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[nolessthanseven]

character name: Isabelle Lightwood
fandom: the Mortal Instruments
timeline: Immediately following Simon's revival in City of Ashes
character's age: 16/17

powers, skills, pets and equipment:

Isabelle is a Shadowhunter - or Nephilim - like the rest of her family, and is rather skilled when it comes to fighting. Her main weapon is a gold electrum whip, normally concealed around her wrist as an intricately designed ‘bracelet’ of swirling lines inked into her skin or looped on her belt. Like other Shadowhunters, she also uses an artefact known as a 'stele' - a glass rod used for Marking runes onto her skin, or the skin of other Shadowhunters - and a number of Seraph blades. She also uses daggers of varying sizes, from thin glass ones to proper knives that are normally seen. Her Nephilim blood also provides her with naturally occurring strength, agility, stamina and coordination, in addition to whatever runes she might be Marked with, such as those for balance, strength, and healing. There is a rune for virtually everything, as is stated in canon, and these can be used at any time, providing one has a stele with which to Mark oneself. Most runes are temporary, but some are permanent, such as the one for the Sight, Marked on the dominant hand; those runes that are temporarily tend to fade after a few hours, or a day at most.

Though she's been trained to fight on her own, Isabelle tends to prefer working in groups, often with her brother, Alec, and adopted brother, Jace. As such, her fighting style, while more than able to be adapted to one on one fights, generally reflects the necessity of having one or both of the other Shadowhunters there with her. She tends to be the one to bring up the rear in any sort of stance, which suggests that she either may not necessarily be as skilled as Jace or Alec, or simply that she's better at covering them. She is often used as the bait, in a sense, drawing out the demons that they hunt, and luring them into a false sense of security. She also has on her at all times a large ruby pendant that pulses when demons are present either near her or in a high enough concentration for the ruby to detect.

canon history:

Isabelle is one of the Nephilim, part of an exclusive world not often seen by what they know as mundanes - normal people. It's divided into those with some demon blood, being faeries, vampires, werewolves, and warlocks - otherwise known as Downworlders; those with the blood of the Angel, being the Shadowhunters themselves; and full blooded demons. Though demons come from other dimensions, it doesn't stop there from being a necessity for Shadowhunters: though they live unknown and often invisible to mundanes, they act as a sort of soldier-style police force for the world, killing off any demons who threaten the mundanes on any level, and generally upholding what they call the Accords. This is the agreement between Shadowhunters and Downworlders that allows for a very tentative sort of peace, allowing the Nephilim to keep the demons at bay. The Downworlders don't get involved in Shadowhunter problems, nor the problems of the other groups around them, sticking to themselves.

As the middle child and the only daughter of Maryse and Robert Lightwood, Isabelle is used to being the most prominent one of the family. Her family was once a very well-known and respected Nephilim family, prior to the Uprising when Maryse and Robert initially chose Valentine Morgenstern’s side over the Clave, having believed him to be in the right. They were part of a group known as the Circle, created for the sole purpose of waging war against anything that wasn't fully human: this included anything with any drop of demon blood, such as the Downworlders. They quickly found out that they were wrong when Valentine was said to have told everyone that they were his best lieutenant; he played their loyalties against each other, and that, combined with the extensive bloodshed at the Uprising, eventually led to the Lightwoods walking the floor, so to speak. Though they surrendered to the Clave, the Inquisitor had to find a suitable punishment for betraying the Clave: she chose for the Lightwoods to leave Alicante, known as the City of Glass for the way the demon-repelling glass towers glitter, and move to New York. Because they chose to make penance to those betrayed by hunting down the other members of the Circle - Valentine’s rebel group - their punishment was less harsh than it otherwise might have been. As such, Isabelle received education from her parents and Hodge Starkweather at the Institute where they resided in New York City, alongside her family and Jace Wayland; however, their family is still not seen in as positive a light as it once was, and they seem to be walking on eggshells, particularly where the Inquisitor is concerned.

Isabelle lived primarily in the Institute, a sanctuary for wandering Shadowhunters that is glamoured to appear as a broken down old church to mundanes, but is, in actuality, a grand Gothic-style cathedral. As her family was exiled before she was even born, her entire life has been spent in New York City with her two biological brothers, Alec and Max. When she was eight or nine, Jace Wayland was sent from Idris to live with them; he quickly became family, as he studied alongside Alec and Isabelle. She got a very early start on training and the world of hunting demons, having been raised from birth to be a capable fighter alongside Alec, and later, his parabatai, Jace. Since her parents still went on various trips to Idris, she was well-acquainted with being tutored by Hodge, another member of the Circle who had been exiled out with them and bound to the Institute, in all manner of things from the academic to otherwise.

