Cerealia App

[withoutrest]

Applicant Info

◎ Name: Orange Crates
◎ Journal: dreamingcellardoor
◎ Contact: orangeCrate @ Plurk
◎ Current Character(s): Kaoru Akashi (queenofminiskirts)

Character Info

◎ Character's Name: Li Changge (Asian order)
◎ Character's Canon: Song of the Long March
◎ Character's Age: 15
◎ Canon Point: After Mimi helped her recover and she starts the gain the trust of Ashina Sun.


◎ Background/History: Changge is a princess born towards the beginning of the Tang Dynasty. She was the child of then Crown Prince, Li Jiancheng and a woman from the Uyghur tribe, Li Jin (inheriting the last name after mariage). She was close to her uncle, Li Shimin who had once been in love with her mother. Whether this fact had anything to do with why he is close to her and dfavoured her is unknown and, though Changge had heard the rumours about her uncle and mother having an affair, Changge had, even from a young age, went out of her way to protect their reputations not knowing that they had once been in love but her mother married the Crown Prince for reasons no one really knows.

Apart from her uncle, no one in her family really gives her the time of day. Her brothers (of which she had many because that's how Chinese royalty rolls) she regularly beat up for mocking and trying to bully her and her mother.

Her father had not spoken to her for years and the first time he did it was to ask her to agree to a political marriage. She agree but her uncle argued against it, saying that what they will get in exchange is practically an insult when compared to the worth of a princess. Her gradnfather who was still emperor at the time, agreed. However, in reward for her display of courage and desire to serve her country, he granted her the title of Princess Yongning, the Princess of Everlasting Peace.

It did not make her happy at all. In the end, she had agreed because she was a princess and it was her duty, but also because she wanted to find favour with her mother, a beautiful golden haired woman with eyes that were green like the jade for which she was named. Her mother, who had, according to Changge, never looked at her directly and, instead, always stared off into the distance.

Changge wanted to become someone her mother would look upon with love and pride. But even after agreeing to the marriage, even after being granted a title, her mother never looked away from the window out of which she stared.

On her mother's request, Changge had studied swordsmanship, war strategy, politics and other subjects meant for men instead of the arts that women traditionally learn.

Many of her teachers were important ad talented men of the court and, under their tutelage, she became a proficient fighter and a sharp-witted strategist. She absorbed all these lessons wit great enthusiasm, thinking both that, if she excells her mother may pay attention to her and that, if need be, she can protect her mother.

She passed her days like this up until some point after her fifteenth birthday.

On July 2nd, what will become known as the Xuanwu Gate Incident occurred. The Crown Prince, Li Jiancheng, fearing Li Shimin's influence in the court planned to assassinate him. Unfortunately, the plans reached the ears of Li Shimin and, instead, Li Shimin killed both the Crown Prince and their little brother at the Xuanwu Gate. Followng that, Li Shimin ordered the execution of all of Li Jiancheng's wives and children. Changge had managed to escape the Forbidden City because her mother told her to run right before the incident occurred (being the one who, without anyone knowing, warned Li Shimin of the assassination attempt). She had bee chased, but managed to lose her pursuers by jumping accross a valley, sacrificing her horse in the process. The man in charge of chasing her was one of her teachers and, out of care for her, reported back that the princess had fallen down the gorge and they could not find the body.

Many people could guess that she was still alive, but out of an attachment to her, a fair number of them went along with the story, including her uncle who would force his own father to abdicate and become emperor himself in two month's time.

But Changge was not content to simply die.

She returns to the capital, dressed as a man and, upon meeting one of her teachers tells him that her path is one of revenge.

She tells him that as long as she and her uncle both draw breath, she will never stop trying to kill him.

◎ Is the character a hacker and/or do they have a sixth-sense?
No.

◎ Personality:
There is a great deal of dichotomy in Changge's character. On one hand, she claims that she will do anything for revenge. She was willing to go as far as starting a war and had manipulated good people to try to put herself in a position to do so. She claims that she doesn't care if the world burns as long as she can have Li Shimin's head and when she is playing the strategist, she doesn't hesitate to drown an entire army, to sweep them all away in a river using a clever trick.

