Canon: Earl Cain Saga
Character: Mary Weather Hargreaves
Timeline: Chapter 47 (final) at the grave, before Alexis/Augusta arrives.
Personality:Mary tends to act somewhat older than her actual age in public, though this sort of behaviour was often expected from children of the Victorian society. Still, she is just a child, and is found acting like any other child her age would, enjoying games and stuffed animals. While she is stubborn, it is not as if she won't take 'no' for an answer, especially if it is from her dear older brother Cain. However she has been known to go against even his will if she wants to do something bad enough without a good enough reason. She is very conscious of his love for her and knows that he wouldn't tell her 'no' unless it was for her own good, but that is something she learned the hard way after the time at the Cremorne Gardens. Of course, being a child, sometimes she just doesn't care, and wants what she wants because she wants it. She's also not beyond falling just short of throwing a fit when she wants something, but she has more dignity than to go into hysterics over most things most of the time. Instead she will be the child that is told no by one parent, then goes to ask the other parent. If she sees an opportunity to get beyond Cain's orders to do something that she really wants to do, she will take it. She's also rather aware that she's a cute little girl, and will use that to try to get what she wants. It is a part of the resourcefulness she learned to use while living in the slums. If she is given orders from anyone besides Cain, she is more likely to use her own sense and judgment to decide what to do than to listen to them just because they tell her to do something. She is far more likely to listen given solid reasoning.
She's also very compassionate and understanding. She is objective and fair when she meets new people, not really taking anything like appearance or class into consideration when dealing with them. She prefers to try to think the best of people before she has any evidence to the contrary. She's sensitive to the hardships that others have been through as well, having been through far more than her fair share herself. Even though she now looks like a noble child, her years growing up in the slums and the people she met there are still remembered and kept as friends in her heart. She knows that she has been lucky, but that does not mean that things have been that easy still. Living with Cain, she has seen how people around him keep dying – people he cares about – no matter what he tries to do. She's shared this hardship with him, since they care about many of the same people, but as a result of seeing all the things that happen in the outside world she has decided that no matter how bad things in the outside world might be, she wants to make the home as peaceful as she can and be there with a smile and be there with comforting words. She also believes that even people who do not seem 'good', have the capacity, and with enough love they can be helped still. There are very few people that fall out of that range, though her father is one of them.
She is strong in the face of adversity as well. No matter how terrible things seem, she keeps her head up and forges forward with a powerful will. When her brother dies, she interrupts the fighting of her family and announces that she will take up the head of the household. She refuses to wear black since she is certain Cain is not dead, no matter what her cards said, and insists that she will be taking up the head only until he returns. She maintains this because her Uncle supports her and reveals that Cain left a signed and stamped letter that indicated that his wish was the same as hers, thereby making her the head of the family. She accepts this role with strength, and it is implied that she truly acts as the head of the family, instead of just a figure head as most children would be.
Mary also can have a bit of a temper. She hates the way her brother jumps from one women to another. She also gets defensive when people try to suggest that she might be a spoiled noble who knows no hardships, considering all the difficulty she has been through. She also dislikes being belittled for her past or being given false compliments. She might also bare her fangs at a practical joke, but in a far more playful manner. Despite this, over all she's very kind, generous, compassionate and mostly carefree.
Even though she's seen many horrors, she still has been able to maintain a sense of innocence as well as kept a firm grasp on her childhood. This is in part of her attempts to remain as a soft and warm influence at home for Cain, but she realizes that he is not the only person who can use someone like that in their life. She doesn't really realize how strong that makes her and is so completely invested that even though she tries to remain a child, it isn't an act.
In the same vein of attempting to maintain her innocence, she loathes the idea of raising a weapon against another human being, or even an animal. Monsters are another story, and she will do what she needs to in order to protect herself, but she would much rather use words than force. Cain told her that she should keep her hands clean of blood, and so she even hesitates killing the abomination of her aunt inside her father's body that is the result of her father's experiments. Though she did hesitate, after hearing what she had done Mary also wasn't afraid to draw her gun, though a trap kept her from needing to use it. Cain is gone now, so her need to be as soft and warm for him has lessened, but it only means that she is more likely to act in violence in a sense of justice or to protect the people she loves, but she would still rather find another way around it.
Background:Mary grew up in the slums of London. She had a very basic education, learning to read and write thanks to the mother of one of her friends, a school teacher. She learned from the mother of another friend how to read palms, astrology, and tarot cards. She had an apartment with her mother, though it seems to have been very small. She lived there with her mother, until she committed suicide. Her mother killed herself in order to protect Mary from a crazy suitor, in the hopes that his obsessive passion would die out when she died, however, because the poison used was from the Hargreaves household, Mary believed that her mother's former employer, the Earl Hargreaves, killed her. From then until she was about nine years old she lived on the streets, making a living by giving tarot card readings. Her best friend, Eric, stayed with her from that point on. Together they were able to get by through a scheme where she would read tarot cards and distract people while Eric would pick their pockets.
Eventually she does a reading for the Earl Cain Hargreaves, who she believes killed her mother, Alegra, though it was Cain’s father, Alexis, that actually had the connection to Alegra, not Cain. The things she predicts slowly come true. She told him that “three victims will be affected... you will die soon,” though the second part was coloured by her plan to murder him. She seems lace a needle with the same poison her mother died from and attach the needle to Cain's wallet, though the wallet falls out of Cain's pocket. Later it is revealed that Mary was not the one to actually have set up the switch, but Mary’s mother’s ex-fiancee who wanted to kill Cain because his father “stole” Alegra from him, though Mary clearly harbored a great hatred for Cain at first. A bystander picks it up and is killed by the poison, marking the first victim. Running away from the scene, Mary drops her mother’s bracelet, only to realize later that Cain must have picked it up. She begins to soften up to Cain when he insists that she comes in out of the rain, dries off, and has tea before he would return her bracelet.
