Characters
Céline Aldric (Book 2)
From What the Crown Costs
The youngest Aldric, and the one who kept the warmth her two oldest brothers mostly misplaced. Expressive, quick, funnier out loud than anyone braces for, with a sharpness underneath she can turn devastating when she chooses. She calls Julian Jules, and no one else is allowed to. She tells Lucien she loves him and never waits for him to say it back. And this year she names Felix's pattern out loud — the oldest argument between the two youngest Aldrics cutting, once again, both ways.
Full Name: Céline Élise Yvonne Aldric
Date of Birth: 3 February 2012
Age at Book 2 open: 14 (turns 15 during the novel)
Title: Her Highness Princess Céline.
Voice: Expressive and quick, with a warmth she gives freely to the people she loves. She says what she feels and means it, and she is funnier out loud than anyone braces for. The sharpness is real, and it can turn devastating when she wants it to, but it runs underneath an openness her brothers mostly lost somewhere along the way: where Julian files his wit down to a point, Céline just lights up and tells you. In a room where something worth hearing might happen, she opens a book and reads with such apparent absorption that the adults forget to stop talking.
Appearance: Unmistakably an Aldric, in the youngest-child way — the family coloring, the dark hair, features still settling somewhere between child and the adult she's becoming. She carries herself with the unbothered ease of someone who has never had to pretend and does not intend to start. Neat, composed, watchful.
Personality: Sharp and privately very funny, old enough now to understand her family's dynamics and young enough to still be forming her own place inside them. Her bond with Julian is the most important thing in her life so far and the one relationship where his control simply drops — she calls him Jules, and no one else alive is allowed to. With Lucien it's gentler and uncomplicated: he brings her books, she reads them, and she tells him she loves him without ever once waiting for him to say it back, because she has never needed him to. Nicolas she adores and misses more than she lets on. Felix is the complicated one — the brother closest to her in age and the one who can wound her without trying. This year the wounding runs both ways: she finally names his pattern out loud, which cuts him, and he cuts her back, the oldest argument between the two youngest Aldrics showing no sign of ending.
Background: In her third year at the Collège Sainte-Marthe and home for Christmas, Easter, and the wedding and coronation that will reorganize the family around her. Academically strong, strongest in history and literature, and serious about the cello in a way she keeps deliberately quiet: second chair in the school orchestra, a ranking she accepted with a flat neutrality that fools no one who knows her, and fully intends to turn into first by sixteen.