Name: Colette Anna Cartwright
Gender: Female
Age: 20
Description: Colette has a tall, thin frame, pale skin, and high cheekbones. Her eyes are a stormy gray. Colette's hair is thin, light blonde, and almost always pinned up in some fashion, as it should be. While this would make some look more severe or strict, the effect is lost on her.
History: Born to a French mother and English father, both talented Shadowhunters, Colette was raised in Paris for all of her childhood and a good portion of her adolescence. With no siblings, she and her parents were a happy little family that occasionally fought demons together and loved each other immensely.
Her mother, a woman of great passion, lived every day as a bright new adventure, while Colette and her father struggled to keep pace. However, the woman was teaching her daughter more than just Shadowhunter training, and delighted to watch the child learn to live more vibrantly each day, despite inheriting her father's quiet demeanor.
Colette learned to speak the passionate French language flawlessly, but much preferred the formality and briskness of English. Her mother encouraged risk taking and recklessness in training and fighting, while her father asked her to be rational and calm. Even when Colette began practicing the piano, one parent encouraged passion and the other discipline. As polar opposites, her parents didn't get along all the time, but Colette, the combination of their two very different personalities, was their binding force.
At 15, as a perfectly happy balance of her mother's spirited vitality and father's serene manor, Colette learned a new lesson from the former, one of decisions and consequences. Unbeknownst to her and her father, the woman had been a part of a great affair with a family friend for several months, following the distance between she and her husband that had been growing over the past few years. The disgrace came to light, and the public, when the two were caught by his wife. Colette's mother was prepared to leave her husband, but it turned out that her lover was not prepared to leave his wife. Mother returned to a shattered family, father now aware that his wife was no longer in love with him.
Colette's father, completely broken, spoke up for himself for what could have been the first time and requested a separation. Her devastated mother, facing the loss of her husband and lover, decided on an impulse that the Shadowhunter world was not for her. In another scandal, claiming that this particular life had nothing more to give her, she sought her next adventure in the mundane world. Stripped of her marks and banished, happy to never fight another demon, Colette's mother left their lives very quickly.
Colette's goodbye had been strange and cold, still shocked that her mother's crave for excitement had led her so very far away from their family. She suspected that the woman had wanted her daughter to come with her, but knew very well that she was in no place to ask. Everything she had known was shifted, and with this, Colette withdrew into herself. Her learned enthusiasm for brightly burning experiences lost its appeal, seeing the destruction they could and would leave in their wake. Colette cast aside everything in her that came from her mother's influence, terrified of where she would be without her father's guidance thus far.
Colette and her father moved to the French countryside almost immediately in attempt to leave the disrepute behind them in the lively city of Paris. Unfortunately, there was no escaping the whispers of society. So as not to subject Colette to her peers, a tutor was brought to the small household to continue her training, while also heavily focusing on the manners of the prim and proper. Colette embraced these Shadowhunter and mundane traditions, finding comfort in the rules that were so against what her mother had taught while her father had always praised them.
Funnily enough, her father found love again in Colette's tutor, and the two were married a little more than four years after the family scandal. A new marriage forced Colette's father to begin seriously thinking of prospects for his beloved daughter, and he found that although his new wife had overlooked the family scandal, not many other people were willing to.
Letters never read by Colette were send back and forth between the Head of the Institute in London and her father. In a hurried blur of events, at a young 20 she is being sent quite alone to London to meet and stay with her new fiance, Quinton Ashbrook. Her father told her this the night before she was due to leave. He and her betrothed's mother had planned the match at each's benefit, and although the arranged engagement came as a shock to her, Colette quickly accepted the plan with the grace that was expected of her. She has high hopes and wants to make the best of this unexpected turn of events, even though she will miss her father dearly.
Personality: Colette is soft spoken, gentle, and appreciative of the beauty present in small things around her. Valuing harmony above all else, she despises conflicts of any kind, and often finds herself biting her tongue or withdrawing herself from tense situations. Despite this, she is an able fighter, and does see the urgency of combat to protect others, however much she wishes it weren't necessary. In keeping with her meek personality, Colette is very traditional and greatly respects the way things were and continue to be, partly because change, which to her in the current time is inessential, generally brings about discord that could otherwise be avoided
Likes: Books, piano, protecting others
Dislikes: Conflict, gossips, modernity
Weapon of Choice: Colette has no particular favorite.
Relationship Status; With who: Engaged to Quinton Ashbrook
Picture: 
Other: Colette speaks French fluently and having practiced for several years, she is also quite skilled playing the piano.
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