Robert Capio
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Out of Character
Rue never intended Robert to be much at all. Nor did she think she'd ever have to try to explain why an Italianesque name belonged to a British family in the 1660s.
In Character
Specifics
Full Name: (Lord) (Doctor) Robert Ellingsworth Capio
Birthdate: October 8, 1660
Birthplace: Manchester
Hometown: Alnwick, Northumberland, England
Currently Resides: After a long stint in the afterlife, back at Comus House
Family: Wife, Alice Fitzwilliam. Father, Lord Reuben Capio. Mother, Sarah Stuart Capio. Younger siblings, Philip Capio and Valerie Nyström. Son, Fabian Fitzwilliam.
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Married to Alice, at long (long long long) (long) last.
Schooling: Glasscrafting apprenticeship, early on. Medical training later, and then medical school every sixty or so years to keep up with the times.
Detailed Information
Physical Description
Robert is of fairly average height (5'11", which is actually how tall his PB is and not just a sign of the fact that too many of Rue's characters are 5'11") as well as fairly average build for his fairly average height, though he's a little on the skinny side these days. He has brown hair which he keeps fairly short, brown eyes and a face that could be best described as 'slightly pointy.' He's got a birthmark on his left wrist, and otherwise besides the typical sleep-deprived shadows under his eyes, has nothing remarkable about his physical appearance.
The things that really make him stand out in a noticable fashion are his propensity for vests, loose ties, and still that same old off-white hat with the brown ribbon and the thick brim. He also almost always wears brown loafers, but you can persuade him to change the color of the shoes.
Personal Information
Genial and gentlemanly. Professional. Affectionate. Silly. Charismatic. Quiet. All of these are words that suit Robert very well – he's a quietly social, fun if often timid person. Robert loves to try to do whatever crosses his mind, lives to learn things, and is often very calm and personal about it. He'll keep half his mind in his mind and doesn't talk a lot about himself (outside of how he feels about things that are actually being discussed – in that case, he'll open up almost instantly). Early in life he was very bold, and mellowed out nd calmed down as he got older, known in later years as the pensive army doctor.
His romance with Alice Fitzwilliam – actually, spending any time with Alice at all, especially when coupled with the bonus of Harry Sullivan – starting in the early 1960s managed to make him come somewhat out of that quiet shell again. He was only ever boisterous when a part of the antics his friends (and pseudo-sister, actually great-several-times niece Dawn) created, though, and still tended to be the quietest of the group.
However, he utterly failed to act his age and still does. How could he act his age, really?
Robert, as previously stated, speaks his mind. He's never outwardly ashamed of his feelings (even if sometimes he really is, he'll still admit to them when he has them) and believes that hiding things of importance to a person can only be detrimental. He will be sure to say how he feels about a particular personal issue as soon as it is appropriate. The only truly important (to him, anyway) secret Robert ever kept from the people he loved was the one that lead to his crossing over – and even that is no longer a secret. Of course he's kept secrets, but they're never anything important, and not really secrets – he will, if asked, admit to any thought or past event.
He is a terribly sentimental, romantic person, though he's only ever demonstrated it with Alice, who in his opinion is the only one in the world who deserves it. Despite the fact he's never had quite a lot in the way of personal funds, he would – and often did and will – spend every spare cent on her. Taking her places, buying her things, making her happy.
And he isn't wealthy. His family isn't wealthy – running hospitals is not really a argely personally lucrative business. Due to being nobility and having control of the hospitals he does live a comfortable lifestyle, but not rich. Forget what Fitzwilliams and Rémis may have you believe, not every large family containing angels is filthy rich. For the most part, Robert has just spent his life comfortable. He's never been in danger of being poor, but most of his traveling in the last hundred years (of which there was a lot) was funded by work or the Fitzwilliams, and Alice paid for Fabian's schooling.
His favorite color is hunter green, and so it's excellent how good it looks on him and Alice both (though it suits her hair better). He also really won't go out without that one hat, even if it doesn't match his outfit at all.
Robert is usually nibbling on something, often tiny pieces of dried fruits. He has a perfect metabolism and likes to be doing something with his hands, so why not?
