Lydia Montag
From DirtyWiki
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Out of Character
Lydia's backstory is missing lots of details. Not an accident. Actually, it's the same with a few of Rue's characters.
In Character
Specifics
Full Name: Lydia Emily Montag
Nickname(s): Spot, Shep and Lyds.
Species: Human (believe it or not)
Birthdate: November 1st, 1986
Birthplace: London, London, England
Hometown: London (Soho)
Currently Resides: Soho for now.
Family: Grandparents Kiora and Lukas Montag, father Alexei Montag, mother Leonore Hammond, brother Guy Montag, uncle Jonas Montag, aunt Renée MacGruder, and thirteen cousins MacGruder.
Sexuality: Bisexual
Relationship Status: Somewhat single; mostly estranged from Faolàn Kavanagh, though she's still close to his sister.
Schooling: Went to primary school in London; dropped out at twelve.
Occupation: Sex worker who's working on becoming a mechanic instead/also.
Detailed Information
Physical Description
Lydia is 5'3", with only a slightly too-skinny body (she needs to learn the merits of three meals a day, clearly, something she doesn't do simply due to time) and dark brown hair a little longer than her shoulderblades. She is leggy, which to her has always been a merit, and pretty pale, considering breeding. (German men and Scottish women have a tendency to have pale children.) The only distinguishing mark about her besides her typical second-rate attractiveness (pretty for hire, but not pretty for a photoshoot) is a birthmark on the tip of her nose. There's nothing very special about it, it's just weird enough to notice.
Personal Information
Lydia's a West End brat. This is evident in most of what's about her; an amateur prostitute turned professional sex worker who uses vulgar language, talks fast and acts faster, plays people if she has to, and works to support a family living in a messy tiny flat. But that's at first glance, and at first glance she is the stereotype.
Looking closer, though, Lydia is a giver. That's a lot of what she's always been -- sacrificing education and private funds for her family not by force but because she could, and that's not the stereotype. She's also happy -- not a Stockholm syndrome sort of induced-happy thinking, but genuinely happy. Lydia has always been shameless, blunt and occasionally manipulative. These are not results of her earlier, rather seedier career -- these are most of the traits that made her good for it. She got them from her mother, who, considering those traits, made a perfect actress indeed.
She's kind to those she loves, to the point where she'd do anything shy of death -- she's not quite that much of a giver, and does value her own life over just about anyone's but her little brother.
Lydia is also a polymath – though not to the prodigial extent of Avery, she does have several wide-spanned talents. She has a natural knack with mechanics, and is almost an instant genius at building and reconstructing things – anything from motorcycles to lifts to keyholes. That's why she's so good at breaking into things (or alternatively out of them).
Also, she's a totally shameless fan of John Cameron Mitchell, and can be caught singing songs from 'Hedwig' when thought alone.
Backstory
The Montags, as a family, were never much. Alexei Montag was a grocer from West Berlin, complete with the funny last name to go with the occupation's requisite. Leonore was a London librarian who'd spent time abroad, and having found herself married to a man named Montag, started calling him Guy. Having never learned to read English, he didn't quite get it.
Eventually (and this is the part that Lydia doesn't know too well), Leonore got it into her head she'd be a wonderful actress, and wanting to do the best for his wife, Alexei agreed to her plan and the two of them moved to the West End of London, Leonore pregnant with Lydia during her run of auditions.
And Leonore, maybe surprisingly, did make a good actress, and the family did remotely well, Alexei working at another small grocer's as a secondary income, and Lydia in school. She was a good actress, that is, until she got pregnant again when Lydia was ten. She lived just long enough to christen him 'Guy Raymond Montag' (once a geek, always a geek, despite the career change), to learn she had no chance to survive through such a damaging childbirth, to kiss Alexei and Lydia and little Guy goodbye. Then, just like that, having been perfectly healthy two days previously (if not very pregnant), she died.
(It was around then that she met Caper and Battle. They both made fun of her semiGermanic voice, but once they got over that became very good friends. Firefly wasn't added to their group until later, but Lydia loves him just as well.)
The family then barely scraped by. Baby's fees, school fees, food fees and Alexei's job was never very good. They had always relied on Leonore's charming ways and stage talent. Lydia dropped out of school at twelve to stay home to take care of Guy so Alexei could work longer. Alexei never forgave himself for supposedly leading her to do that, despite her insistence that really, it wasn't his fault, and was entirely her decision.
When Lydia was fifteen, she got her first offer for paid sex. Scared of the law more than her father's wrath, she said yes, provided nobody ever knew. This kept happening, though, and when Lydia was seventeen, she was old and skilled enough to use what she'd learned getting a job at an escort service. Sometimes customers would buy her gifts, which she'd keep some of and sell the rest, giving the money to father and brother, and that is how she managed to get the nice clothes she sometimes wears, the ones the company didn't pay for.
Sometime in there, at around thirteen or so, Lydia met Thierry Clannagh, a boy from the North who spent weekends with his estranged father in London. The two of them became friends, followed by lovers simply in the romantic sense. They never slept together. They never got to, as Thierry died in 2001, right in front of Lydia. (She spent the next year or so crying on her boys, especially Battle, who she also began a purely sexual affair with. It was Caper who got her romantic attention – they were together until she ended up landing him in hospital.)
This may explain why, perhaps, Lydia is uncomfortable with certain phrases in Gaelic -- he'd always promised she would learn them once they were married. Not nice, Thierry.
But in ten years of relative comfort, and nine years of squalor, and Lydia's still helping take care of Guy as Alexei gets older. And yet, life was still pretty boring until the day she happened upon Tesco's in the early morning and just happened to be the only witness to Gabriel Thorne's murder. Clearly, Lydia wasn't part of the plan. She screwed the plan up, too, because she was certainly there, and as she saw him fall, became almost immediately fond of Derek, willing enough to have her witness testimony bent in her favor.
Of course, it didn't help that she fell in love with the prosecutor – by then, though, even he had been convinced to sway to Derek's side of things. Her part of the trial wasn't staged, however. Their relationship was solidifed, really, confessions and all when they were both busy being held hostage in a small bank in Galway by Rick Foster and three of his not-quite-friends. It could be said that Lydia's bad luck was half to blame for the event, but Lydia's mechanical talent (as well as subtle skill in manipulation) was entirely to thank for their escape. Not that Faolàn's two sisters and the other pair the Kavanaghs had taken in didn't yell at them anyway.
Life went on for Lydia mostly as normal, however, until Claire Camden and John Camden's wedding, when a conflict between Faolàn and Tierney ended in Faolàn's telling her he was somewhat less (or perhaps more) than human. She didn't really care, though, and actually is of the belief that sharing a secret so intense strengthens a relationship (see the way she and Battle and Caper are the only ones who know every detail of Firefly's abilites).
It got even less normal when Natasha Walker visited Lydia and Battle bringing a message along from Thierry, who he'd actually only spoken to days previously. Lydia and Battle both almost instantly believed him, however, and she's coming to terms with what Tasha told her.
Possibly because of her association with Tasha, and possibly because of her association with Faolàn, but most likely both, when Tasha, Fabian Fitzwilliam and Cary Vaughn-Blair asked Faolàn to fly them to Chicago to take care of a murderer, Lydia got to go. For her, it was quite a trip, and she got to attend to the ritziness of the Sheraton Hotel, make her cousin Spinner pretty damn jealous, and ended up acquiring another cat.
Right now, she and her little brother are also housing cousin Emory MacGruder when he's not at the Athenaeum with Kita and JD, as well as the frequent visits from Bernard, Felicity and their daughter Dora from Italy.
