From a young age, Giselle—born “Odessa”—was immersed in the beauty of the palace gardens and the romantic rituals of Shevalan culture centered on love, marriage, and the reverence for Torm and the The Red Knight [Faith].
Born to Alain Derosier, the royal gardener, and Orianne Laurens, a priestess of Torm, Odessa grew up as part of the Shevalan gentry, her childhood and adolescence shaped by quiet privilege and courtly service. Her father—a druid—had been appointed Royal Gardener to His Majesty Lancevale, “The Old King.” With the position came a move from their modest garden estate near what is now Deadwood to a cottage nestled within the royal grounds.
Orianne, a cleric of unwavering devotion, served in the castle’s clergy. Known as a principled and strategic woman, she upheld values of honor, discipline, self-sacrifice, and the delicate balance between heart and duty. Motherhood became her sacred calling, filling her with divine purpose… but perhaps unsurprisingly, all the pious praying in the world did little to soothe the new baby Odessa’s explosive tantrums. Nor would rites of penance, even more unsurprisingly, help her years later as a hormonal teen rampaged through their home.
To keep her daughter occupied, close, and too exhausted to explode, Orianne introduced Odessa to noble-appropriate pastimes that bridged their family's humble roots and elevated station: horticulture, calligraphy, music, and lyrical study, alongside the education afforded to young gentry within castle walls. Orianne and Odessa were known to sing like nightengales, and their duets would move entire temples to tears.
Alain, meanwhile, was officially named the Royal Rosier—keeper of the King’s Rose, a legendary bloom first cultivated during the reign of an ancient Elven king to symbolize sovereign rule. After King Lancevale’s death, Alain would be tasked with raising a new King’s Rose to honor the next monarch. An artist at heart and distant even by elven standards, he poured himself into this work. He rarely voiced his love for his daughter, but he expressed it through quiet, meticulous gestures. Though Elle seldom heard words of affection, her father never arrived even five minutes late to a lunch, the entire time she loved him.
It was in the gardens that the young pre-teen Giselle first encountered ‣ —then “Morwen”—the strange, watchful child newly arrived from the Gur settlement near the Black Lake. Rumored to have seer powers, Sybil captivated Giselle with her dark and tortured presence, and in turn, Giselle’s headstrong, willful passion captured Sybil’s gaze and made it impossible to look away. The two young elves formed a profound connection, one created by the perfect balance of seer’s haunted silence and squire’s hopeful song.
This bond was tested first when the adolscent ‣, then known as Margrave Ryelot, began to make his presence more known around the castle, and worse, began to court the mysterious Sybil du Lac Noire. To Giselle’s horror, Sybil entertained his courting, accepting his gifts and reassuring her “friend” Giselle that these gifts and dates were nothing more than pageantry and Sybil would be a fool to refuse them. Even if Sybil were speaking her truth, Giselle overlooked Sybil’s blatant participation in the scheme and chose, instead, to hate Ryelot for his intrusion on their romance. She bitterly challenged him wherever she could: barbing him when he came to fetch Sybil for an evening walk in the gardens, feeding his horse haylage to give the stallion unfathomable gas, or throwing out what letters she could find between them, especially any marked to her from Ryelot.
Her competition with Ryelot came to a head when he boasted he would hold a mock tournament for gentry adolescents when they were teens, with Sybil as the Queen of Beauty. Like all the gentry of Sheval, Giselle was entitled to basic combat training, however, she excelled in martial combat, especially fencing and archery—so his challenge was well received by a Giselle just waiting to prove her worth for Sybil and Ryelot both.
Giselle and Ryelot fought bitterly in the tournament and Giselle successfully defeated him in several categories, including archery and tilting at the rings, but was laid to mat during the final hand-to-hand combat, defeated by Ryelot. Although Giselle lost, she had put up a surprising fight at the tournament for someone with only basic training, and Ryelot’s targets shifted, from romancing Sybil to removing Giselle from the picture. The young woman posed an issue for Ryelot, who assumed that Sybil’s coyness was due to the young woman’s presence.
Around age 50, Giselle was mysteriously called into military action. The note cited that a military general had seen her at tournaments and thought her a good candidate for knighthood, which would require her to move away from the walls of the castle for her knightly training. This great honor was celebrated by Giselle’s parents: a Shevalan knight is one of the most revered (and romantic) positions in Shevalan culture. The Derosier family would own land after Giselle’s apprenticeship—she’d look like a fool for turning it down in front of her family’s smiling, eager faces.
Giselle journeys from page to squire to knight.
She learns about knighthood from Dame Anaïs Montclair.
Sybil sends her letters and information on battles, giving her an edge in her service. She also tells her that Ryelot is continuing her courting but she is uninterested, still.
Her nameday occurs at the castle and she is knighted there. The Derosiers are granted a rosarium, several acres of orchards, and an honored name as part of her new lordship.