Backstory
Robert Ellingsworth Capio, named for no one and for his mother's mother (like many other people) was born very young, and proceeded to grow up. His brth lasted for almost a day, and when he was finally born at 4:01am on 8 October, 1660, it was a miracle in itself that his mother was still alive. Had his father not been there holding onto her, keeping her from feeling the pain, she might not've made it. Thankfully, the hemorrhage was cleared up – Sarah Stuart Capio, Robert's mother, wasn't immortal until 1666, after all.
But Robert was the first child, and for four years he was the only child. Those four years were spent migrating between Alnwick Castle and a building in London, with some holiday time spent in Manchester and in Alnwick's Comus Woods. (The house wasn't built yet – there was a different one there, though.) When he was three, he met the children of family friends – Acton and Eliza de Sune. The Capios and the de Sunes were close, and the de Sunes knew about the Capios being angels, and they were hoping the children would hit it off. As much as a five year old, a three year old and a one year old could, they did. Or almost did. They tolerated one another.
In the beginning of Robert's fourth year of life, he found out he wasn't going to be the only child anymore. Young Robert was absolutely fascinated by his mother's pregnancy, even if he wasn't entirely certain about having a sibling. A brother, his father determined, and Robert immediately insisted on knowing how he knew. Sarah didn't know, after all.
It was explained to Robert that his mother was human, like the de Sunes were, and so wasn't able to tell. This was something he'd never even considered – he assumed that, like him, his mother simply didn't have wings of her own yet, or kept them in all the time like his father did when they were in London. (Back in Alnwick, Reuben frequently kept them out. The people in the area knew that the Duke and his family were more than human and were insanely protective over them, keeping their secrets and hoping their magic would bring them safety and luck. Usually it did.) The idea that Sarah was a different species didn't bother him, though, just confused him a little bit. The idea of pregnancy, on the other hand, fascinated him utterly. He wanted to know about everything, even at such a young age.
And then, in June of 1665, Robert had a little brother. Philip Stuart Capio, named for no one and his mother (like many other second children), had a much easier, shorter birth than Robert had. He was small and misshapen and ugly and Robert thought he was interesting anyway.
Shortly after Philip's birth, the Capios went to London. In September, London burned – their home was safe but there was smoke everywhere. Reuben marched straight into it to see what he could control by magic, which was very little. He couldn't force natural forces backward. The family lost friends, including street urchins Robert had played with, and it instilled in the boy a great fear of fire. All three of them – Robert, Philip and Sarah – became somewhat ill from the smoke, and Sarah's survival was doubtful. That was when, for the first time, Reuben feared for the life of his lady wife in an immediate sense, and she came out of the Great Fire immortal.
They went back to Alnwick. Robert didn't see the square mile of London again until the mid-1700s. Reuben would go alone to handle the government – the others remained. Robert and Philip grew up in relative peace, and from the ages of five to twelve Robert had a fairly blissful childhood. He had friends in Acton and especially Eliza, who became his best friend fairly quickly once she actually talked. They were only a year and some months apart in age, and Acton was two years older than Robert. Eventually they became somewhat of a foursome, with Acton leading his younger minions Eliza and the Capio brothers. They played with the hounds, of which there were many. They pranked people. They got into trouble. They explored. They got in the way a lot.
Unfortunately for Eliza and Philip, who were bored by it, the younger three were tutored together. Robert loved it. Robert took in knowledge like a drain takes in liquids. He wanted to learn everything there was to know about everything, starting as young as six. Acton, the future lord of somewhere else, was trained separately. Where Robert had an innate hunger for knowledge of information, Philip wanted to see everything there was to see of everywhere, and Eliza wanted to know everything there was about people. It started out like that and remained like that as long as they were together – and longer.
When Robert was eleven and Eliza ten, the two decided they'd try kissing. No surprise that they were each other's first kiss, as they had been betrothed very young. No one intended for them to actually marry, but the parts were played.
On Robert's twelfth birthday, he was apprenticed to a glass-smith, whose name I really need to decide on at some point. During that year, Robert both learned a lot about glassworking and about getting in trouble – two separate instances with rifles, things he should've never touched and never will again led him to accidentally killing a horse and accidentally shooting the scrotum of a landholding agemate. He was indicted for the horse, but not for the testicular injuries. He had to work off his fine – Reuben was, at least, fair.
