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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 behest 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 and 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 loose consciousness. She experienced the memory of her birth, from Linn's prespective, 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 until Prince Rufus was found decapitated on a hunt two week before the celebration.
Seraphina
Due to Viridius's painful gout, Seraphina is in charge of the music for Prince Rufus's funeral. Unfortunately, the player of the Invocation broke his flute, and the backup player was too drunk. Seraphina plays the Invocation in their stead, though she hesitated because she saw her father in the crowd and knew that he must be furious at her for drawing attention to herself in public—thus increasing the possibility of someone discovering of her secret but being in charge of the program and seeing the grief of the royal family she decided to play. Although she never played the Invocation before and only having heard it once or twice, played the Invocation beautifully, bringing everyone except the saarantrai to tears. While playing, she unconscious hummed fourths and fifths, and the occasional dissonant seventh, something pointed out to her by her dragon mentor, Orma, after her performance. As they were speaking, a beggar girl approached Orma and handed him a piece of gold coin, baffling Seraphina, but Orma refused to tell her about it.
A brewing riot interrupted their conversation; though Seraphina tried to draw Orma attention away from it, Orma insisted aiding of the newskin the crowd—Sons of St. Ogdo among them—is harassing. The Guard comes down on the riot and people flee. Seraphina tried to convince Orma to leave, but he insists on staying with the newskin so that the embassy can lock in on the signal coming from Orma's earring.
The Captain of Guard, Prince Lucian Kiggs, approached them to question the newskin. Seraphina decided to help out when she realized Prince Lucian has little experience with dragons. She was shocked when the prince referred to her by name, and he explains that Princess Glisselda had been talking about her new music teacher excessively. Prince Lucian shrewdly guesses that Orma is a dragon, disturbing Seraphina—for someone with a secret like hers, he was a dangerous person to be around with.
After Undersecretary Eskar argued with Prince Lucian. He asked Seraphina about Orma, but she politely dodges his questions, and not-so-politely turned 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 refused and guided him back to his area.
The next morning, Seraphina oversleps 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 agreed 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 ws 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.
Relationships
Lucian Kiggs: "What is it like to be so talented?"
Seraphina Dombegh: "What is it like to be a bastard?"
—Seraphina Chapter 11
Lucian Kiggs
Initially in Seraphina (book), she got annoyed with Kiggs and calling him a bastard once, however at the end of the book 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 betrothed, 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.
References
-none written yet-