InsaneJournal

All About Elisabeth
Name: Elisabeth Vincent
Birthdate: 23 September 1906
Age: 34
Citizenship: French
Loyalties: As far as politics go, Elisabeth is outwardly loyal to the Vichy Regime and the Nazi Occupation. In actuality, she cannot stand them and is a passive resistor (for now). Personally, her only loyalty lies with the library.
Occupation: Librarian, assistant in Circulation Department

Appearance: Tall for a woman, and slender, with the body of a former dancer. Elisabeth is proud of her high cheekbones, inherited from her mother, and her gray-blue eyes. She wears her dark blonde hair long and typically loose.
Character PB: Natascha McElhone

Personality: Elisabeth is very closed off and shy, although she struggles to release her underlying desire to help others. Her selflessness comes more from a lack of caring for herself than a deep, philanthropic need to save the world. A spinster, she has never given much consideration to the attentions of men, not out of spite but simple disinterest. Her career at the American Library has sparked a strong interest in the culture and literature of the United States, but it is not something she will easily admit to.

Strengths: Encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of subjects, good at playing to authority
Weaknesses: Inability to connect emotionally, socially awkward.
Skills/Abilities: Expert knowledge of the library and its systems of organization, can crochet, a decent cook, fluent in English, knows some German.

Background: Elisabeth is the only child born to Geoffrey and Marie-Athène Vincent. Her father was a literature professor and from an early age, Elisabeth was constantly reading. Her mother, the daughter of a Parisian trader and his Greek wife, had been a ballerina before she married, and dreamed of her daughter following the same path. Theirs was a life of culture, if not great wealth, until World War I began and Geoffrey was conscripted into service in 1915. He returned home a year later, a much colder and harsher man after losing his leg in battle. This changed young Elisabeth, who had loved her father for his vibrancy and intellect; after his return, she felt as though she had been deceived and that the man she had known was a lie.

In 1918, Elisabeth's mother died in the Influenza Pandemic. Deciding that he could not care for his daughter alone, Geoffrey sent her to live with Marie-Athène's parents. She would not see her father more than a handful of times over the remainder of his life, learning of his death by chance in 1926.

Joseph-Marie and Dorothea Pépin were more than happy to provide for their granddaughter, but the age gap between them only furthered Elisabeth's emotional distancing that had begun with her father's return. They encouraged her to continue studying ballet, which she did until the age of seventeen when she decided she would rather attend University. Her grandparents indulged her, and she graduated at 21 with a degree in literature. She subsequently pursued an advanced degree in library studies and worked at the University's library. In 1931, her grandfather passed away, and she moved back into their house to care for her grandmother. They traveled back to Greece in 1936 where Dorothea eventually died. Elisabeth brought her body back to Paris for burial, then found a small apartment near the American Library in Paris where she had recently been hired. She spent all of her available time there, and within the year knew the collection inside and out.

With the onset of World War II in 1939, Elisabeth participated in the Library's outside efforts to supply books to soldiers in the field. When the Library closed temporarily following the German invasion, she volunteered at the National Library, subsiding on small withdrawals from the inheritance left to her by her grandparents. She returned to the American Library shortly before it re-opened its doors in September 1940 and has stayed on since.