Yet, when she meets the former King of Yan on his way to deliver his cavalry to the Turks so they can attack Li Shimin's government, she persuades him to stop such madness, that to do that would only end badly for the people of their country. She saves the life of a girl she barely knows and gets angry over the temple that is housing her being bad-mouthed.

On one hand, she is capable of great calousness and yet she also possess great compassion. She is a cunning and level-headed strategist and yet she can also be an impulsive and passionate person.

She willingly put a man and his family in danger, using them as a stepping stone to further her own goals. And yet, when it came down to it, she had refused to give up on them, had cried and gotten angry at not being able to save them.

This dichotmy, this hypocrisy in her character was a constant point early on in the series. She says the Princess Yongning, who had wanted peace and stability was dead. And yet, the former King of Yan noted after their conversations that he was no longer the King of Yan, but she was still a princess of the Tang.

The reality is, Changge is not as heartless or callous as she'd like to think. She gets attached to people easily and she despises injustice. She cannot simply turn a blind eye on the suffering of others and, just like when she was little, she wanted power not to bully others but to protect people. This is an important part of her personality, though in her grief she had often tried to ignore this part of herself and actively pretends it died with her family.

She did not need that weak girl she had been, the one that had been unable to protect anything.

And yet, she understands on a subconscious level that she is being a hypocrite, that what she says and what she does, cannot be reconciled with what she wants and who she is.

Some of the darker parts of her personality comes out of grief and the pain of being unable to protect anything. The obsession to kill her uncle was a way of retaliating, of taking back a fraction of control. A way of making someone hurt the way she does.

The problem is that she can't fool herself forever. Clever and capable of self-relfection, she knows there is something not right and eventually she figures out that even if she kills her uncle, nothing will change. Following that revelation she focuses on trying to understand what the path she truly wants to take is.

At this canon-point she has yet to have this revelation or to work through it. She is still stuck on the "I want to kill my uncle" stage, but she is beginning to see the hypocrisy in the fact that she claims to want to over throw the government and yet does not want to cause a war and the suffering it will bring.

Another dichotomy is Changge's trust in others. It is in her nature to dislike being alone, and yet, especially in the beginning of the series, she actively puts herself in a position where people cannot get close to her. She tries to keep her distance because she has basically been rejected by her mother her entire life. Yet, she connects to people easily, becomes attached to them inspite of herself especially when they are kind. No matter what distance she tries to keep she inevitably thwarts her own attempts. She is incredibly suspicious of everyone and everything, putting on a mask to keep the people and things she doesn't trust at bay. When she does trust someone, she will trust them a great deal. Even then, however, when there is no other logical explanation, she will still suspect the people close to her. She is realistic in tha way, knowing that even blood family could turn on each other, since she had grown up in the Forbidden City where such things were not uncommon, where her very life had been turned upside down because her uncle had killed her father.

Her losses and her experiences have shaped her a great deal and it shows the most in the way she deals with people.

On the other hand, below this giant mess of contradicting inclinations, Changge is naturally cheeky. In the beginning it's not sure whether or not this is her personaltiy or just a front, but in flashbacks about her childhood you see her displaying this cheekiness long before she had needed to wear a mask. She can also be quite sarcastic. She does not laugh easily, but she is a great deal less serious and sombre than she initially appeared. As the story progressed, this side of her appeared more and more.

Due to her upbringing and her own personality, she can also be very charming when the mood strikes her. This is part of that training in politics.

In fact, Changge is a very good actor and she will play the part of charming merchant, cold-blooded psychopath or delicate lady very convincingly. Around people she doesn't know as well, she will put on a mask. Around people she is comfortable around, she may become quieter and probably smile less but the smiles she does give are genuine and warm, not at all like the ones she wears to charm others. Of course, when she's around someone she feels she can depend on, or someone she really trusts, that cheeky personality and her short temper comes to the surface. Because for all that she can be really calculatng, she can really yell at people when she's angry.

Her acting isn't flawless though. When certain issues, like her family or the fact that she can never step foot into the place she had called home her entire life, comes up, she can't hide her saddness entirely. These sort of feelings, or regret and of pain are the ones she seems to have the hardest time coping with. There's also the fact that her acting may sometimes be a little too perfect, to the point where nothing is reflected in it to the point where some very perceptve people may notice as signs of insincerity.

