User Profile

Name: Dr. Jizabel Disraeli

Series: Cain Saga; Godchild

Personality: Jizabel isn't evil, he's just really, REALLY messed up. (Alexis raised him. Alexis. The guy never had a chance. At least Cain was on his own at 10! ._.;;) Observing love, friendship, dedication and trust in others infuriates him, because he's never had experience with any of the above, and the only way he can deal with it is by telling himself they don't really exist. He's decided that people are no damn good, and that human beings are incapable of unconditional love... and since they can't really love, they're not worth loving. Or even caring about. He includes himself in this assessment of humanity, and takes for granted that he is just as heartless as other homo sapiens. Jizabel, as a general rule, is ice-cold toward people--just as long as "people" doesn't include his half-brother, Cain. He looks at human beings as spare parts and research material... with the exception of his assistant Cassian. (Cassian's sweet but complicated so I'll have to come back to it >.>)

Jizabel has a sort of love-hate thing going on with his younger half-brother, only not in the usual sense. Rather than loving Cain one minute and hading him the next, Jizabel both loves and hates Cain in the extreme 24/7. The attention Alexis lavishes on Cain, while not positive by any stretch, is still attention--and Jizabel seems to have concluded that if he can't have his father's love, "attention" will have to do. He resents the favoritism of his father, and the extremely close relationship Cain has with Riff grates on his nerves. At the same time, even Alexis couldn't erase Jizabel's original, caring nature. On a deeper level, he loves his half-brother like a golden-eyed kittycat.

Like many people who've had severe emotional damage, Jizabel is a great actor. He can be quite charming and seems to prefer playing the part of a sweet, shy, socially inept M.D. when a little deception is called for. Around animals, however, the sensitivity is no act. It's more or less the only situation where his original, childhood personality shows through.

CASSIAN:
Cassian is the one person who's shown Jizabel absolute, unconditional concern and affection. Jizabel doesn't quite know what to make of him, or understand just why he feels a corresponding compulsion to protect Cassian. For now he's just playing it by ear, waiting for it to start making sense.

Timeline: Jizabel will arrive in Payatt a few weeks after Cassian's surgery.

History: Jizabel is one of Earl Alexis Hargreaves's handful of illegitimate children. (His mother was probably unmarried; no mention is made of her having a husband or there being any father figure besides Alexis in his childhood.) Though Alexis could be charming in public, he had a monstrous dark side. Marquis de Sade would have been scared of this dude. No joke. Realizing this, Jizabel's mother fled with him shortly after he was born, even going so far as to disguise Jizabel as a girl to hide him. Alexis caught up with them, however, and appointed himself "Dad"--Jizabel's mother gave up trying to resist after that.

For years, Jizabel never saw the twisted, sadistic side of Alexis. The earl was often away, so whenever he returned Jizabel was always delighted to see him. Alexis went through the motions of being an affectionate father, but the hugs and smiles and kind words were completely superficial. A gentle, sensitive boy, Jizabel's animal magnetism was apparent from a very young age. They lived in the countryside, so he was surrounded by domestic and wild animals all the time. His favorite pet was a lamb he named Snark.

One day, just before Alexis came "home," the servants were preparing a feast (which naturally involved the slaughter of chickens, etc.), and somehow Jizabel stumbled across the scene. He was horrified--here were all these people who had seemed so kind and friendly, killing his animal friends without remorse! Like many young children, Jizabel had never made the connection between dinner and death, and once he did, he completely shut down. He suffered a panic attack and refused to eat for days.

A normal parent would have sat down with his child and given him the "circle of life" speech, or something similar. Unfortunately, Jizabel was stuck with Alexis. The earl's response was to pull a Medea on his unsuspecting son: after keeping Jizabel isolated from his pets, Alexis promised him that he would be allowed to see Snark if he would only come and eat his dinner like a good boy. Reluctantly, Jizabel agreed. After he had finished, Alexis announced that the meat his son had just eaten was in fact his beloved pet. It was at that point that Jizabel became convinced he was going to Hell. He had eaten his best friend; surely this was an unpardonable sin.

Even after that ordeal, Jizabel still believed that his father loved him. It took Alexis explicitly stating that Jizabel didn't matter to him to disabuse him of that idea--which happened as soon as Cain, Jizabel's half-brother and Alexis's only legitimate heir, was born. Alexis still expected Jizabel to serve him faithfully once he became a doctor (and therefore useful to Alexis's secret society Delilah), but he made no secret of the fact that his older son meant nothing to him. Jizabel, believing himself incapable of defying his father's will, did so without complaint.

Partly out of jealousy and partly because Alexis encouraged it, Jizabel made a hobby of tormenting his half-brother. At first he declined to become one of the Major Arcana (the higher ranking members of Delilah), but Cardmaster Alexis was determined that hes son should take on the role of the organization's "Death Card." As part of the initiation, Jizabel was forced to re-live his childhood trauma. As the administrator of the initiation ritual, Delilah's High Priest Cassandra (aka Lord Gladstone) was required to "look into the soul" of the initiate. Once Cassandra knew Jizabel's past, he kept trying to use it to his advantage, convinced that Jizabel was the perfect ally in his ambitions to unseat Alexis and become Cardmaster himself. Cassian, a 35-year-old minor Card trapped in a body twenty years younger (he has some neurological irreglarity; it's like the opposite of progeria o.o;;), tried several times to chase keep Cassandra away from Jizabel, but since he had the body of a 15 year old, there wasn't much he could do.

When Cassandra decided to capture Cain, (Alexis's "Achilles heel"; the Cardmaster had forbidden his minions to physically harm Cain, reserving that right for himself) he and Jizabel made a bet: if Cassandra succeeded, Jizabel would serve him instead; if he failed, Cassandra would give Jizabel "everything he owned". Cain, of course, outsmarted Cassandra and escaped with the faithful Riff. Jizabel decided that an "I told you so" was in order and went to collect his winnings. Cassandra attacked, lunging at him with a sword, but Cassian jumped in front of him at the last second and was fatally wounded. Stunned by Cassian's sacrifice, Jizabel abandoned his usual coldness and turned to another of Delilah's surgeons to help him repay the favor--one who was experimenting with brain transplants. (Jizabel figured that "all" of Cassandra's possessions included the High Priest's body.) He took Cassian and Cassandra to the other surgeon's O.R., informed Cassandra that he would be the first human test of the procedure, thanked him politely for donating his body to science, and put him under. The operation was a success, and Cassian left London with the properly-aged body he had always wanted... and no longer bound to the Cardmaster, who was told that Cassian was dead. After leaving, Cassian vowed to return and free Jizabel from Alexis and Delilah. (Jizabel, unknowing, expects to never see him again and hopes Cassian is out there living a happier life. <3)

Friends (11):

Mutual Friends (3):