Destitute Daughter of a Doomed and Dwindled Dynasty: Katarosi of Antaram
My birthday is the last day of March and to honor myself I am posting one of my own favorite OCs every day of March: The OC Jubilee.
“You have a lot to say for someone dangling from a rope,” Katarosi reminded him. She hoped he understood that she had an axe and he did not.
“Two ropes, actually.” He smiled as though this were clever.
THWACK. The little boat swung wildly, scraping against the hull. “You seem to be mistaken, Master Sancto,” she informed him. “But please, do continue.”
Katarosi feels strongly that she was born the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with nothing for an inheritance but problems she cannot solve and hopes she cannot fulfill. Antaram has always been a small country, but once, it was strong, proud and flourishing, and its god-queens were revered and renowned. Katarosi is not a goddess. She will never be a goddess. Antaram is poor, and weak, and bereft of divinity, and definitely about to be conquered any minute now and its cultural identity erased. Princess Katarosi is bookish and heavyset and bespectacled, nothing like the saintly icons of the warrior queen Sparkasuki or the priestess queen Anahit. Just about the only thing she does have going for her is that she is, at least, unlike her father, a girl. A girl who is deeply and profoundly dreading the idea of having to figure out how on earth she's supposed to subject herself to bearing some random man's children for the gods damn dynasty.
The crown princess of Antaram does have a little sister, but Katarosi's mother Deloram has insisted that Houri is going to join the Flametenders and take a purity oath, which does rather decisively rule out Katarosi punting on that particular responsibility. At age 16, Katarosi finds herself being pressured by her father into marrying some twink of a boy from the most notoriously untrustworthy divine bloodline of Chald, to bring in his money and his guns and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Katarosi could have a child special enough to bring back Antaram's long-lost divine star.
All she wants to do is run a damn greenhouse.
Katarosi did not fully realize that this dread about marriage was mostly because she's gay until Lord God Vahagn threw it in her face just because he could. In classic lesbian fashion, even after dating Ismyrn Galatti for three years she's not entirely clear on the fact that they are in a romantic relationship:
She was with two fellow students and her – best friend? Her knight? Her dance partner who happened to also be a young woman? Her something.
Katarosi has never developed passionate feelings for a man, but she does easily form bonds of friendship and loyalty with men, and she very much knows how to put on the Angry Wife Voice to get them to shape up. After various tribulations, her collection of good, reliable men includes Rodomond Veraldo, his son Luzcrezo, Hayr of Tokhar, Orland Perentorio and yes, even Barsamin, eventually.
Her native Antaram lies just on the eastern side of what is considered to be the boundary between "the east" and "the west," and Katarosi is keenly aware of how Occidental culture is eroding Antaram's identity as she attends university in the Republic, accepts a Republican girl as her true love, and feels that she's been spending more time speaking Occidental than Tarimin. The crushing inevitability of her entire country becoming just another province of a western nation hangs heavy over her and the rope is fraying before her very eyes. When she does become a mother, she is painfully aware that one of her two children, her daughter, will inevitably see herself as western, and gives her an Occidental name: Ravelin Galatti. But her son, she is resolved, will be vehemently Tarimin. Katarosi is the one who keeps insisting that Prince Emerlian is exactly who and what he should be, but... you know, he didn't ask to have the hopes of a dying culture pinned on him any more than Katarosi did.
Katarosi feels constantly buffeted on all sides by betrayal, backstabbing politics, and the suffocating realization that she Is Not Good Enough. At her worst, she is depressed, pessimistic and openly bitter towards everyone around her. At her best, she is focused, commanding, level-headed in the face of urgent peril, and very skilled at balancing polite words with just enough menace to terrify people into appeasing her. She has taken the words of one of her ancestresses deeply to heart: "We will endure."
“... How are we still alive?” asked Hayr, hoping he did not sound ungrateful to the Will of the World.
Katarosi folded her hands. “We are Antaram and we will endure,” she said with her eyes on the towering doors. “It’s what we do best.”
Vibe music:
Heartache (Toriel's battle theme)
Tararajčica
Toriel Undertale is quite similar to Katarosi, all things considered, including the Incredibly Super Extra Divorced Mother energy. Tararajčica is a Croatian folk song about a girl being persuaded to give up her ways and settle down in marriage. The song that Ismyrn sings for her as they dance ("Beauty! Don't you think that maybe...") is my own lyrics based on this song.