Seraphina Dombegh

Were you looking for Seraphina (novel)?

Seraphina Dombegh
Aliases	Phina
Species	Ityasaari
Gender	Female
Status	Alive
Age	16
Living	Lavondaville, Goredd
Skills	Musical prowess, telepathy among ityasaari
Scales	Silver, located on left forearm and in a band on back
Hair	Brown
Eyes	Bovine brown
Height	Very tall
Parents	Claude (father), Linn (mother), Amaline (fake mother), Anne-Marie (stepmother)
Siblings	Tessie (half), Jeanne (half), Paul (half), Ned (half)
Relatives	Orma (uncle), Imlann (grandfather)
Occupation	Music Mistress
Teachers	Orma, Viridius
Students	Glisselda
Love interest	Lucian Kiggs
Friends	Orma, Glisselda, Lucian Kiggs, Lars, Abdo
Enemies	Imlann, Thomas Broadwick
Debut	Seraphina
Appeared in	Seraphina

Seraphina Dombegh is an ityasaari sixteen-year-old girl living in Goredd. She is a talented musician, the assistant to the Goredd court musician, Viridius, and music tutor to Princess Glisselda.

Background

Seraphina is an ityasaari, a hybrid of human and dragon; her mother, Linn, was a dragon who married the human Claude Dombegh without telling him her secret until Linn later died in childbirth, managing to leave Seraphina maternal memories (mind-pearl) before passing on. Surprisingly, Seraphina can recall her time spent in her mother's womb, as well as her birth. Claude initially kept Seraphina's origins a complete secret from her, instead he forged documents naming the fictitious Amaline Ducanahan as his wife and Seraphina's mother. They moved to Lavondaville, Goredd and Seraphina's father picked up his law practice where he had dropped it, and later became the Crown's expert on Comonot's treaty. 

At the ritual blessing of every infant, Seraphina's patron saint was revealed to be the heretic saint, St. Yirtrudis, but the priest decided to assign her to St. Capiti instead which became her substitite Saint.

In spite of Claude's objections, when Seraphina was eight, her father's aquaiantance Orma hired Zeyd, a dragon, to be Seraphina's tutor. Zeyd was Seraphina's favorite tutor, but at the behest of the Censors, holds Seraphina over the edge of St. Gobnait's bell tower, allegedly in a physics lesson in gravity.

In actuality, Zeyd was endangering Seraphina's life at the order of the Censors to test Orma's emotional stability: Orma himself was a dragon and Seraphina's uncle, though Seraphina was unaware of it at the time. Orma casually convinced Zeyd to spare Seraphina departed with Zeyd, leaving Seraphina sobbing at the summit of the cathedral. When Seraphina crawled down the stairs and went home, she found Orma waiting for her, ready to scold her for trusting a dragon.

At age eleven, Seraphina discovered the true nature of her origins. She found her mother's old flute and began to teach herself, but her father, who had forbidden her to learn music, caught her on Treaty Eve and broke the flute.

The next morning, feeling reckless, Seraphina snuck out of her room. She joined a crowd, standing beside an old knight and his squire. To celebrate the treaty, there was a procession of dragons in their natural forms; however, one of the dragons spooked and moved out of line, sparking panic and a riot.

Seraphina got caught underfoot, trampled, but a dragon moved to protect her, scaring off the humans with his presence. Seraphina thanked the dragon and realized that she instinctively understood Mootya. When the dragon spoke her name, Seraphina looked into his eyes and suddenly recognized him to be Orma; seeing Orma in his true form unlocked the maternal memories Linn left her, and causing Seraphina to lose consciousness. She experienced the memory of her birth, from Linn's perspective, revealing Seraphina's true identity and her relationship to Orma.

When Seraphina woke up, the knight and squire were protecting her from the crowd. They took her home, where she was put to bed. Seraphina had her first manifestation of her latent ityasaari abilities: visions of the grotesques. For the next week she was bombarded with uncontrollable visions and developed a band of silver scales on her waist and forearm.

After she was nearly recovered, Seraphina had a conversation with her father and Orma about what to do with her. Seraphina acknowledged the need for total secrecy and near-isolation—if she were to be found out, she would undoubtedly be killed. According to St. Ogdo's scriptures, "If soe'er the worms defile your women, producing misshapen, miscegenated abominations, suffer not ghastly issue to live. Cleave the infant's skull with a thrice-blessed axe, ere its fontanelles harden like unto steel. Sever its scaly limbs and burn them in separate fires, lest they return in the night, crawling like worms, to kill righteous folk. Tear open the monster child's belly, piss upon its entrails, and set ablaze. Half-breeds are born gravid: if you bury the abdomen intact, twenty more will spring up from the ground– " which Claude later stopped Orma from sharing any more details. Claude agreed to allow Orma to become Seraphina's teacher, in all matters—including music, previously forbidden to her. Seraphina later claimed that Orma saved her life.

