners, and long walks on the beach. Despite her talent for writing romance novels, Desdemona has never known true love or a lasting relationship of any kind, an irony which she hopes her readers will never find out.

History:

Desdemona is the illegitimate lovechild of Charles Vonderheide and Regan Pierce.  Charles, heir to Britain’s branch of the aristocratic Vonderheide bloodline, belonged to a prominent wizarding family that could trace its ancestry back to the 13th Century.  The Vonderheides were staunch purists and funded much of Voldemort’s operations in Britain. After Voldemort’s fall in 1998, the family came under Ministry scrutiny for their wartime activities. Several Vonderheide properties and accounts were seized for investigation by orders from Minister Shacklebolt. Those who did not hide their trails carefully were sent to Azkaban and their estates confiscated by the Ministry. The Vonderheides suffered substantial financial setbacks while the public’s opinions of them plummeted. To better their image, the family established a Restoration Fund for victims of the war soon after their legal troubles blew over. However, despite their charitable actions, the Vonderheides remain committed to the purist cause and eagerly awaits the day when one of their own will arise once more to purge the Wizarding world of its impurities.

The current head of the family is Astrid Vonderheide, Desdemona’s paternal grandmother. One could imagine her disgust when her son became enamoured with a Muggleborn art dealer and begot a daughter with her out of wedlock. The Vonderheide matriarch gave Charles two choices, leave Regan or be disowned.  Fearing retribution from his family and losing the privileged lifestyle he had grown so accustomed to, Charles picked the former. He never spoke to Regan again. Charles died in 1988 when Desdemona was only five. In his will, he left her a generous trust fund of 85,000 Galleons. Naturally, Astrid, as the Executrix of his estate, refused to pay such a bequest. She was adamant that no “filthy Halfblood” should ever lay a hand on Vonderheide money.

After Charles left her, Regan Pierce moved to Gloucester where she gave birth to Desdemona on December 2, 1982. Regan saw to it that Desdemona retained her father’s name as a snub to the Vonderheides. Despite her strong resemblance to Charles, Regan loved her daughter unconditionally. Desdemona grew up in a comfortable middle-class environment and was given an education heavily concentrated in the arts. She learnt to paint from her mother and took ballet lessons every weekend at the Hillcrest Academy of Performing Arts.

Being of a shy and withdrawn disposition, Desdemona did not have many friends growing up. Despite her mother’s best attempts to coax her out of her shell, she never found the courage to join her peers in play. The majority of her childhood was spent reading and drawing indoors. From an early age, Desdemona displayed considerable talent for writing. She won her first writing contest by the age of eight. After that, writing became her first and foremost passion.

In 1993, Desdemona entered her first year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Like her mother before her, she was sorted into Ravenclaw. Although Desdemona was very diligent when it came to homework and assignments, she rarely spoke up in class and did all she could to avoid attention. If not for her platinum blonde hair, she would’ve been missed by her professors and peers altogether.

In her third year, Desdemona caught the notice of her Vonderheide cousin, Emilia, a hardliner Slytherin three years her senior who took great pleasure in bullying the young and the weak. Emilia’s harassment was enough to prove to Desdemona that her mother was fully correct in her belief that all Vonderheides were bad to the bone. If not for the compassion and kind words of Adrian Stratford, a Slytherin and Emilia’s crush at the time, Desdemona would have seriously considered running away from Hogwarts. He took pity on the younger Vonderheide and talked Emilia out of her prey. Adrian had his charm and good looks and Desdemona soon developed a crush on him despite the fact that he was a Slytherin and way out of her league. Adrian graduated from Hogwarts during Desdemona’s fourth year and moved away to Australia a year later. Desdemona never forgot him but never spoke to him again. When she started writing professionally, Adrian became the prototype for all her male leads.