It was initially on a simple mission to kill one demon that she met Clary Fray, who, though she appeared to be a mundane, could see her, Alec, and Jace while they were glamoured. They found quickly that Clary's mother was Jocelyn Fairchild, an exiled Shadowhunter and the wife of Valentine, who had chosen to forsake the Nephilim life and live as a mundane. Clary's memories and Sight had been bound by the warlock Magnus Bane since she was small, thereby keeping her from seeing the telltale scars of a Shadowhunter on her mother, and from seeing everything else around her. It turned out that Jocelyn had taken the Mortal Cup with her when she escaped from Idris, which is one of three primary Shadowhunter artefacts known as the Mortal Instruments - the Cup is used to create more of the Nephilim, though Valentine intended to use it to create an army to follow through with what had initially failed with the Circle.

Along with Clary, Jace, Alec, and Simon Lewis, a mundane Clary knew from childhood, they began to search around for signs of the Cup. In the process, Simon fell for Isabelle's preternatural beauty and she led him on for a while, seemingly protective of him at times and completely uncaring at others. It was because of Isabelle's Downworlder connections that they initially got to Magnus, finding out the truth about Clary's memories; this was also where Simon ingested a faery drink and was turned into a rat that is then taken back to a prominent vampire lair elsewhere in the city, thereby forcing the group to retrieve him. He later changes back to normal. Eventually, they find that Jocelyn had been kidnapped by Valentine, who had been thought of as dead until this point: it was a shock to everyone when he returns. When they found the Cup, and Jace and Clary return it to Hodge, it turned out that Hodge was still loyal to Valentine, and had merely been biding his time. Hodge betrayed them all, handing the Cup off to Valentine, though Isabelle and Alec wouldn't find out until later.

Promptly after the betrayal, Maryse returned from Idris with Max, and kicked Jace out of the Institute for being a spy for Valentine. He was then jailed by the Inquisitor for the same reasons, despite protestations from both Isabelle and Alec, and sent to the City of Bones to be watched over by the Silent Brothers. When Isabelle, Clary, and Alec head there, responding to a distress call in lieu of the adult Shadowhunters, who had been responding to the death of a faery in Central Park, they manage to rescue Jace after all the Silent Brothers had been found killed. It came out later that Valentine had stolen Maellartach, otherwise known as the Soul-Sword, the second of the Mortal Instruments, used in trials to guarantee a Shadowhunter tells the truth. Throughout all this time, Valentine had been collecting the blood of varying Downworlders to change the alliance of the Soul-Sword, killing both a warlock and a faery, and very nearly killing a werewolf. Meanwhile, Jace was placed under house arrest with Magnus until it could be decided what to do with him, which was only broken once when Isabelle contacted Alec with the announcement that they had been called to have an audience with the Queen of the Seelie Court. It went well, except when Clary ingested faery drink and was forced to kiss her heart's true desire, which happened to be Jace despite them both being under the impression that they were siblings, and it was forbidden.

After emerging from Turtle Pond, where the entrance to the Seelie Court was hidden, Simon fled and remained incommunicado until Raphael, the leader of the local vampire clan where they had to rescue Simon from, showed up at the Institute with Simon's body. Though he wasn't quite dead yet, it came out that he was very nearly so, and needed to be buried: he had bitten Raphael and taken in some of his blood, and was turning into a vampire. They took him to a Jewish cemetery, to reflect Simon's beliefs in life, and stood by while he tore himself from the ground, emerging a new vampire fledgling.

personality:

Being the middle child, Isabelle has a neat tendency to draw all the attention in a room to herself, both via her outgoing personality and her extreme good looks. She is not only a beautiful young girl, she very much knows it. It leads her not only to be very popular with the boys, but also to have rather rocky relationships with girls; to say the least, she's more than a little bit jealous of any girls she might meet. Despite knowing that she's gorgeous, she isn't entirely happy with herself: she's taller than most boys, and believes it to make her appear more intimidating than she'd like on a daily basis. She is fiercely loyal to her family and the Clave: if there’s a toss-up between the two, her family always comes first. Even when it seems as though one of her brothers was in the wrong, she will defend their position in some regard, rather than side wholeheartedly with the Clave. She’s extremely close with her brothers and Jace, whom she also considers a brother despite the lack of biological ties. Isabelle is noted to act exactly as a sister should, even to Jace - happy and loving. She has an excellent sense of familial bonds that extends to even the Clave, which acts as a larger family to her, in a sense.