Robert also got his wings when he was twelve. Shortly after, he showed Philip and Eliza and a visiting Acton (who, at fifteen, was living in Morpeth learning law) and they all ran up into the tower, which Robert jumped out of, shooting his wings out halfway down and landing gracefully. A large number of people saw, and a small party was held in the honor of Robert's maturity.
All of a sudden, he was learning a craft and learning to control his magic at once. To some this may have seemed daunting; to Robert, it was wonderful. He reached journeyman status at twenty, and started making many of his own pieces. Sculpture and windows and decorative items and bowls and cups and all manner of things. While Robert greatly enjoyed it, he didn't think he was learning enough. He wanted to do many other things – he didn't really want to be Duke, but he had some time before he would be.
In 1681, at Philip's urging, the three of them (Robert, Philip and Eliza) traveled to Ireland. They stayed for three weeks, toured around a bit, tried to stay out of tension as much as they could. While they were there, they befriended a painter named Anraí Ó Súileabháin – a Catholic. The political tension didn't mean much to them, as they were some twentysomethings and a sixteen year old all involved more in art than in politics. Robert never mentioned to anyone being the heir to a duchy, and he and Philip were both using assumed names.
The shock wasn't that they enjoyed Ireland, or that they made a friend, but the fact that Anraí and Eliza fell rather suddenly in love. This was a very large problem, considering the politics of the age – and Eliza had to go back to England with the Capios. The four of them kept it a secret, and Eliza returned to Ireland with them to see Anraí whenever she could.
Shortly after their first return from Ireland, Philip met his intended wife, a Manchester girl named Susan Gyford. Shockingly to Reuben, Sarah and the Gyfords both, Philip and Susan did in fact actually fall in love as well, and married in August of 1682. Robert found himself surrounded by love – Acton had wed by then, and now Philip also, and Eliza had her secret Irishman. Robert didn't have love. Love didn't find him and love didn't really appeal to him enough for him to go looking for it; his true love was in knowledge and learning and experience and he would stay with Philip and Susan and Eliza and Anraí and Acton and his wife, too, when they were around, and simply take things in. Love would fall in his lap when he was ready for it.
Love didn't. But mastery did, and by 1683 Robert had a couple of apprentices of his own, and was operating a shop. That didn't stop him from craving the knowledge of more – and he even wanted, more than anything, to become a physician. No one knew where Robert's sudden urges to study the body so intricately came from, especially as he wasn't human himself, but neither was anyone disputing it.
In 1685 Robert formally started studying medicine, apprenticing to a local doctor. The doctor in question thought training an older man who was going to be Duke someday a ridiculous idea, but then again, according to most people Robert wasn't going to be Duke. He was the second son. Reuben Capio himself played his oldest child, and in 1695 planned to inherit from himself, which, eventually, he did. Robert had to attend the "funeral" of his "father." The entire city of Alnwick, of course, knew it was an act, but the majority of England didn't.
Before that, though, Robert became a doctor – he walked the tables in 1692. The tragedy of Robert's life at that time, the tragedy far larger on a personal level, was not even when Eliza left in 1684 for Ireland and failed to return until a few months later. The tragedy was that she came back pregnant.
Somehow – and no one can really remember how, and I have yet to figure out how but it happened so it's going here anyway – they snuck Anraí into England and hid him in a barn. It seemed like a good idea at the time, anyway. And everything went well up until it didn't. Eliza was a bit old for having her first child. Science wasn't then what it was now. The bleeding, which was similar to Sarah Stuart's experience giving birth to Robert, started and never stopped. Before he managed to become a doctor, Robert watched his best friend die of bloodloss giving birth in secret in a barn.
Eliza, at least, got a proper funeral, and was buried in Alnwick. This was because they kept the secret of the cause of death – and they kept the secret of the child himself, a boy who Philip and Susan snuck back to Ireland with Anraí. They then lost contact, and Robert to this day has no idea what happened to the man or his then-unnamed child. He made Eliza's grave some glasswork, continued in his studies, and tried to move on which, for the most part, worked. If someone mentions her or things that remind him of her, he still thinks of her to this day. The depression resulting from her death only lasted for a year; two, at most.
