Theodora Capet

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Princess Theodora
Birth
26 February 1988
Death
N/A
Titles
Porphyrogenita,Dame Commander of the Pantocratorian Empire
Marital Status
Married to Prince Brendan of Holista

Her Imperial Highness Princess Theodora (full name: Theodora Irene Marie Antoinette O'Brien) 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 and the wife of Prince Brendan O'Brien of Holista.

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.

Shortly after her seventeenth birthday in early 2005, Theodora was kidnapped by agents from Vegana (although this is not publicly known with any degree of certainty), who blackmailed her father to withdraw Pantocratorian troops from Syskeyia, where they had been fighting in the Syskeyia-Reich War. When Pantocratoria complied, rather than release Theodora, her kidnappers sold her to a terrorist group under the command of the sidhe Grand Duke Sebben. The group brutalised Theodora until her rescue by Danaan troops (see Theodora's Ordeal). Theodora's kidnapping and imprisonment marked a major turning point in her relationship with her father Emperor Andreus. Through her forced absence, the Emperor realised how much he loved his daughter, and how much he regretted his previous cold treatment of her. The two now enjoy a much more affectionate relationship, although Theodora struggled to gather the strength to move on with her life (see Picking up the Pieces), to eventually marry her rescuer (see Three Weddings and a Coronation).