18: Glass
It is critical to note that Primrose (most commonly called Prim) had nothing against her parents for naming her something as stupid as Primrose. This is backed up by the fact that she continued to use the name instead of taking the opportunity to forge a completely new identity upon her arrival on the shores of the kingdom with no papers to speak of. She made the conscious decision to keep the name, you see, even as she pointed out that naming one’s child Primrose was a sign of bad decision making.
Prim’s rise in the criminal underworld began with striding into one of the city’s most well-known gambling dens and, in spite of having no money, managed to talk her way into getting a few chips on credit. She then began to clean the place out with a singlemindedness that quickly earned her the attention (and ire) of the owner of said den. It was determined that she must have been cheating, and so Prim found herself escorted by several muscle-bound men in suits to a backroom that consisted of a concrete floor with a drain in the center and a folding metal chair.
She exited the room alone, covered in blood that wasn’t hers, and clutching the thing for which she became known: a makeshift dagger which was really just a shard of glass with cloth wrapped around one end to allow her to clutch it. In spite of her ghastly appearance, Prim politely exchanged her chips for her winnings and left the building unopposed. Nobody seemed inclined to stop her, because it was quite clear the few who had tried to stop her were no longer among the living (or at the very least, among the conscious).
Within a month, Prim had surrounded herself with like-minded individuals, all of whom seemed to be under the impression that the current structure underpinning the underworld was in dire need of an overhaul. Within three months her war was well underway, and the city police more or less threw up their hands and stopped investigating cases involving well-known criminal organizers being found with slashed throats – it was both extremely obvious who was responsible, and by that point Prim’s funds were more than enough to just pay them to look the other way. A year after her arrival, Prim was comfortably in control of the city underworld, and officers of her organization were instantly recognizable by the glass blades they carried.
The speed of her rise to power was matched only by the swiftness of her downfall a year later.