Grazia Rubino-Zaffria
Description
Her eyes are striking in clarity and hue, framed by a sooty thickness of eyelashes and artfully enhanced by a subtle hand at eye makeup. Their color is the deep gold of an amber whiskey by firelight, and they gleam with an inner flame of intensity that makes Grazia unlikely to lose staring contests with most. Her hair is a dark, glossy mahogany, falling in a cascade of fine silk to her shoulders; it is a dark relief to the warm gold of her olive skin and the deep gold of her eyes. Tall and elegant, even-featured with high, strong bone structure, there is a fineness to her features, to the hawkish line of her nose, and a softness to the fullness of her mouth, that could suggest gentleness or delicacy. Yet there is something about her carriage that suggests, instead, a battering ram.
Personality
Grazia is dry and sharp as a merlot, and could be compared to such a wine in other ways: she is elegant, powerful, and stands up to anyone. She also has expensive taste, with a deep enjoyment of luxury for its own sake as well as representative of status. Quick and powerfully intelligent, she has a sharply honed sense of justice that she is capable of tempering with a fierce pragmatism. Though she is not without warmth or affection, she tends to shield these qualities beneath a fortified reserve of strength.
Background
The younger daughter of a lesser line of Duke Rubino of Gemecitta, Grazia could never amount to anything resting on the laurels of her blood, and chose a path of ambition that relied on her intelligence and scholarship instead. While her older brother Lysander fooled around a lot and threw himself into artwork and, as far as Grazia could tell, nonsense, she pursued study and statecraft with a will. She had few -- but very close -- friends growing up, mostly among her mother's household, and her strongest relationship was with the Seraph of Gemecitta, who provided her, as she grew older, with a great deal of personal tutoring with a focus on the teachings of the Sentinel as well as Vellichor. She took on a legal apprenticeship and studied diplomacy and law.
She worked frequently with the Duke as an older teenager and young woman, a relationship that was not warm but was forged steel strong out of respect. She watched as Lord Zaccheri fell madly in love with his tempestuous wife, and watched with a remote judgment and quietly did her work, backing him up in the role of assistant diplomatist and contract maven. When Lord Valkieri succeeded him as heir, Grazia wasted little time in striking up a close association and friendship with his assistant Penelope. It's possible that very few people wept for Duke Giovanni when he died, because he was a hard, hard man; but Grazia did, grieving him as one could only grieve one's particularly ruthless mentor.
