Ilandere White

Ilandere White [she/her], born Eglantine Charming, is a 2019-introduced original character, bleh, and bleh. She is destined to be the next White Doe in the opera Rusalka. She is currently attending her Fourth Year at Ever After High. She's commonly known as Dery.

Personality
As a member of one of the most influential families in Ever After, Ilandere strives to be a palatable, peaceful, and well-behaved young woman. Someone the public loves and admires, without dipping into the territory of being too popular, lest the public turn on her.

The first impression people have of Ilandere is that she's incredibly mellow and easygoing. While she isn't in any way sluggish, there's still a noticeable lack of energy in her presence. Ilandere likes to go with the flow, go with whatever other people have already decided, because it really is too much trouble to try and contribute her own thoughts.

Thus, she's not very opinionated. She especially has a very weak sense of justice. Ilandere is alright with letting immoral things happen, especially if it's someone popular or someone she's friendly with that's doing it. Ilandere is the person that sees bullying, expresses her pity, and changes the subject. While she may be perfectly lovely in manners, any genuine acts of kindness need to have some sort of payoff for her. Otherwise, they're really not worth it. After all, nice is different than good.

Ilandere's also not one to pry into others' lives. Even if someone is clearly not okay, but says they're okay, Ilandere will shrug and move on. Essentially, she wants as little stress in her life as possible. She'll keep up her gracious image by asking people if they're alright, but if the chance arises to get out of actually helping them, you can bet she'll take it.

So, she's clearly not a fan of conflict. At least, any sort of conflict that isn't just silly, lighthearted drama. Here are some other things she would prefer to avoid: hard work, responsibility, and any sort of emotional vulnerability.

Ilandere is the first to wheedle herself out of duties, or slip away from the spotlight. She shirks responsibility like a snake sheds skin. That is to say, snakily. If she put her mind to it, Ilandere could be capable of taking charge, but she just dislikes the pressure. She isn't motivated generally, and gives up easily. People end up assuming she's incompetent and doing her share because they don't want her to mess things up.

And that's exactly what she wants. Ilandere isn't dumb. Well, she literally can't be, blessed with a fairy gift of intelligence and all. But aside from that, she's shrewd, and cunning. She intentionally plays up her ditziness and general uselessness to craft a perfect public image. Lovable, endearing, but not to be trusted with any important matters.

You have to admit that she really has it all figured out. All those cogs in her head, and she uses them to be lazy. That's the dream.

Her obsession with a docile public image is justified. Ilandere wants to stay out of the trouble that her illustrious family name brings. It really wouldn't do, having to change plans for pesky paparazzi. Her ideal range of fame is high, so that she's well-liked, but not too high, to the point where she becomes mainstream and thus, easier to hate. The more popular she is, the harder she'll need to try to keep it up, so it's so much easier to purposefully stay out of the spotlight.

And that's reflected in how Ilandere makes friends. Though from a prominent family, she much rather prefers to be the beta of the group. She dislikes any sort of seriousness, much preferring to talk about frivolous matters. The epitome of "if I avoid it, it doesn't exist!"

This means that while she's fun to be around, she's the absolute worst when it comes to anything that has emotional weight. Ilandere's lovely at small talk, but genuine tears will put annoyance into her soul. Why do people need to bring their problems to me and ruin a perfectly fine day? Coming from a rich and influential family, she really cannot relate to some of the things her peers go through, and oftentimes doesn't understand why people try to open up to her about these struggles.

At the end of the day, Ilandere's just a kid who wants to live out a carefree life. She doesn't really care for others too much that well but it's all cool because they aren't her.

Appearance
Ilandere is an East Asian girl of average height, though she's often wearing heels that bring her up from 5'5" to 5'8". Her family is from Macau, and her father is ethnically Chinese, but Ilandere thinks there's a possibility that's she's mixed. Their biological mother isn't talked about often so she doesn't definitively know. And well, Ilandere's never been one to rock the boat on something that doesn't really matter anyways.

Her hair is naturally snow white (hehe), which is visible in her warm pastel pink dye job. It's rather long, relatively healthy, and she usually wears it in waves. Ilandere also goes the extra mile, and died her eyebrows pink.

She has warm light brown skin, and a skinny, athletic build. She's made up of a lot of round edges, but her knuckles are bony and would really hurt if they punched you in the face.

While her eyes can't really be described as doe eyes (too much of a low hanging fruit, man), they're still a very pretty dark brown, almost black. She's fond of false eyelashes, and her everyday make up look contains doing little white dots along her bottom lashes, mimicking a deer's coloration.

