Theodora Capet

Princess Theodora

Her Imperial Highness Princess Theodora (full name: Theodora Irene Marie Antoinette Capet) is the second daughter and fourth child of Emperor Andreus I Capet and Empress Theodora Pelopenies (after whom she was named). Her elder siblings are Prince Andreus Capet, Prince Constantine Capet, and Princess Anna Capet. Her only younger sibling is Princess Zoë Capet. She is the niece of Prince Basil Capet and Princess Irene Capet.

Princess Theodora is that type of unfortunate royal who is utterly unsuited for her position. Physically she matches the image, and few doubt that she will grow to be a beautiful young woman, but there is more to the maintenance of the illusion of majesty so necessary to modern monarchies than beauty - what one says and does is just as important, if not more so, and it is here that Theodora fails as an imperial princess. Her friends ceaselessly gossip in court circles (and worse, to the press) about how Princess Theodora can't stand the rigid formality of the Imperial Court of Christ Pantocrator. She clumsily stumbles through the rituals of the court, and is generally regarded as being utterly unreliable, although personally quite charming.

Throughout 2003 Theodora was the subject of tabloid scandal after scandal after she was banned from entering the Imperial box with her family at Mass for a year as some sort of penance. To the gossips in the court (which attends Mass with the Emperor daily), the sight of the Princess kneeling at the steps up to the Imperial box rather than climbing them provided all sorts of grounds for vicious rumours. The reason for the public and humiliating nature of the penance have never been made clear, but tabloids being what they are, stories circulated that the Princess had been involved with everything from court plots to drug use to drunken orgies. The Imperial Court of Christ Pantocrator made no official response to the vicious libel in the tabloids, which was eventually used by the United Christian Front as an excuse to give the Ministry of Cultural Development the power to censor the press. Given Princess Irene Capet's close relations with many leading churchmen, and her agenda of expanding the ministry's powers, some cynical defenders of the slandered Theodora now suggest that the public penance was, all along, designed to provoke exactly the sort of vile reaction in the tabloids it provoked. Such allegations have never been proven (or repeated in public), of course.

After the happy marriage of her sister Princess Anna Capet in 2004, the absence of the Emperor's favourite has seen his attitude to Theodora soften somewhat. He is now less likely to reduce the unhappy Princess to tears for the slightest mistakes in court protocol than he once was. Although Theodora is constantly aware that she doesn't live up to her father's expectations, as she has matured she has slowly grown to accept that.