This was in part because he had a new calling. Robert took an oath, had a new craft, a place in the world. And many of it was rather commonplace – fixing injuries was all well and good, as was helping with troubled pregnancies (something he found himself wanting to be able to do rather more than he'd expected; originally, he had assumed he'd hide from the issue), it was diseases that held his fancy. Not that they were very well-known then, but that was the thing of it. The mystery of them. How they worked, what they came from, what made them tick.
Despite that, he went on simply working at a hospital – at being Alnwick's entire hospital, until he himself became Duke in 1759.
Long before that, though after he became a doctor, Sarah became pregnant again, with herself and Reuben's first child – or perhaps their second, according to public record, their first child being Robert himself, the next proper heir. This time, Robert was able to study the pregnancy with all the fervency he'd wanted to the first time around – and he was there to aid in the delivery, too, when Valerie Kite Capio, named for no one and his father's mother, was born. The little girl was fascinating to the entire family – including, of course, Philip and Susan, who by then had two children of their own, a daughter Felicity and a son Currer.
Backstory: Timeline
Yes, it, too, has a lot of holes. There's so much time to work with here! I will be filling this in slowly.
8 October, 1660: Robert is born.
December 1663: Three-year-old Robert is introduced to one-year-old Eliza de Sune.
June 1665: Robert's little brother, Philip Stuart is born.
2-5 September, 1666: London burns. Robert never can shake the horrible memories. They form a pattern of discomfort with fire.
8 September, 1666: The family leaves London and never returns.
October 1672: Robert turns twelve and begins his apprenticeship.
March 1673: Robert's first experience with a rifle accidentally demasculinates a neighboring boy. He doesn't get in any trouble.
April 1673: He does get in trouble when a month later another accidental discharge with the same rifle kills a horse.
1681: With Philip and Eliza, travels to Ireland for three months and meets Anraí Ó Súileabháin.
1692: Robert gives up glasscrafting for medicine.
March 1704: Robert's little sister, Valerie Kite, is born. Robert hovers over the midwife for the entire proceeding.
1758: Reuben Capio crosses over.
January 1759: Robert becomes Duke of Northumberland.
1800-1804: Attends medical school again.
1890-1895: Attends medical school for the third time.
1914-1916: Works as a medic in World War I. Surprised at what he doesn't know and missing the study, Robert "dies," and then –
December 1916-1920: Goes through medical school for, yes, the fourth time.
1940: Enters World War II, this time in the Royal Air Force. Spent time with Randolf, Anne, Rupert and some other people (possibly even Mir and Pierrick while he was there, too.
1943: Honorably discharged. Returns to England. Works on his hospitals and on fabricating a son, who is him also.
1958: Attends medical school for the fifth time. This is where he meets Sully. His "twin sister" Dawn is attending school also.
Backstory: Prose
- Anxieties: A letter from Valerie to Robert. November 1720.
- A Spring Weekend: A party at Castle Alnwick goes a little bit sour for Sully. April/May 1959.
- Big Deal, Small Change: The loss of quite a bit of Robert's hair. December 1959.
- The Epic Doctor: In which Robert and his set meet Alice for the first time. December 1961.
- The Epic Interruption: Robert and Alice meet again. January 1962.
- The Epic Mutants: Sully, Dawn, Mikey, Robert, Alice, Isabella, pot, a mutant dog child, stolen pants, a twin bed and some unresolved sexual tension. And wings. All because of a heat wave. February 1962.
- The Epic Cough: A tender moment on the tube turns Robert thoughtful and even slightly scheming. March 1962.
- The Epic Approval: Robert asks Randolf and Isabella's permission to court Alice. April 1962.
- The Epic Evening: Robert and Alice's very first date. Quite eventful. April 1962.
Backstory: Simplified
Fabian's father. Alice's husband. Creator, ex-chair and repeated dean of Capio Healthcare and various hospitals.
Also really old.
External Links
Robert's Journal
100 Previously Unstated Facts About Robert That Still Aren't On This Page as of 30 May 2008