An extension of her unending loyalty to the Clave is her somewhat ‘religious’ personality. While not devout per se, her upbringing has left a clear imprint on her, giving her underlying tendencies that stem from both the strong individuals she’s unwittingly surrounded herself with and the nature of living in the Institution with her family to almost pray in a time of need, drawing on things around her for her strength, even if it’s not necessarily to a higher being. She also tends to not take the Lord’s name in vain, sticking with phrases like ‘goodness’ instead. At the same time, she's been a New Yorker her entire life, and this very much affects her speech patterns. The Clave plays a large part in her life, if not the biggest part, teaching her respect and kindness that she doesn’t often show; when the need arises, however, she is more than willing to show the wisdom far beyond her years and demonstrate the respect deserved. Her strong sense of family comes from this, as well as her ability to simply be a regular girl, with a passion for men and fashion alike. She does tend to have some issues with authority, however; she doesn't take well to her or her family being put down in any regard, and will defend them with a fierce passion unlike any other. She lives for passion, whether it's shown through anger or lust or anything in between, and she lives her life to extremes.

Her tendencies to prefer male company over female likely stem from growing up with a strong-willed mother, whom she resembles greatly in terms of personality, and the three males in her biological family; despite being a proud young woman, she harbours some level of jealousy towards other females, regardless of whether or not she has a stated reason or not. It’s often a rather unstated reason, in fact, and simply an unrealised need to be considered better than other girls that plays off her beauty. She uses this very endowment to secure her role as the ‘eyes and ears’ between her brothers and herself and Downworlders, such as the Seelie Court, among notable others. At the same time, there’s a point at which she is specifically described as looking much like a fairy tale princess, something that makes her very hard to like; being a girl who can visibly take care of herself and look fantastic at the same time, she practically creates jealousy wherever she goes, whether it’s intentional or not. She uses it to her advantage, though, effectively protecting her brothers: since Alec tends to drift towards the background, Isabelle steps forward and takes the attention away from him in a way that makes them both comfortable in virtually any situation.

Isabelle is very much a compulsive flirt. It helps her get places, largely with Downworlders, though whether it’s actually intended to simply irritate her Nephilim parents isn’t understood fully: it is, in fact, another way to keep the attention away from Alec. If Maryse and Robert's attention is on the latest Downworlder she's collected, then it won't be on her older brother. However, despite coming off as unattached to those she dates, she does actually expect something like affection from them. It is later explained as her simply being cautious: her mother, in Isabelle's youth, told her to never trust men because they will always hurt her. This makes her hard to get to really know; she doesn't really know how to love, and seeing people truly in love baffles her to some extent. Her expectations not being met usually leads to an interesting and almost out of character show of disappointment, though she hides it well. She also hides pain incredibly well, likely as a defence mechanism for being seen as just a weak hanger-on to Alec and Jace; the few times she is recognised as in pain or injured, she reacts with just a small whimper, barely audible. Just like she is baffled by the idea of giving herself over completely to love, she is baffled by willingly welcoming any kind of sadness.

One thing she doesn’t hide well, however, is her innate appreciation for the finer things in life, such as sleep. Interrupt her beauty sleep for any reason less than life or death, and the reaction is always the same: exasperation to the nth degree. It’s possible that even if it were life or death, she would act as if it were an inconvenience to some extent. If it’s a matter of the heart, though, Isabelle sees it as even more exasperating in nature - further proof of her natural feminine superiority, as she likes to call it. She believes that she is more than able to use everything she's given as a means to get whatever she wants; she uses her looks to further her goals, though considering the relatively innocent nature of aforementioned goals, this rarely poses a problem.

Just like her compulsive flirting, Isabelle is a social butterfly with an innate appreciation for shoes; her personal motto is ‘nothing less than seven inches’ is used to reference both her slightly off-colour wit and her adoration for beautiful footwear. She loves to go to parties and nightclubs, which helps her meet all of those she isn’t supposed to know: she actively fosters a number of connections throughout the Downworlder world.

why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting?

Isabelle is used to weird situations, and is rarely fazed by anything people throw at her. As such, there's very little in Anatole that would truly shock her to any extent. She's also incredibly capable of taking care, not only of herself, but also of others if the need arises; she's meant to be a protector without recognition, and wouldn't hesitate to step up to any of the creatures the Mist throws at her.