The second victim is Eric, who goes out to meet who they believe to be Cain in Mary's place. Instead he is met with Alegra’s lover, who kills him. Cain arrives on the scene only a moment too late, but early enough to hear from Eric that he had called the police for help, meaning that only he, the police, and Cain knew he would be there. This leads Cain to realize that it had to be one of the police, and goes to them with Mary, however it is the main detective’s partner, not the police chief, that was the real culprit. Mary is grabbed by him and held at gunpoint, but is shot by Cain marking the third victim of the tale. Mary says at first that she still hates him after he saves her because she has no reason left to live now, save for him. She does, however, accept his outstretched hand, and as time goes on (mostly time we do not directly see,) it seems she comes to love him as dearly as she did Eric and her mother, and not just because he is all she has left. Even then, she in part manages to always remain strong because she continues to believe that he is alive, even after he has gone missing.
As events progress, Cain begins to believe that she must be related to the cursed family, though it is later suggested that he just grew fond of her and saw enough excuse to call her kin. He also promised Eric that he would protect her in his stead. Mary’s own mother also told her that the Earl Hargreaves is her father (causing the earlier confusion). He adopts her into the Hargreaves family after saving her life, and she has lived with him since. Now a part of high society she has begun training in the arts expected for a young lady to know. Cain does his best to keep her sheltered, but due to her stubborn nature she still works her way into the troubling things surrounding Cain. He tends to have a habit of walking into murder cases and in the process solves them. Mary commonly gets mixed up in these cases, though as time goes on she does a better job of staying out. Still, the most traumatizing experience happens late in the manga- the bombing of the Cremorne Gardens (mistranslated as Crimone Gardens in the manga, though the author's notes clearly indicate what she meant). Mary insists on going into the festival happening in the Gardens for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee even though Cain tells her not to. He knew that his father's group, Delilah, were going to kill the people attending. She gets her brother's best friend, Oscar Gabriel, who was supposed to be helping to watch her, to help her sneak past her strict Aunt Katina to go to the festival. For a while everything was fine, but bombs started going off, leaving the entire place in ruins and killing many. While she later faces a bomber with no more fear than one would expect in that situation, she realized that her brother knew something was going to happen, and that is why he was so insistent on keeping her away from it.
She might not actually be able to do much on her own, but she silently supports Cain, keeping his spirits up and giving him someone to protect while offering him her love.
Abilities/Additional Notes: Mary is very intelligent for a ten-year-old. She is a fast learner, having mastered manners, linguistics, French, piano, and the other typical subjects for a noble child in the Victorian Era in less than a year's time. She uses her sharp tongue to 'politely' insult those who anger her, though she will fall into coarser speech with someone she is more familiar with or other children. The time she spent on the streets has also equipped her with a wide range of other useful skills, including basic survival skills, cooking, and fortune telling. She specializes in Tarot card reading, and is eerily accurate in her readings, with the ability to not only get an idea of the situation for a person far away from her, or even for someone's future. She also is able to see spirits, but she does not usually have much interaction with them. Though not in the manga, due to her high intelligence, habit of doing what she is told not to, and general inquisitiveness, she has likely read all the books Cain has on poisons and at least examined them in their bottles. She is also pretty good at giving puppy eyes and playing the innocent girl.
Sample Journal Post:[A young blond girl with rather large blue eyes is looking a little annoyed at the camera.]
Oh! There we go! [She smiles and pulls the screen away from her a bit.] This is amazing! What is this doing exactly? It's like a mirror, but a little different, it's not a reflective surface. It seemed like this is supposed to send things to people, not act as a mirror though, so I am not even sure if this is working....
I hope it is! [She keeps smiling, but rather than with satisfaction, it settles into an uneasy hesitant one. She wants to be polite, but that does not stop her nerves from showing through her expression,] My name is Mary Weather Hargreaves. I am not entirely sure what is going on or where this is, so I would greatly appreciate if someone could offer some information. I am sure there are people who are furious that I am missing.
Sample RP:On a corner of a dark, abandoned street that looked a little like the slums she knew from her childhood yet still alien and strange, Mary stood, looking around with confusion. The last she knew, she had been at the gave her brother had built. She was curious who it was meant for, as Cain had covered her eyes when she was last there.
This, however was a completely unfamiliar place. She could not remember how she got here. She swallowed her welling panic. "Uncle Neil? Oscar?" she called unsteadily, peering into the dark.
No response.
"Cain," she ventured next, still with no response.
Of course he would not reply, even if she had some vain hope Cain had whisked her off to surprise her. That was not the kind of thing he would do, though. He would not put her in a situation like this, one that would scare her.
There had to be some explanation, though.
She wondered for a moment if she was by some chance dead, if this was some limbo. She called, "Mom? Eric? Emile? Gilford?"
Still there was only silence.
She takes a wary step forward, unintentionally kicking a PCD on the ground. She picks it up, hitting a button as she does. The light from the screen casts an eerie glow, but only makes her curious. Cautiously she makes her way into a nearby house, seeking temporary shelter as she examines the strange device, hoping to find something there that would ease the tension in her chest and explain a little about what is going on.
