Hellene Panhard

Unlife is never easy for one thrust into the limelight by a respected sire. Michaela, the Prince of New York, Embraced much like the Sabbat did, throwing hastily turned soldiers against enemy forces. Her detractors brought this accusation against her, only to have her shrug her shoulders in response. For those who managed to survive Sabbat attacks and distinguish themselves, the situation became doubly difficult: They shouldn’t have been Embraced in the first place, and when they survived, they inherited the prestige and power that goes with being the prince’s progeny. To anyone not Embraced with a silver spoon in their mouths, these childer were the ultimate representation of princes’ abuse of power. For Hellene, her combination stigma and status was something to be satisfied and overcome. She was Embraced from the ranks of a semiprominent banking family and had spent much of her mortal life learning the business from her father and uncles. Capital from her investments helped finance the Camarilla war effort. Contacts she made during her years inNew Yorkbefore the Sabbat wereoustedplayed key roles in uncovering Sabbat havens. Her intrigues compromised Sabbat leaders; her drivers smuggled Kindred into the city. Through it all, Hellene remained quiet. From the beginning, Hellene resented some of her blood-siblings, who were indeed wastes of the Embrace. Surely Michaela knew this, Embracing them to die, but a few had the temerity to survive. Greedy and jealous, they had little more to do with their unlives than to take what others provided. They abused their position as the prince’s childer, usurping domains and feeding without respect for the established grounds. When most of them died off during the Battle of New York or before it at the hands of Black Hand assassins, Hellene shed no tears. She merely redoubled her efforts. As the provisional prince stepped in, she pledged her aid to him, and her support helped hold the city’s Kindred together. They saw that this onceprivileged childe had made her own sacrifices, and it was the least they could do to act in kind. Times have changed, however, and Hellene has been slow to keep up with them. Maybe New York doesn’twant that stability. The Kindred may want a little more freedom than the traditional Ventrue claims to domain allow for those outside the power structure. Hellene rankles under this roguish vision of New York. Having been able to parlay her efforts in the battle and her seniority into the only sort of socially directing role she could a harpy she wants to refocus herself once again, this time on the princedom. Simultaneously liberal (for a Ventrue) and conservative (because she’s aventrue, at least in the minds of the Kindred as a whole), Michaela favors a policy of reconstruction before restriction. Her own experiences under Michaela’s domain have set the tone she wants to allow Kindred to build domains and become stable. From there, she wants to impose an order on the rapid growth that has already occurred. While she has garnered support from elders, it is those elders who have already taken the opportunity to grow their domains while younger Kindred still feel like they have to test the waters to see what they can get away with. In the end, Hellene feels that she’s owed the princedom, even though she’s loath to express it in that manner. She’s no stranger to hard work, however, and her greatest task may still be ahead of her, in that she must convince others to come around to her way of thinking.

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