briar. -

i love a good place to hide in plain sight.

Basic Info

Full Name briar lavinia campbell-acton Aliases/Nickname(s) rose/rosie. lady briar lavinia. never use the latter. DOB/Age january 8, 2000 / 25 Hometown/Time Period elmbridge, surrey / present Citizenship(s) british

Notable Appearance

Height/Build 5’5 / svelte Hair/Eyes blond / brown a tattoo of a rose on her ankle and a rabbit on the inside of her left wrist. a scar across her collarbone and another from appendix surgery. gets freckles in direct sunlight.

Employment

Job Title intern Length of Employment she just got here Housing 3 bed in the intern building Recruitment courtesy of stevie and dino, who gave hr the heads up about briar when she was leaving the british army. Work-related Skills fluent in english, german and latin. classically educated in literature, philosophy, rhetoric and ethics. analytical. close-quarters combat & marksmanship; she's trained in both standard issue and improvised weapons. survival skills. extremely calm under pressure.

Personality

Positives + disciplined + reliable + resilient

Neutrals = introverted = realist = principled

Negatives - uptight - unmoored - blunt

briar is technically a noble, definitely an intern, and absolutely a soldier. raised as a military brat with more half-siblings than songs she could name, she spent her formative years bouncing between boarding schools, drill sergeants, and a couple of extremely ostentatious estates courtesy of her estranged parents and several aunts and uncles who could only be described as ‘kooky’. and it’s probably because of this background that she is, at her core, hard-working, loyal, and extremely disciplined. but despite her elite training, she’s awkward in the wild (read: birthday parties), distant by default, and inexpressive enough that someone asks if she’s mad at them, much to her own mortification, at least once a month. emotionally unmoored, but excellent in a crisis, just don’t ask about her family. or her feelings. or if she wants to “grab a quick drink after work.”

History

Family lieutenant general alastair dominic campbell-acton, OBE. british army officer. - father lady genevieve “ginny” lavinia hartwell. artist, philanthropist, rich woman of leisure and marchioness of tavistock - mother. various half brothers and sisters from her father's side. jack callahan. time wrangler. her great-uncle, not that either of them have clocked it yet.

briar was born to alastair, a career soldier and proud product of the upper middle class british culture. married four times, alastair fathered children across those marriages like a man issuing orders - dutifully, without much follow-up. ginny, his second wife, was briar’s mother and after their ‘trial separation’ after two years together became a full blown divorce, Ginny took on the bulk of parenting; if by that we mean ‘she bundled briar at a nanny until they could ship her off to boarding school.’ where alastair was distant and structured about it, ginny floated in and out of briar’s life, presenting her with grand ideas about freedom and the universe, whilst offering their relationship the emotional depth of a kiddy pool. essentially, briar was fucked from the get go and was happy to bugger off to giggleswick at least to get to talk to people.

unfortunately, she very quickly learned the hard lesson that she would not be able to cruise by after a childhood in isolation across various country manners, and spent the first years there (she started at 8 years old) floundering. kids could be mean, and briar wasn’t particularly chatty or social; in fact, she spent a lot of time in her own head. eventually she made friends, people who understood her a little better, but the damage was done and sometimes her isolation felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy. she joined the army cadets at the school with her father’s encouragement and eventually, she was allowed to let her physical prowess and mental toughness speak for her.

next came acceptance into magdalen college, oxford university; something she didn’t particularly want but felt she needed to do to satisfy the expectations of her family, however distant they were. maybe they’d notice her, she didn’t know. she had chosen to study fine art; she enjoyed painting if she didn't tie it too much to her mother. and predictably, again, it was within the university officer training corps (uotc), was where briar found a sense of belonging. they gave her structure, something her scattered emotional upbringing didn’t. it gave her focus and discipline, two things that felt second nature to her. and so she excelled there once again, not because she wanted to be the best, but because she didn’t know how to not do that. other than that her social life was sparse; her friends were elsewhere, and she struggled to make more again. she retreated into herself.

after graduation, briar followed through on the only thing she knew how to do: join the military. the british army just seemed like the obvious next step, not out of patriotism, but for the environment it provided. so for the next few years, briar served with distinction, rising through the ranks with ease. she became known for her precision, calm under pressure, and effectiveness in high-stakes situations. unfortunately, as the years went by, briar started to ask a question in her own mind: was this really it? all that work and still nothing to connect to. she remained completely out of her depth in personal interactions; the military just gave her an environment to hide in. and as time passed, she began to feel increasingly alienated. she finished her contract and never went back.

at 25, unsure of what she wanted from life and with little to no support from her father and a suspiciously quiet mother, she left the military and found herself in the strange, undefined space of civilian life. and it did seem like a bizarre coincidence, at first, that she was contacted by an agency to join their next class of interns. the term time wrangler wasn’t something she understood, but at the very least it promised something different and while details were vague, the idea of applying her exceptional skills to something beyond traditional military training intrigued her.

so she applied, and was accepted, and moved onsite. it was going great. then when her mother finally called her back, she found out through a series of unfortunate events ginny had inherited, and in a few decades, briar would be marchioness briar lavinia hartwell of tavistock, so that’s been something else she’s decided not to unpack while life was going okay for her for once.

Notes/Trivia

briar does not talk about the fact she won awards for art, but she did: the art studio is her happy place and the thing she missed most joining the army. she sketches and doodles on everything, and her sketchbook is full of portraits of others on the base.
provided her mother doesn't have any other kids, briar will eventually inherit the title of marchioness of tavistock. it's a generational title that functionally means nothing and is more of an inconvenience than anything else, but comes with an extremely large inheritance and land that she feels weird about.
she can disarm a man in five seconds, and assemble a rifle in nine.
loves dogs. loves all animals but really loves dogs.
capricorn sun, virgo moon, scorpio rising. better at handling a battlefield than a birthday party, she’s the kind of person who always has a plan, a backup plan, and no idea how to answer "how are you?" without breaking into a cold sweat.

quinn gmt u know it dinosaurheels @ gmail daisy edgar jones

briar.

[No Subject]