(no subject)

[sicsemper]

the basics
▶ CANON: Rome
▶ PLAYED BY: Tobias Menzies

▶ FULL NAME: Marcus Junius Brutus
▶ NICKNAME(S): Brutus
▶ ALIAS(ES): Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus (adopted name)

▶ AGE: 32
▶ DATE OF BIRTH: early December, 77 BC? (timeline weirdness again, plus, the pre-Julian Roman calendar was a complete mess)
▶ BIRTHPLACE: Rome
▶ NATIONALITY: Roman
▶ HOMETOWN: Rome
▶ ARRIVED FROM: Rome March 15, 44 BC

▶ GENDER: male
▶ PRONOUNS: he/him
▶ SPECIES: human
▶ SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Roman
▶ RELATIONSHIP STATUS: single and not ready to mingle
▶ RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION: Roman
▶ DRINKS / SMOKES / DRUGS: yes/no/possibly
▶ MBTI:

▶ CURRENT ADDRESS:
▶ PETS: none (he can barely take care of himself)
▶ FINANCIAL STATUS: city allowance
▶ LIVING CONDITIONS: A mess. Brutus has never not had someone attending to him and it shows. He doesn't know how to clean or take care of a home. When he can he'll try to hire that job out, but in the meanwhile if he spills something or drops something he tends to just leave it.

If he ever gets to trying to settle in it will not really be set up like a modern apartment. Very little furniture; couches facing each other and a few side tables in the main room, with no dining table and few chairs. A paper covered desk, some shelves and a single daybed in the bedroom. More a study with a bed in it than a bedroom with a desk in it. Books everywhere. Restrained, classical images on the walls and as objet d'art if he can get his hands on any.

Possibly the most foreign and 'ancient' thing will be a rather prominent altar in the main room. It will be his best approximation of a lararium with images and statues representing his personal gods and ancestors. There will also be candles, incense, salt, milk, an offering dish, and whatever else he thinks appropriate. It's obviously a very frequented and important place in his life. (A smaller setup is on a shelf in his bedroom as well.) Brutus believes and he believes hard.
▶ TRANSPORTATION: walking

▶ EDUCATION: The grammar school of Staberius Eros, tutors, further study in Greece
▶ LANGUAGE(S): Latin and Ancient Greek
▶ SKILLS: rhetoric, bad poetry, tyrannicide
▶ OCCUPATION: senator, praetor urbanus, liberator

▶ FREQUENTLY FOUND:

▶ YOU MIGHT KNOW THEM FROM: history, Shakespeare, Dante, Michelangelo, pretty much every political assassination/revolution since 44 BC

▶ TRIGGER WARNINGS: murder, war, slavery, politics, manipulation, suicide, general ancient attitudes and nastiness

▶ CURRENTLY: having a patrician meltdown


▷ external
▶ SIGHT:

▶ HAIR COLOR: brown
▶ EYE COLOR: brown
▶ HEIGHT: 6'
▶ BUILD: gangling
▶ DOMINANT HAND: right
▶ TATTOOS: none
▶ PIERCINGS: none

▶ DISTINGUISHING MARKS: none

▶ DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS: coltish limbs, soft skin, crooked teeth, scholar's hands, clenched jaws, tight smiles, deliberate movements, cautious eyes, heart on his sleeve

▶ STYLE: Adjusting to modern clothing is going to be A Process. He will not like Darrow's prevailing styles at all, but the fact that he can't keep wearing his bloodstained senatorial garb and that he can't just run out to the shop and buy a new toga means that he will have to adjust sooner rather than later. In public Brutus will be wearing loose fitting tops and trousers, though he'll feel ridiculous in them as only invalids and foreigners wrapped their legs in Rome. Eventually he will likely adopt a sort of contrariness about the whole thing and wear what he wants regardless. It's the sort of attitude that saw him wearing long-sleeved, long-skirted, loose-belted 'effeminate' tunics in Rome and in Darrow it will see him making tunics over trousers an everyday fashion choice. Maybe even a long shawl draped over it as well in imitation of a toga. It will just be Brutus trying to adapt and feel comfortable, but in the end it will all probably look a bit high fashion and daring. In private it's only belted tunics, no trousers. When it comes to footwear he'll be wearing lace up boots when the weather is cool and sandals when it is hot. When it comes to jewelry he'll occasionally wear bracelets, brooches and rings, but only in moderation and only of the best quality. When it comes to fabric and colors he tends to like things rather embellished and usually in shades of blue, grey and earth tones. He refuses outright to wear purple.

Thanks to multiple trips a week to the barber his hair is always neatly trimmed and he is always clean shaven. (He has no clue how to shave himself.) Thanks to similar frequent visits to a local bathhouse he's likewise always very clean and well-scrubbed. So far so (mostly) normal. The weird thing is that a lot of his body is hairless. This is due to a lifetime's use of various ancient roman depilatory methods and then plucking the hairs that manage to come through. It might look weird to modern eyes, but in his mind it's what sets him apart from a barbarian. If the hair on his head is getting long and a beard starts to grow it means he is definitely not in a good place mentally.

▶ FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND MANNERISMS: First impressions of Brutus can be... odd. He very obviously reads as upperclass to just about anyone from just about any background, but there's a certain strangeness that makes him seem even more alien and out of time than most of Darrow's temporally displaced guests. Brutus comes from a culture and class where appearances were of the utmost importance. Something as small as the tilt of a head, the positioning of the fingers, the angle of an arm, spoke volumes and was carefully scrutinized. It was an incredibly competitive society as well and Brutus was bred to rise to the very top of it. He has been on public display since he was a child and it shows. When he walks his posture is erect, his left hand sometimes instinctively comes up to rest on his chest, and his stride is measured and energetic, unaffected and deliberate all at the same time. It is the walk of someone trained to master the difficult art of moving well in a toga and no amount of wearing barbarian trousers can fully break him of it.

