Leopold Wormwood - Capitol
Jan 11, 2024 12:40:40 GMT -5
Post by parsnip on Jan 11, 2024 12:40:40 GMT -5
Leopold Wormwood
Backstory/context:
When a situation is granted the option no limits there are clearly a plethora of options available. Leopold employs a no limits mandate wherever he goes. He is chaotic, arbitrary, and entirely self-focused. On the inside.
His dynasty stretches back to District Seven, during the Dark Days. Rebels at heart, his family consisted of soldiers fighting against the Capitol, tooth and nail. Ultimately, they were captured and forced to live on as some of the first modern Avoxes. Somehow, their legacy continued. That somehow was brought about by an influential figure in the Capitol at the time. He took pity on the treating of the Wormwood family – an entire legacy committed to servitude without a voice. A relationship formed between him and Lucia Wormwood, Leopold’s grandmother, and the family line was permitted to continue. In the figure’s words “Purity bred from Purity.” He believed that his intervention would create pure Capitol loyalists out of the offspring. And, of course, he was right.
While Lucia’s voice would never be heard, her four children born into the influential figure’s own household were posed as his own children. His wife was financially compelled to agree to this arrangement, of course. The Wormwood family privately consisted of Leopold’s father and three siblings, Lucia, and what remained from the other Avox relatives – a distant cousin of Lucia’s and her own mother and father. They continued to serve the house loyally in hopes of staying on their new associate’s good side. It seemed like the only way to survive in the Capitol as the Dark Days came to an end, and the fighting was grinding to a halt. On the signing of the Treaty of Treason, their existence became less and less, however. Fading into the background. It was no longer fashionable for their influential benefactor to pay them any mind, and slowly his attention was more set on the children.
Lucia grew sick and tired of this – reaching a breaking point when a strange illness seemed to befall her mother and father consecutively. Like a viral flu, they both turned unwell and passed within the same month.
This was the beginning of the end for the ruse that was the Wormwood Avoxes. Lucia and her cousin kept themselves from acting out of emotion for long as possible, as not to aggravate any situation that might mean the end of them all, including her children – whom she sees less and less each week. They’d grown up without her, all the way to the age of six, four, three and one. It wasn’t until a visiting dignitary caught her sneaking to their room during a banquet that was going on downstairs that everything suddenly would change. While Lucia tended to her children, posing as their nanny (as they weren’t aware of who she really was to them), the dignitary eavesdropped whilst the children spoke to her. She would sign back to her eldest Marcus, as though she’d been teaching him all this time. While the dignitary didn’t figure everything out that was said, he did realise that this was the perfect leverage against his rival – the influential benefactor of the Wormwoods.
It wasn’t until later, when scandal would break against the walls of their household that the change came. Their influential benefactor was slated in the press for harbouring rebels during the war. All titles and property was to be stripped of them and handed to a more suitable owner. While the dignitary from earlier that year was clearly responsible, it wasn’t him who was named as the new owner of the estate and all its riches. It was Lucia Wormwood’s firstborn child, Marcus Wormwood. Named as he was, a Wormwood, for he was outed as a rebel’s child at the age of seven. The cost was high, however. Lucia and her cousin were both sent to the penitentiary where they would eventually not be seen again, but her children got a chance to meet their mother before the end.
The dignitary left the Wormwoods to their new estate, his appetite for revenge on his counterpart sated. But it meant that he could stand as guardian over their progress in the future, looking keenly on the boy Marcus and his new team of stewards who help to keep their estate thriving and aplenty.
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The only son of Marcus Wormwood, Leopold has a wide mind for strategy. His thinking is often out of the box and without regard for limitations. What’s worst about him is that the ends don’t just justify the means, but rather he will feel no remorse during any of it. The ends are the means, he just has to figure out which way is quickest. At the taller age of twenty-nine, his Capitol day have been spent lavishly. His family, although full of their own culmination of dramas, now lives a life of luxury due to the presence of a marvellous yet aging benefactor, a friend of his grandmother’s, who was a known Avox. It’s only because of this connection that they have wealth at all, as a power play meant the acquisition of a large estate, it’s treasury, and the staff loyal to the buildings themselves.