Speaking of makeup, Ilandere's very much into the beauty scene. While she is blessed with good genetics, she still goes through a meticulous skincare routine to cover any bases. It mostly stems from her desire to be presentable and marketable as a Charming

Socializing
She loves parties because they're an excuse for her to talk about the most inane things with others and do ridiculous things. The best thing about parties for Ilandere is that the mood is always so lighthearted that she doesn't need to worry about dealing with any serious problems other people have. And if she encoutners one, she can just pretend to be drunk and escape.

Any sort of socializing is good really, as long as it stays fun and cheery!

Beauty Products
hm

Abilities
Unbeknownst to Ilandere, she actually does possess magical abilities. People are drawn to her like a magnet, and are reluctant to think negatively of her. They're inclined to like her, no matter what she does. It's very subtle, but it gives her just a slight edge over others. It's sort of a play on the opposities attract trope found in romance movies.

It helps her get away with a lot, but she just believes that's how everyone is.

How The Story Goes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka_(opera)

How Does Dery Fit Into it?
Ilandere was born as Eglantine Charming, to a family of D-list Charmings. Her father remarried when they were quite young, to none other than Apple White's aunt.

As new members of the White family, it really wouldn't do for their children to be destinyless. There must be something right? That's sort of the reason why the Rusalka DCA happened in the first place. A Fairytale Authority worker got pissed at these high and mighty royals making more work and being generally snobbish so they thought, "hey wouldn't it be cool if I took my frustrations out on not these assholes but their children? *to the tune of Momoland's "I'm So Hot") I'm so smart!"

Thus, Ilandere got the role of the prince, and Adoette got the role of the white deer. Obviously, one child was more favored, and given a much more prominent role.

Now, an interesting thing happened. Ilandere wanted to switch with Adoette. "To make amends," she'd say, "to give you the larger role." Later, she would run to Adoette's room in the middle of the night, tears in her eyes, whispering how sorry she was, how she didn't know what she had condemned her to.

See, the prince in Rusalka dies. Adoette took a long time before she forgave Ilandere. Knowing her sister, it was an honest mistake. She wasn't that bright, and just wanted to give her little sister a bigger role to shine in, right?

Right.
 * Though originally charmings for an undecided destiny, their father remarried when they were young, to none other than apple white's aunt. So they became part of the White family. Their parents subsequently kind of used their status as part of the White family to search for destinies to give their children. This is basically the reason why the DCA happened when no one cared about Rusalka before.
 * Dery was originally the prince, but she switched with Adoette to be the white doe. This is because the prince role was larger and more important, and she wants the relationship between herself and Adoette to be better.
 * Well the prince dies so. nice going. Dery didn't do this on purpose though (or did she?)
 * In any case, Adoette just told her "whatever. i'll do it." so she thinks it's all alright now!
 * she did do it on purpose, but she tells gwen different, and gwen believes her

Viewpoint on Destiny
Since she has no problems with her destiny at all, and honestly considers the entire Royal/Rebel debate to be a huge headache, Ilandere aligns as a Royal. No problems at all, miss kill-your-sister-and-your-roommate.

Name
The surnames are quite boring in this case! Charming is uh, Charming. And White is the same as the Apple White.

Ilandere is a name that means "moon woman". That's not very relevant to anything, but I do think as a name it's quite pretty, and sophisticated. I mostly chose Ilandere because it could be nicknamed into Dery. Back when she was named Eglantine, her nickname was Lan.

Her name used to be Eglantine Charming, which is a little clever yohoho on my part. Eglantine sounds like an adjective, perfect for the name of a Charming. In actuality, it's a noun, another name for the sweet-brier plant. Eglantine being sweet brier is an unintentional reference to how similar Ilandere is to Briar.

Ilandere and Gwen's names not being adjectives signifies the line between them and the other Charming families. When they shed these names and took on their current ones, it represented how eager their family was to gain recognition. Ilandere completely embraced her new name and erased all traces of her old, which shows how little it meant to her, how obedient she was to her parents, how easily she adapted to things.

Hextracurricular Activities
myeh

Trivia

 * Ilandere and Adoette's birthday, September 28, is National Hunting and Fishing Day 2019, a day where the white deer is celebrated. It's also a lovely coincidence, as September 28 is also the birthday of a certain person who she may be somewhat based off of.
 * whom is this person? ;)
 * I generally don't like using the nickname Dery even though that was the whole point of the name Ilandere?