>>5199016Things were now finally making sense. The first thought she had when meeting you at the royal ball was burning you to cinder. The only way she knows to love is to feel pain and to push pain onto others. Serpico was literally the only one that didn't run away when she tried to abuse him relentlessly, but why was that?
You see a few more memories of her and Serpico going inside a forest when they were young, something that would contextualize her relationship with him and her workers.
"Fetch me some twigs."
As Serpico caught a few bundles of sticks, he noticed several skeletons of small animals, along with the chirping of a caged little bird. After lighting the cage on fire, the poor creature furiously fluttered and cried before welcoming the sounds of silence.
"Why are you doing this, Lady Farnese?"
"The bird didn't become attatched to me. It was a bad pet. This is my crematory, my holy altar, where I send them away." Her smile was illuminated by the flames as she absorbedly responded to her page. It was far from the first time she did this. That mansion was a prison of her own making, and though she liked to burn things at a young age, she also realised that made her all the more unlikeable and unnaproachable towards people her age.
She purposefully made an effort to scare her servants with her evil side, and the ones who couldn't stomach her poor character traits to see the real her were deemed weak by her standards. She would rather be feared than to be found out that she is the one afraid. Afraid of getting attatched to someone, only so they can leave her to find someone more stable. The one who was supposed to love her the most, was the one who set that rule towards her.
"Father! Father!" Farnese once interrupted a meeting to give her parent a hug, not seeing him in a whole year when the only interaction she had was seeing the tortured inquisitors at her plaza.
"What is it, Farnese? Can't you see I'm in the middle of a conversation?"
"Y-Yes, Father... I apologise!" She held a rabbit plush close to her, one that she got from her father in a family trip when the Vandimions were still close and relatively united.
"Do you still carry that filthy old doll around with you?"
"Huh? Y-Yes, Father."
"Throw it away. I can order them to make you as many as you'd like. Go play by yourself now."
"But-" Farnese felt conflicted in losing the emotional value of her gift for several hollow duplicates, but her father knew what was best for her, so she obeyed in order to approve him.
"...Yes, Father..."
"STOP IT!" The real Farnese slaps you out of your trance by whacking you relentlessly with her torch until she lost her breath. She did not want to be reminded of those memories when she thought she grew past them, but the tears in her eyes were very visible. She did not want anyone to know about the inner workings of her mind, yet she was exposed by the one she least wanted to be laid bare by.