His father Marcus is a stringent man with not a lot going for him. He is full of fear, thinking that the entire Capitol could rain down on them all at any point. While not unfounded, Leo sees this as a huge weakness. He’s despised that trait of his father’s for the majority of his life, as he believes that in stagnation there is only defeat, and victory – above everything – is the only way forward. As a child, Leopold would sit in on many meetings as his father tried to make a name for their family. It was goal to secure a future in the Capitol, as their property was granted to them only through a meticulous scandal. To Leo, this has always been something his father did too slowly, with far too much tact, and no attention upon the bigger picture. It lead Leo to think hyper-intuitively. His mind was focused on how to improve situations, focusing entirely on efficiency rather than morality. He let his actions become fuelled by logic. And that was before he was even twelve.
The staff liked Leo. He was a breath of fresh air in the estate. He was the only child and his father had three siblings. His mother was a dignitary underneath their guardian angel and was rarely around for this reason. It allowed the boy a degree of freedom – he was free to be as cheeky as he liked, as coy as he pleased, and he most definitely was both without so much of a consequence. The loose cannon of the Capitol, all the way into his teens. There, he started to have bounce-back from others. School was becoming tougher, and people were starting to learn of his family’s history, or lack thereof. He had to find ways to become manipulative, and to protect himself from their offenses before they would happen. Now he was hypervigilant as well as intuitive. The perfect disaster for a maniac.
During his academy days, Leopold learned a great deal about putting on face. He’d been the target of ridicule before, but when it was the judgement of faculty that he was trying to avoid, there was no other option left except excellence. It was here that he became an academically obsessed with information finding. Firstly about subjects, topics, classes. Then it was his peers. How to relegate their existences down to nothing with just one well-timed mail. He found swiftly that emotional attachment was archaic. He’d had lovers, friends, and associates all bend to his way of thinking only to be discarded the second they’re no longer of use. But, where was the humanity? Maybe it wasn’t there in the first place. Nobody could tell, because for all they knew he was the charming man from the Wormwood Estate. In reality, he was the lion amongst the worms, collecting any bird that falls too close to the pride.
Presently, Leo has been graduated a great deal of time. Having spent most of his young adult life working in the sphere of policy and politics, he has managed to arrange himself into the position of assistant whip. He is responsible for ensuring that certain members of the political delegation in the Capitol vote in line with their superior’s wishes. He’s to be utilised by any councillor or their staff, essentially, but has yet to have those connections solidified, even after all these years. Being assistant has been valuable to him – not only is his name clear of any scandal or ridicule, but he is able to sit in on the most important of meetings, and attend on decision-making all the while garnering his own rolodex of contacts and information. The unassuming assistant, as he views himself.
Unassuming he is – as he is a tall and broad man who would make commuters unhappy on entry to a train. His hair is usually shaved down and his visage is that of somebody up to no good. It’s people’s ability to disregard somebody such as him that makes him all the more powerful, though. While they don’t expect the brute to have knowledge beyond them, and instead fail to anticipate any next steps at all, he is already ten steps ahead of them. It’s what has gotten him so far after coming from so little. He stills wears the suits. He likes the fashionista element of the Capitol so long as it serves a viable purpose, yet he is usually seen in monochromatic looks.
Now, his sights are held higher and higher with each coming Reaping. The closer he gets to the 100th anniversary, the more intense his feelings are towards his goals. Maybe he would settled or Chief Whip of the Council. Maybe, he has pinpointed a goal among the Council itself. But, for which district? Would he even mind? It just might be that he could mould any district into his own design should he be granted that privilege. The question remains as to whether he is granted it, or if it is just another portion on his web of plans.