Desdemona graduated in 2000 and briefly worked for Fleur and Bottoms Bookshop as a part-time clerk.  She quit her job in 2001 to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. Desdemona first novel, a sweeping romance titled Amor & Psyche was rejected eleven times before finding an audience with Belvedere Publishing House in 2004. Despite its limited release, Amor & Psyche caused quite the sensation. Witch Weekly gave it five stars out of five and by the end of the year, Amor & Psyche had reached the fourth spot on Daily Prophet’s bestseller list.

Astrid was horrified by Desdemona’s success and soon launched a lawsuit against her and Belvedere Publishing House to have the Vonderheide name removed from the novels. Astrid claimed that Charles was not Desdemona’s true father and thus she had no right to claim the Vonderheide name as her own. The court eventually decided the case in Desdemona’s favour.

Having just completed a sequel to Amor & Psyche, Desdemona is currently working on a third novel titled The Glass Slipper.

What is your occupation? How do you go about it?
How did you get your current occupation?
How does your past and abilities justify your current skills?:

Desdemona is a full-time novelist, poet, and short-story writer. She specializes in the romance genre. Although Desdemona began writing at a very young age, she did not get published until she was in her mid 20s. As of 2008, Desdemona has authored three novels (Amor & Psyche, its sequel, Proserpine’s Kiss, and an unrelated third work, The Glass Slipper) and a number of poems and short stories that she hopes to compile into a themed anthology.

Writing has always been Desdemona’s first and foremost passion. She has a brilliant imagination and is equipped with the remarkable ability to translate her visions into words. Desdemona enjoys writing about the fantastical and the surreal, complete with sweeping landscapes and a love that defies time. Many critics have panned her work as painfully naive and often, clichéd, but despite their unfavourable reviews, Desdemona is unwilling to venture out of her comfort zone. She knows what she enjoys writing, she knows what she is good at, and as of this point in time, she has no intention of experimenting with other genres.

Writing Sample:

On her coffee table sat Monday’s edition of the Daily Prophet and there was something strangely forbidding about its presence. After much hesitation, Desdemona picked it up with shaking fingers and flipped to the Entertainment & Reviews section. Her big blue eyes widened at the sight of “Vonderheide’s Snuff Sequel a Flop” in bold, black print. Biting back an indignant moan, Desdemona pouted and read on. Her novel was no snuff!

The review was written by a woman by the name of Tessa Birmingham and she had absolutely nothing nice to say. Desdemona blanched as she skimmed over the article.

What I wouldn’t give to have never laid eyes on this trash of a novel…Utterly and completely predictable…a naive protagonist that outlived her importance by the first page…Clichéd…Hunky male lead a fop…By no means attractive…Lacks substance of any kind…Just horrid…Insulting to women…men too…Like finding half a worm in the apple you’re eating… Zero stars out of five. That’s right. Zero.

Desdemona curled up and flung the papers away. This was by far the worst thing anyone has ever said to her in this lifetime and possibly the next. Even Emilia’s curses and insults paled in comparison. Somewhere out there, she must be laughing her snooty nose off right now. If her former tormentor was feeling particularly malicious too, she might even send Tessa Birmingham a fruit basket with a neon pink thank-you card inside. The thought made Desdemona cringe and it was made worse by another question, good Merlin, what would Adrian think? Desdemona’s lips quivered and she buried her face into the cushion on her lap. Was a good review really too much to ask?

Sum up your character in one paragraph:

A sweet and innocent young woman who is easily swept off her feet, Desdemona is not unlike the protagonists of her novels.  She is shy, timid, and lacks social grace. As the illegitimate daughter of a pureblood scion and a Muggleborn art dealer, she has been exposed to much prejudice during her lifetime (most of it from the bullying and belittling of her paternal family, the Vonderheides). Desdemona escapes the misfortunes of her circumstances through writing. To this day, she has authored two novels of the romance genre respectively titled Amor & Psyche and Proserpine’s Kiss. In her spare time, she is also an avid painter and reader.