Paradise Loste

"Better to live a pastoral life with a um, I mean a hypothetical girlfr-significant other in Eden than it is to rule in Hell"

Paradise Loste (she/her) is the daughter of the Prince from The Garden of Paradise written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Personality
Paradise is a very disconcerting person. Your very first impression of her would be of a nervous soul, one who seems to worry about any wrongdoing. Of course this impression never lasts. Visible in her posture and in her eyes is a feverish intensity of emotion, one poorly concealed under a fragile facade of the ideals she’s trying to live up to.

Paradise places a lot of effort into presenting herself as a pious person- almost more than actually being pious. It’s insincere, blatantly so. Paradise has a hard time demonstrating any sort of sincerity in her behaviour because her mind and her values always seem to be elsewhere- Paradise doesn't seem to know what ideals she is trying to live up to at any given time, and seems torn between them. In general, she’s pretty weak willed.

In fact that’s the best way to describe Paradise. She holds lofty ideals and ambitions in nearly every aspect, and has an intense desire to live up to expectations. However these often conflict. Whether happiness can be found in freedom or in order, whether dedication to a single cause is helpful or harmful, whether she deserves to go to paradise, or even if she wants to, she has no idea what her direction in life should be. She is a chronic overthinker, obsessed with figuring out the universe’s plan, and following it.

However this makes her miserable. She constantly second guesses herself and what she should be doing. Her story features a Prince who believes he can be better and resist temptation but inevitably fails. Paradise wants to think that she truly can be better, but at the same time, she’s terrified that she’s not. This makes her fluctuate between periods of intense feverish conviction, and periods where she simply gives up, deciding to live hedonistically. After all, in all likelihood she’s damned anyway, so what is the point in suffering now?

Speaking of suffering, Paradise has a knack for it. She has an intense martyr complex, one which causes her to refuse all human kindness offered to her. It’s no secret- Paradise is certain that misery is the purest form of goodness. She considers happiness almost dirty, and anyone who indulges in niceties depraved. She is an extremely melodramatic pessimist, who is convinced the world is against her. She believes wholeheartedly that fate and her destiny have trapped her on a singular life path, that it’s a way to forcibly control her. She resents it, resents being controlled by whatever higher power it is. She's intensely repressed.

When it comes to her relationships with others, Paradise is very very awkward. She overshares everything she's thinking with whoever she's talking to. It's very clear from these exchanges that she dislikes all the limitations her pseudo-religious lifestyle holds, and is more than slightly obsessed with the idea of pleasure, of doing all the things she deems sinful (but other people would deem well… normal.) Paradise is also pretty obsessed with the notion of greatness. She wants to be more than human, more than herself. It’s something she constantly represses through weak attempts at humility.

Paradise is an incredibly shifty person. She's a liar and an unreliable narrator, who rarely seems to give a clear answer to anything when asked directly. Although she's never private with her thoughts and feelings, she seems pretty averse to the truth.

She tends to look straight through people, as if they aren't there to begin with. Paradise is a pretty big believer in solipsism-the idea that she's the only real person and that everything else is a construct of her mind. She often analyses people as if they were constructs of her subconscious meant to tell her something, or trickster figures sent by a conniving higher power to mess with her. While she doesn't always believe in it, by her own admission, if she's not a lesser god of some description, she would be very shocked.

Paradise is vehemently anti-establishment and anti-industrialisation. To her, anything that tries to overwrite the natural world and destroy tradition is evil. In-keeping with this, Paradise strives to be completely self sufficient. She makes and does everything herself, from making clothes to growing food, and in situations where she isn't capable of doing things alone, she quite simply goes without it. She is someone who likes to work harder not smarter, due in no small part, to her martyr complex. Paradise would rather drive herself to the point of collapsing just to fulfil arbitrary goals than fail, even if the success is meaningless.

Weaving
It's nothing like good hard labour to keep you humble… or so she says. She likes making very detailed fabrics so that she can look just as beautiful on the outside as… wait that's not very humble...

How does Paradise come into it?
After the Prince got cast out, well he had no idea what to do with his life. He wanted to atone, but had no idea how. He ended up casting away his duties as prince, and left on a journey to find himself. He joined a rather (ahem) suspect religious sect, and was never seen again.

Well, that is until his subjects came to fetch him back. After all, the king had died and his final wish was for his son to be restored. King Adam however, remained a strange ruler, shut away in a small unfurnished part of the palace. He married his advisor and she ended up taking over the Kingdom’s day-to-day running. The two had a daughter, Paradise, who was um… raised. They can't really recall all the people they hired or all the schools they sent her to but she was definitely raised.

Parallels

 * Paradise is named after the John Milton play about losing one's place in Eden. This mirrors the story's plot which is also about sinning and getting cast out of Eden.

Pet
Paradise's pet is a black haired Afghan Hound named Eden. She originally got her for the sake of aesthetics (after all, a beautiful dog complements a beautiful outfit) but Eden was definitely more than she bargained for. A stubborn, strong willed dog, Eden at times completely dominates her owner. Oh well, Paradise still likes her.

Romance
Paradise is a lesbian and extremely unsubtle about her desire to have a girlfriend, despite how subtle she thinks she’s being.

Trivia

 * Paradise Loste is a very unsubtle reference to the poem by John Milton.
 * Loste is apparently an actual surname although I couldn't really find a meaning for it. The closest I could find was 'Loss' which comes from los which means marsh. Not quite a garden but it'll do.
 * Paradise was created as a love letter to Harry Clarke, a Golden Age illustrator known for illustrating Hans Christian Andersen fairytales, Edgar Allen Poe stories and stained glass windows.
 * Says ‘um’ a lot.
 * Paradise is a quarter demon, on her mother's side. This is why her eyes dilate and contract like a cat's.