◎ Powers/Abilities:
- basically anyone who is anyone, whether they are man or woman, need to know the four important things that show you have culture: music (specifically the guqin, but by the Tang there are a lot of instruments that are popular in the court), chess (weiqi), writing and art. It can be assumed that Changge is well versed in all these and have a certain amount of skill in them all.
- strategy: Changge has constantly been praised for being an exceptional strategist in war.
- martial arts: she has been taught hand-to-hand combat and trained in various weapons as a part of her upbringing. Weapons she has been shown using include swords (the Chinese straight sword), daggers, crossbow and bows. Though at this current canon-point she has not gotten the upgrade in her sword skills she gains later in the series.
- equestrian skills: horse riding. It was what people did back then for travelling.
- She can speak the Uyghur language

◎ Weapons & Other Special Inventory:
- Hair pin her mother left her
- a small dagger
- a bow and quiver
- winter clothes
- a Chinese straight sword

CEREALIA-Specific

◎ Element: Water
◎ Sense: Sight. All her senses are important, really, but as a strategist it's important for her to be able to spot the details in her surrounding and to see the bigger picture. So I feel like sight is probably symbollically more important to her character.
◎ Seven Character Traits:
Positive: cunning, compassionate, determined
Negative: bull-headed, prideful, divided
Neutral: lonely

Samples

◎ First-Person Sample:
First person sample~.

◎ Third-Person Sample:
She dreams of the Forbidden City sometimes.

Changge remembers those simpler days when she went to and from lessons, showing off to her other teachers and her uncle all the things she was learning.

She beamed at the praise they gave her, about the neatness of her calligraphy, about her shrewdness when she played weiqi, and about her talent for the martial arts. She remembers carrying the praise back with her, full to the brim with the knowledge that she has not only done well, but has exceeded the expectations of her teachers. She returns to where her mother resides and relates them all to her while her mother's closest maid servant listens with a smile answering Changge's own.

But slowly, the smile disappears and, little by little, the praises she received seemed to lose their lustre, because no matter what she says, her mother would not turn to look at her. She watches the way her mother's golden hair catches the light and, slowly, she takes a step forward and reaches out--

--Changge wakes up with her hand outstretched towards the ceiling of the tent.

She breathes heavily for a moment, then slowly drops her hand again with a sigh. She slowly sits up and pushes a hand through her hair.

That had been a long time ago. Many, many years before the treachery that had taken her mother and family from her had occurred.

(Her hands had been so small back then, if she had reached out and grasped her mother's sleeve, would she have been able to hold on with that weak, little hand?)

The edges of the dream cling to her as she slowly brushes her hair back with her fingers, putting it up the way men wore their hair. The mornings out here, out on the plains and away from Han territory, are chilly and it is a balm after the fever that had taken her before. It also helps chase away the last of the dream.

Changge doesn't look around the tent, knowing already that Mimi has left to get their breakfast.

She finishes tying her hair and then puts on the clothes she had been provided (men's clothing, of course, in the style of the Turks). It is heavy with furs and she's not used to the cut but it is sturdy and of good quality. That was good enough.

Changge is meticulous as she checks over her weapons. A warrior's equipment must always be in good condition. If she does not take care of them, then she will have no one to blame but herself if they fail her in a fight. That is something that has been drilled into her since she was little.

She arms herself, then, when she was satsified, puts the fur hat they provided her with and steps out of the tent.

The men she passes as she makes her way through the camp eye her, sizing up this upstart Han strategist that Ashina Sun had brought into their ranks. In response, Changge only smiles and bows in greeting. It is a smile meant to disarm, bright and seemingly without guile (while on the inside she notes all the holes in their defenses and how she could exploit them).

She hears Mimi's voice calling her name and she turns, her smile changing to something warmer as she greets Mimi who is scowling at her about getting up and how she needed to rest. Changge only put a hand on Mimi's shoulder, patting it once before she turns for the horses.

"I cannot lay about any longer."

After all, their safety in this place isn't guarranteed, so she must seize the chance to make an impression as soon as possible.

◎ Is your character retaining any previous game memories? Nope.