Hellene Panhard
Sobriquet: Princess Panhard or Your Majesty (respectful) or Queen Heavy (extremely rude).
Appearance: Hellene was Embraced before plastic surgery became widely available, and if she had her way tonight, she'd be much more beautiful. Her looks are best described as plain, or even homely, and she is especially sensitive about being unable to do anything about it. She has considered talking to one of the Tzimisce who must still be skulking about town, but her status as a harpy would no doubt come into question if anyone found out, so she's held off - for now. She carries herself and her just-more-than-she's-comfortable-with weight in a matronly manner, and a few of the anarchs have taken to calling her Queen Heavy.
Background: Unlife is never easy for one thrust into the limelight by a respected sire. Michaela, the Prince of New York, Embraced much like the Sabbat did, throwing hastily turned soldiers against enemy forces. Her detractors brought this accusation against her, only to have her shrug her shoulders in response. For those who managed to survive Sabbat attacks and distinguish themselves, the situation became doubly difficult: They shouldn't have been Embraced in the first place, and when they survived, they inherited the prestige and power that goes with being the prince's progeny. To anyone not Embraced with a silver spoon in their mouths, these childer were the ultimate representation of prince's abuse of power.
For Hellene, her combination stigma and status was something to be satisfied and overcome. She was Embraced from the ranks of a semi-prominent banking family and had spent much of her mortal life learning the business from her father and uncles. Capital from her investments helped finance the Camarilla war effort. Contacts she made during her years in New York before the Sabbat were ousted played key roles in uncovering Sabbat havens. Her intrigues compromised Sabbat leaders; her drivers smuggled Kindred into the city. Through it all, Hellene remained quiet.
From the beginning, Hellene resented some of her blood-siblings, who were indeed wastes of the Embrace. Surely Michaela knew this, Embracing them to die, but a few had the temerity to survive. Greedy and jealous, they had little more to do with their unlives than to take what others provided. They abused their positions as the prince's childer, usurping domains and feeding without respect for the established grounds. When most of them died off during the Battle of New York or before it at the hands of Black Hand assassins, Hellene shed no tears. Sher merely redoubled her efforts. As the provisional prince Calebros stepped in, she pledged her aid to him, and her support helped hold the city's Kindred together. They saw that this once privileged childe had made her own sacrifices, and it was the least they could do to act in kind.
Times have changed, however, and Hellene has been slow to keep up with them. Maybe New York doesn't want that stability. The Kindred may want a little more freedom than the traditional Ventrue claims to domain allow for those outside the power structure. Hellene rankles under this roguish vision of New York. Having been able to parlay her efforts in the battle and her seniority into the only sort of socially directing role she could - a harpy - she wants to refocus herself once again, this time on the princedom.
Simultaneously liberal (for a Ventrue) and conservative (because she is a Ventrue, at least in the minds of the Kindred as a whole), Hellene favors a policy of reconstruction before restriction. Her own experiences under Michaela's rule have set the tone - she wants to allow Kindred to build domains and become stable. From there, she wants to impose an order on the rapid growth that has already occurred. While she has garnered support from elders, it is those elders who have already taken the opportunity to grow their domains while younger Kindred still feel like they have to test the waters to see what they can get away with.
In the end, Hellene feels that she's owed the princedom, even though she's loath to express it in that manner. She is no stranger to hard work, however, and her greatest task may still be ahead of her, in that she must convince others to come around to her way of thinking.
Personality: All is within her grasp, but she is cautious with her bids for power. She knows alienating the other Kindred for the sake of power would have bitter, possibly fatal results. The alternative of gaining power just to squander it in appeasement, is a realistic if unappealing scenario. Therefore, she sees her best course of action to be a policy of convincing others of the wisdom inherent in her preferences. After all, she wants what is in the best interests of everyone, but sadly, most Kindred do not understand what is in their own best interests, so she will simply have to make some of their decisions for them. In this sense, she is of a nearly motherly disposition. To the young immortals of New York, her manner is decidedly anachronistic, as she has had to mature politically without the guidance of her late sire. Before Michaela was murdered by that pig Polonia, she instilled in Hellene the wisdom of clothing the iron hand in the velvet glove.
Current Events: Over the last two decades, Hellene has built her rule on a solid foundation of political and social successes. Her philosophy of modest but measurable gains over the long haul, have allowed her to place her enemies in compromising situations when they tried to achieve too much in too short a time. She has proven her beneficence and wisdom time and again as she holds out the olive branch to her opponents, while providing bread and circuses for the rank and file. Her solution to the ever growing problem of overcrowding and illicit Embrace is quiet assassination and the encouragement of rivalry for domain as a sociopolitical pressure valve that prevents anarch uprisings and coup-d-tats.