Orma taught Seraphina cognitive architecture, believing it could stop visions from knocking her out. By building special spaces for each of her mental avatars where they might want to remain. In this way, they wouldn't seek her attention at inconvenient times. Cognitive architecture, dividing their minds into discrete spaces, were used by dragon to keep their head "in ard" that means in order or correctness when they took on human form. Taking on the human form caused dragons to feel emotions which they found messy, unpredictable and overpowering and to keep their maternal memories in one room. He also taught her everything she required to know about dragons, ranging from their history to philosophy to higher mathematics and physiology.

Seraphina's love for music drove her to audition for the position of primary assistant of the curmudgeon court composer, Viridius. Someone of her talent seemed to shocked everyone as she was Orma's student since he lacked passion as a musician having only achieved technical perfection. She beat the other competitors handily and earned the title "Music Mistress" and also became Princess Glisselda's harpsichord tutor. Seraphina moved out of her father's house and into a suite in the palace.

Seraphina was preparing for the fortieth anniversary of Comonot's Treaty and Ardmagar Comonot's arrival when Prince Rufus was found decapitated on a hunt two weeks before the celebration.

Seraphina

Due to Viridius's painful gout, Seraphina is in charge of the music for Prince Rufus's funeral, so when her flutist and his backup cannot perform, Seraphina must take it upon herself, even though she promised her father she would not draw attention to herself by playing in public.

Moved by the grief of the royal family, Seraphina plays her best, bringing the crowd to tears. Afterwards, she speaks to her mentor Orma about her skills. A beggar girl approaches Orma and hands him a piece of gold coin, baffling Seraphina, but Orma refuses to elaborate.

A brewing riot interrupts their conversation, and despite Seraphina's best efforts, Orma insists on staying to help the newskin whom a crowd is harrassing. The Guard intervenes, led by Prince Lucian Kiggs, who approaches Seraphina, Orma, and the newskin, Basind.

Seraphina, seeing that Kiggs is unused to dealing with dragons, steps in to help question Basind. Kiggs shrewdly guesses that Orma is a dragon, disturbing Seraphina; for someone with a secret like hers, he is a dangerous person to be around. She politely dodges his questions until she can't take more and turns her back on him, intentionally forgoing courtesy to end his curiosity about her.

Feeling a headache threatening impending visions, Seraphina hurries home. She goes into her garden and tends to her grotesques. However, Fruit Bat has wandered from his designated area for the first time ever, and when Seraphina finds him, he offers her his hand as if trying to induce a vision. Seraphina refuses and guides him back to his area.

The next morning, Seraphina oversleeps and arrives late to choir practice, drawing Viridius's ire. He reminds her that he wants her to meet his protégée, Lars, and he orders her to attend Princess Glisselda's soiree at the Blue Salon that evening or risked getting fired. Seraphina agrees and goes to her lesson with Glisselda, where Seraphina overhears Glisselda telling a lady-in-waiting that Seraphina is prickly.

The lesson begins, and when Seraphina's stomach growls, Glisselda makes a dragon joke. Seraphina delicately scolds her, reminding her that with Ardmagar Comonot arriving for the fortieth anniversary of the treaty, it was not politic to make such jokes. Seraphina is then chagrinned, realizing that she is, indeed, prickly. But Glisselda responds ignorantly, believing that the treaty came about as a result of humans dominating them in the dragon war. Seraphina quickly sets her to rights, startling Glisselda and making her think; Seraphina uses a metaphor of the relationship of dragons to humans as humans to supernaturally intellgent cockroaches.

Amused by the metaphor, Glisselda asks Seraphina how she knows so much about dragons; Seraphina tells her that she's studied the treaty a lot, and that her father even would read it to her as a bedtime story. While this is true, correlation does not mean causation.

That evening, Seraphina contacts Orma via the spinet to talk to him about Fruit Bat wandering the garden. Orma asks her to meet him at St. Ida's in an hour. On her way, Seraphina was approached by a quig, who sold her a little figurine; however, she was seen by Silas and Thomas Broadwick, who chase the quig off believing that it was harassing her and soon Seraphina collapsed from a vision.

Her mind's eye hovering near the ceiling, Seraphina sees a Porphyrian woman and Fruit Bat conversing, but Fruit Bat keeps looking up as if trying to spot Seraphina.

Seraphina wakes and is taken home by the Broadwicks. She was taken aside by Thomas Broadwick, who saw the figurine in her purse and tells her that "worm-riding quig lovers" like her get thrown in sacks into the river.

