So, obviously, Sérisse is the character I’ve created that I identify with and love the most. She is just over six hundred years old (even though she looks like she is in her fifties), she’s seen a lot of stuff, she’s experienced loss, heartache, feeling misunderstood, alone, being hated on a mass level, and all of the in between.
Clearly, she is not perfect. She has made some colossal missteps throughout her lifetime. Sérisse was not granted immortality until she was well over two hundred years old (that will be explained later in a different book).
Generally, she describes herself as being “too strange, too different, too much.” Even the way she dresses and presents herself is confusing to the average individual.
Sérisse is more hated than she is loved; primarily becuase she is so misunderstood. She always has a reason for everything she does, but the reason cannot always be revealed right away (and sometimes it never is).
This leads to others filling in the blanks in regard to her intentions. When she was younger, this sincerely bothered her. She would try to explain, to justify, and that made it worse. For a while, she functioned as an isolated intellectual who shut herself off from everyone except her immediate family.
When Languilier fell to the Kethri, this prompted Sérisse to go to the ends of the earth and back to exterminate every Kethri, but as we all know, evil can never truly be eradicated.
Sérisse started trying to then force outcomes that weren’t meant to be. Not for selfish reasons, but she believed it was her duty as sovereign to always fix everything. Controlling the environment was another way to bypass the emotions she needed to deal with. Sérisse pushed herself to the point of exhaustion, collapse, and breakdown.
It was her opinion that she was too old for therapy, that it wouldn’t help her, she knew how to deal with things on her own, etc. When she finally did go, she bucked it at first in her own way. She ashed on the therapist’s rug. She diverted the topic. She got angry, defensive. Eventually, she learned that even a six hundred year old doesn’t have all of the answers, despite her divine gifts.
Sérisse still has her moments, but she understands so much more about herself, what triggers her, how to respond to uncomfortable feelings, etc.
She still ashes on that therapists carpet, tho.
Every. Single. Session.
Because Sérisse d’Argelonne will never stop being Sérisse d’Argelonne.