character :: Amelia Partridge
Amelia knew at a young age what kind of expectations her country had put upon her. She is strong-willed and stubborn, and the very idea of becoming engaged to a stranger is perfectly terrifying. But, for all of her unwillingness to bend, Amelia is loyal to the Partridge name. Unhappily, Amelia ships herself away from her family to marry some idiot in the Region of Gold. It’s a far cry from her home in the Bronze, and there’s many structural problems in this society – problems that she’s determined to fix. After the ink had barely dried on her wedding certificate, Amelia sets to work to shake things up in this strange new land. Disaster strikes as a dear friend turns the tables on the small rag-tag team of revolutionaries, and Amelia finds herself pining for the days when her biggest affront were a simple arranged marriage. Now, as the first chapter of her life comes to an end, a new chapter is written – with any luck, her own daughter will make fewer mistakes.
Amelia is the baby, the last-born daughter of the top trading family in the Bronze Region: and all six of her sisters had already gotten married and begun new trading strongholds all over the world by the time she turned 20. She receives the best education, and Amelia finds herself a natural trader. She can strike a deal and find loopholes that infuriate her business partners, but gather respect. The only thing in Amelia’s way is a pesky arranged marriage! It wasn’t fair, and Amelia made sure that the whole world knew it. She was rebellious and difficult to manage: it’s a miracle that she scored the best match possible, the son of the Shaffer family. The only son of the Shaffer family. With Amelia betrothed to this young man, the Partridge family will have successfully placed one daughter on each of the major trading regions, effectively securing the family’s place upon the throne.
the end of the world -
When Amelia begins the summertime visits to the Shaffer family, she’s barely thirteen. Vincent is a brat, full of himself and completely unyielding. The two torture one another for three months a year for seven years, picking on one another and developing a rivalry that threatens to shatter the engagement time and time again. Vincent likes to chase skirts – but Amelia likes to ride off into the countryside for steamfox hunts for days at a time without contact. The two young ones want freedom, but eventually they come to their senses after a major upheaval in the Bronze region: it’s time to get married. For Amelia, it’s akin to a death sentence.
It’s not until she’s married that she truly gets to know her husband. Vincent, as it turns out, was controllable. While he may insist that he called the shots in the home, Amelia knew exactly who wore the pants in the family. All of the smart trading decisions in the Shaffer estate seemed to happen after their wedding: and, in an unrelated note, Vincent seems to have misplaced his wax seal to sign his name on important documents. Amelia slowly comes around, and the two of them truly find love a year or so after their wedding, a day that Amelia remembers clearly.
Vincent had many requirements as his position grew in the Shaffer estate. The family owned the coastal gold mines, and up until Vincent’s wedding, it were his father’s job to oversee the labor and production of the mine. But as Vincent aged up and his father grew sicker, Vincent began descending into the mines to mingle with his loyal workers…dragging Amelia along with him. Amelia watched Vincent attempt to be hard-handed and somewhat cruel, as is required for any person to make money, but he always seemed to default to kindness. In particular, he doted on a young woman with a bad accent named Abigail – it seemed as if she were permanently hard on her luck – and this kindness drew Amelia in.
Vincent’s possessiveness over Amelia also won her over. After all, her parents had been so quick to whisk her out the door in favor of a smart business deal: to see the ever-proper Vincent become rattled by any adversary was a real treat. So, when Amelia met an old friend for tea one afternoon, she knew that Benjamin would be the perfect tool to get Vincent right where she wanted him. It was wrong to use the affections of another man to get the attentions of her husband, but she did it with gusto. Benjamin eventually found himself another little woman (a major step down), and Vincent would never find out that Benjamin’s new girlfriend was a Rust. If he had known early in the battle, maybe that tragedies that would come next could have been avoided.