In her rooms, Seraphina enters her garden and confronts Fruit Bat, whose avatar had changed to look more like the boy, Abdo, she saw in her vision. She explains to Fruit Bat that it's dangerous for her to have visions, and he agreed to not induce visions.

Colorful snow begins to fall from the sky of the garden, and upon catching a snowflake on her tongue, Seraphina experiences a memory from her mother. Though Seraphina wasn't sure where the memories are coming from or why they came now, she knew she can't leave them scattered around. She gathered them in a tin box, and they arranged themselves orderly as note cards.

Unable to resist, Seraphina takes out one of the cards and experiences a memory of her mother writing a love song and talking with Claude. Seraphina was disturbed to learn her mother's name, Linn, and to know the passion Linn had felt for Seraphina's father.

Seraphina contacts Orma via the spinet again and tells him about her Fruit Bat's behavior and the vision. Orma is fascinated and sees it as an opportunity to learn about Seraphina's abilities—perhaps Fruit Bat knows something—and Seraphina sarcastically suggests going to Porphyry to find him, but Orma takes her seriously. She goes to bed very late that night musing on meeting Fruit Bat in the real world.

The next evening is when she's promised to go to the Blue Salon. She goes and spots Miss Fusspots, one of her grotesques; Seraphina tries to approach her but is stalled by the arrival of Prince Lucian and Princess Glisselda, and the chaos in the wake of their arrival makes Seraphina lose her.

Seraphina listens to the bragging of one of her musicians, Earl Josef of Apsig, about the hunt that had led to Prince Rufus's death. Josef claimed that a dragon must have done it, but Seraphina offers that the Sons of St. Ogdo may have set it up to look like a dragon's deed it to stir dracophobia before the upcoming anniversary.

Prince Lucian declares his agreement with her, appearing beside them. Seraphina spots Miss Fusspots across the room and Prince Lucian has to physically drag her out of Queen Lavonda's way. Lavonda has brought several saarantrai ambassadors and expects Princess Glisselda and Prince Lucian to make them comfortable and accepted.

When Glisselda glibly says something impolitic, Seraphina saw that no one else is brave enough to point this out to the princess. Thinking of Orma, Seraphina gathers her courage and gently but frankly tells Glisselda that she's being rude and reminds her that it's her duty as princess to set an example for the people, such as by inviting the saarantrai to sit or dance with her. Prince Lucian volunteers to ask one of them to dance first, and Seraphina notices him react when Glisselda obliviously says that he's better at this stuff because he's a bastard and thus understands the common people.

Unable to withstand the pressure of being among so many people, and with dragon jokes rampant, Seraphina gratefully leaves the Blue Salon when Viridius waves a dismissal at her. On her way out, Seraphina bumps into Lady Corongi, Glisselda's governess who gave her such biased ideas about dragons. The two argue briefly about their views on dragons before parting ways.

Once home, Seraphina goes to her space and took Miss Fusspots's hand, inducing a vision. She sees Miss Fusspots undressing and sees that Miss Fusspots has a dragon tail—Miss Fusspots must be a human-dragon hybrid like Seraphina herself, which made her wonder if all of her grotesques were actually half-dragons like her.

Once the vision ends, Miss Fusspots herself arrives at Seraphina's rooms and hit her with a book, enraged at the invasion of her privacy. Seraphina revealed her forearm to the woman. Miss Fusspots told Seraphina her name, Okra Carmine. She was a Ninysh ambassador, grudgingly forgave her and warned her to never again have these visions of her. Dame Carmine leaves.

Seraphina experiences wonder at the thought that she wasn't alone, not the only half-dragon, and that all of her grotesques were like her. She feels the urge to go find them but knows that she can't, as she has responsibilities at the moment.

Character

Personality

Seraphina is very observant and cautious although slightly bad-tempered which Princess Glisselda pointed out to Lady Milliphrene. Glisselda as well called her "prickly" and "does have a dreadful taste in gowns"

Relationships

Lucian Kiggs

Lucian Kiggs: "What is it like to be so talented?"

Seraphina Dombegh: "What is it like to be a bastard?"  

—Seraphina Chapter 11

Initially in Seraphina, she got annoyed with Kiggs and called him a bastard once, however at the end of the story it was clear that there is a romantic attachment between the two of them. Despite of the fact that she loves him, she was friends with his fiancée, Princess Glisselda. Seraphina was brave and smart enough to bluff Imlann once to save Kiggs' life during their investigation on Prince Rufus' death when Imlann threatened to kill him. Kiggs still loves Seraphina even after she revealed to be half-dragon.