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Brigida has lived through it all. When she was a girl, she was as fine a hunter, dancer, and player of music as any lady of the Lyceum. She was not the most beautiful of her sisters but she was clearly the most accomplished. At sixteen, she was the Golden Rose of Tor, and she had lovers on her string at twenty ranging from all over the Compact. But all idylls end. Brigida joined the Faith relatively late -- at 24 -- in part to avoid a disastrous marriage she did not want that would have sent her to the Laurents. She had no desire to join the workhorse duchy of the Valardins. Instead, she cast aside the silks of her wild life as the Golden Rose of Tor, and threw herself into a new life as a priestess. She had a solid background of Lyceum politics to bring with her to the priesthood along with genuine faith for the gods and a healthy respect for the power structures here that she could potentially grow into. She had already survived at least three poisonings before she donned her first robe. She learned quickly that the machinations of the priests were different in form from those of Lycene politics but not in kind. Ambitious people jockey for position everywhere, and the Faith is no exception. By the time she was 40, she was such a mainstay of the priests of Petrichor that there were few other names that could even be considered for his Archlector. Yet at this pinnacle she chose to stay, leading the godsworn and championing the guardian of the land rather than attempting to politic any higher.

It's hard to tell where the blonde in Brigida's hair ends and the white begins. She keeps it short, a round, shapely cut that fluffs little around her head like the aureole of a silvery dandelion when she does not comb it back. Her eyes are a deep green, leafy, that sometimes shows a tiny gold fleck, like sunlight dappling through the forest. What was once a rubenesque youth and beauty is now a soft rounding of age, etched with minimal lines but cast in deep grooves that highlight the strength of her cheekbones. Her nose is slightly broad, slightly flattened. Her eyebrows are a darker blond arch over her vivid eyes. She might have once been taller, but now stands rounded and small and with immense gravitas, sometimes carrying a stick.

Brigida has lived through it, whatever it is. Loss, death, war, love, tragedy, dreams dying aborning, dreams awakening: she's been there. She knows. Her wisdom is cut with no little vinegar. She is fierce and bold behind an iron propriety that has been cultivated with age, and only occasionally is breached to deliberately shock people. Tough, tough-minded, and without compunction about doing what needs done, she is socially extremely perceptive, clever, and can be as manipulative as an entire league of grandmothers working in concert.