Instead of elaborate dances and raging parties, Amelia looked forward to quiet nights about once every month or so breaking bread with the peasant family, Abigail and Zachary. Something felt taboo and comfortable about the afternoons spent around the candle flame, watching her husband stumble over himself to find relevant conversation points to the poor. Amelia grew more and more concerned about the lives of the miners now that she took the time to know them: and the nameless, faceless people who slaved away to make the Shaffer family richer suddenly took on a new meaning. They were people with families, little homes with swept earthen floors! It didn’t take much convincing when the first talks of change began to flow in. Vincent was naturally apprehensive: but Amelia, along with the help of Benjamin, Zachary, and Abigail, began to change his mind.
there are worse things.
The Shaffer family was going to fall out of the role of dictatorship and would begin to listen to the demands of the people. A proper democracy. This is the natural order of things, Amelia protested, knowing that her own family were elected leaders. Besides, Vincent wanted a new era for the Shaffer family: a kinder, more understanding time. The two at the top agreed: a silent and peaceful revolution. Vincent would speak for his family, allowing a proper election to be held under his name or his fathers: and with Vincent’s reputation, he’d win for sure. It was a plan! The date was set, and the Shaffer home slept soundly the night before the staged uprising.
Amelia learned that night – plans rarely go accordingly. An explosion shook the beautiful manor late in the night, hours before the early-morning meeting with the peasantfolk. Amelia clutched on to Vincent’s chest in the bed, and one look into each other’s eyes said it all: they’d been fooled. Amelia fumbled through her nightstand to find the gun Benjamin had made for her in secret many months ago while Vincent hastily grabbed his shoes, but the guards were no match for the amount of people that flooded into the Gold Palace. Vincent and Amelia were roughly apprehended before either of them could make a preparation, and down the hall the screams of Vincent’s parents as the four of them were hauled to the dungeon together woke up the entire Region.
Vincent held on to his mother as she sobbed, and the elder Shaffer man glared own his captors through the metal bars of their cell. Amelia shook at the bars, demanding to speak to the person who organized the revolt. To Amelia’s surprise, a woman she’d never met before walked forward: the smirk on her face was all the evidence Amelia needed. What gave Amelia the real shock was the man standing behind the stranger: Benjamin. Her heart sank, for it’d apparently been her best friend that had betrayed them all.
The only two to make it out of that palace alive would be Vincent and Amelia, and only after they watched Vincent’s parents slain. Amelia’s life was on the chopping block next, but an impassionate plea from Benjamin saved her. Instead, the insane woman took great pleasure in ordering that Amelia was thrown from the balcony – after all, if she survived, she deserved to live. The last thing that Amelia remembered was grabbing for the nightstand at anything she could carry before two men hurled her from the window.
Amelia awoke on a clay floor, a candle burning by her pillow. The pain was immediate and unbearable: two broken kneecaps and no access to medical care. Abigail was the first to wake up to Amelia’s stirring, followed by Vincent – as it turned out, only the three of them had made it together. Hatred boiled in Amelia’s stomach, the little bitch who had killed the kind man Zachary, tainted her good friend Benjamin, and killed the only family she had to her name. She had sentenced Vincent to work in the mines he once owned until death, and the entire world was backward.
Over the following months, Amelia and Vincent were gifted a small shack next to Abigail from the peasants who were still loyal to the Shaffer name. All of the grand promises from Elizabeth, Queen of Gold seemed to vanish the moment she took up residence in Amelia and Vincent’s old room – just as before, the toil continued. Time stops for no human quabbles, and the seasons marched on: Abigail gave birth to a sweet child with ruddy skin and long eyelashes and Amelia fell pregnant not long after. Amelia struggled to find work during her pregnancy (given her longtime leg injuries), but finally found herself a little niche as the village seamstress.
The only glimmer of happiness in their bleak lives came in the form of their only child: Emma Shaffer. She had Vincent and Amelia’s embarrassing wild hair, and she became the apple of Vincent’s eye. The only thing Amelia managed to take from her old life was given to Emma on her sixth birthday – a mixed metal butterfly hair comb to hide in the mass of tangles and curls.
Amelia considers herself lucky given all that had happened. Looking at Emma, dying would have been a terrible option if her only good in this world were to give birth to such a wonderful little girl. But there’s always time for danger, Amelia discovers, as she falls into the wretched pattern of poverty: Emma gained one more thing from her parents, and it’s the most dangerous aspect of all.