When he talks he uses many gestures, all too deliberate and complex to be merely improvised. They are the result of years of training in classical rhetoric, an art that required mastering a series of hundreds of hand gestures and accompanying stances. Each pose of the body and positioning of the fingers is meant to convey a certain meaning and lend weight to what he is saying, even if said gestures are currently unintelligible to an audience unfamiliar with the intricacies of Ancient Roman public speaking. He uses them in casual everyday speech in order to emphasize a point or an emotion, but if he is orating or acting official some manner of gesticulation accompanies almost every word that he says.

He is slowly adjusting to things like forks, but for the most part he still eats with the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand. His table manners are terrible by modern standards: talking with his mouth full, crumbs all over the place, an iffy attitude towards keeping food on the plate (and plates in general), tucking tidbits in his napkin for later, bones, pits and crusts tossed to the floor without care, and a decided slouch when he sits as he'd much prefer to be reclining like a proper Roman. But the good news is he'll eat absolutely anything. No food is too weird for his palate.

▶ SOUND: Brutus has a good voice because he was trained to have a good voice. Nothing else would do for the heir of the Junii. Loud enough to carry over a crowded senate, deep enough to project noble dignitas, commanding enough to order slave and citizen alike, posh enough to immediately proclaim his breeding and education.

When it comes to oratory, he is not as blunt and caustic as his uncle, Cato, and not as ornate and showy as his fellow senator, Cicero. Brutus's public speaking style tends to be to the point, unostentatious and almost casual, though he is prone to being a bit grave and monotonous if he gets going on a serious subject. In both everyday and public speaking he is very prone to getting emotional and it becomes immediately evident in his voice. Unlike many men from other cultures he makes little attempt to hide it.

▶ SMELL: There's a hint of whatever oil he's using to cleanse himself, but generally not much else beyond the scent of clean body and clean clothing. Wine, perhaps, if he's been drinking lately or incense if he's been praying.

▶ TOUCH: Brutus tends to be fairly reserved with others, but it's more born of caution than anything else. The political situation that he left was incredibly volatile and as a public figure every gesture towards another that he made was subject to scrutiny. As such a lot of his ways of touching others are formal and symbolic: handclasps, cheek kisses, hugs. They aren't friendly, they're theatre. He tends to shy away from unprompted physical contact from others, but that stems more from his current mental state than any dislike of physical affection. If anything he's a little touch starved at the moment.

▷ internal
▶ POSITIVE TRAITS: idealistic, honest, patient, modest, intelligent, trusting, patriotic, gentle, dutiful, cultured, self-controlled, good-humored, innocuous, temperate, scrupulous, emotional, principled, affectionate, curious, responsible

▶ NEGATIVE TRAITS: unambitious, snobbish, cerebral, naive, squeamish, submissive, proud, anxious, conflicted, priggish, stubborn, afraid, emotional, superstitious, angry, self-conscious, ashamed, formal, self-critical, compliant

▶ LIKES: Rome, poetry, philosophy, good food, good company, public games, logic, writing, latrunculi, class, ethics, republicanism, tradition, virtue, honor, studying, art, hellenistic culture, luxury, oratory, the seaside, history, wine, otium

▶ DISLIKES: politics, traveling, riding, fighting, tyrants, discomfort, barbarians, bad omens, cats, familial pressure, crudeness, kings, flattery, Macedonia, war, conspiracies, populism, lying, destiny, sleeping, violence, the weight of his name, Quintus Fucking Pompey, himself

▶ GOALS: adjust to everything

▶ MENTAL HEALTH: Brutus is an insomniac and has been for some time. He also shows signs of anxiety and depression. The causes are psychological, stemming from his choices in the civil war and experiences afterwards as a pardoned traitor in the new Rome, the shame of his dishonor, manipulation by others, distress over the loss of Caesar's trust, and guilt over his part in the man's death. (The historical figure was noted in multiple sources as sleeping very little and being of a melancholic, anxious mind so I'm feeling good with saying these will be longterm issues for him.)

▶ PHYSICAL HEALTH: No issues here.

▶ MAGICAL ABILITIES: None. However. Omens, divination and prophetic dreams etc are a thing in his canon, and the historical Brutus was recorded as having brushes with the supernatural. Is it all just a result of stress and guilt playing with his mind? Probably. But he won't see it that way. The belief is strong with this one and he'll likely continue to have experiences that he interprets as having a divine or otherworldly origin.

▶INFORMATION FOR PSYCHICS AND OTHER MAGIC USERS: If someone can somehow feel his mind or psyche it's probably a doozy. Years of pain and humiliation and fear and hate and doubt and hope and guilt and anxiety all roiling and festering. Psychically he's a raw wound of a man.


▷ relationships
▶ PARENTS: Servilia (mother), Marcus Junius Brutus (father, deceased), Decimus Junius Silenus (stepfather, deceased), Quintus Servilius Caepio (uncle, adoptive father, deceased), Gaius Julius Caesar (possible biological father and definite father figure, deceased)

▶ SIBLINGS: Junia Prima, Junia Secunda, Junia Tertia (younger half-sisters)

▶ SIGNIFICANT OTHER: n/a

▶ CHILDREN: n/a

▶ CLOSE FRIENDS: Gaius Julius Caesar (deceased), Titus Pomponius Atticus, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cleitus, Strato, Marcus Porcius Cato (uncle, deceased), Aristus, Gaius Cassius Longinus (brother in-law)

▶ NOTABLE PAST RELATIONSHIPS: Claudia (ex-wife, divorced)

▶ GOD-MODDING RIGHTS: n/a

▶ MISC: