Name: Siobhan Aisling Cliodhna OâSullivan
Pronouns: She/Her or They/Them
Age and Birthday: 32, 25 December 1987
Occupation: Professor of Medieval History at the University of York
Hometown: An Bun Beag, Co. Donegal, Ireland
Neighborhood: Avalon Circle
Length of Time in the Cove: 3 months
THE L O N G AND S H O R T OF I T:
âAnd then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.â â J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King
â TRIGGER WARNING: Parental Death, Cancer, Parkinsonâs Disease
1. For the first six years of their life, Siobhan spoke almost exclusively Irish. Their mother and father chose to live in An Bun Beag for a reasonâAn Bun Beag is a Gaeltacht, meaning it is an area of the country where Irish is the predominant language. Raising their child on the language they only learned in their later years of schooling was important to them to carry on the culture. She knew a bit of English, but for the most part, Irish was their first language. Just before her 12th birthday, the family moved to England during the school year as Aileen was offered a Research Chair position at Cambridge and in no position not to take that opportunity. Siobhan continued her studies at the Leys School in Cambridge. Boarding school felt like a cage and despite her parentsâ insistence that it would get better, it never felt less lonely. Siobhan focused all of her energy onto academics. At school, Siobhan was viewed as nothing more than a foreigner who didnât deserve her place among the wealthy elite.
2. Siobhan attended Cambridge like her mother and father. They became a student at Newnham College studying History. Being raised by two historians made Soobyâs falling into academia more like a drop on a waterslide than a smooth transition. As a child, their parents told her bedtime stories, though looking back upon it now they were more like academic lectures than they were stories, about whatever possible topic came to their minds that night. Stories of princes and princesses were never fairytales but were instead cautionary tales of men and women with great power and responsibility behaving foolishly. Sooby was absolutely obsessed with the line of Plantagenet Kings and Queens of Englandâbut particularly Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine. They decided her main course of study while at university would be studying the women of the Plantagenet empire from the beginning to the end. But studying wasnât the only thing Siobhan did while away at school; she became quite popular at Newnham for throwing the best parties on campus.
3. After graduating with a First and with offers of Masters programs from Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity, Yale, and Harvard. Growing sick of England, Shiv packed their bags and moved back to Ireland to study for her MPhil in Medieval History before packing her bags yet again and moving to the United States to attend Harvard and receive an MA in Celtic Language and Literature. They didnât stay in the States very longâjust long enough to get her degree; just as she told herself while at Cambridgeâthe goal of higher education is not to make friends, it is to be the best. And the best she became. For their Doctorate of Philosophy in History, Siobhan attended Oxford University and studied the Kings and Queens of England and their political relationship with the colony of Ireland from the Norman invasion of Ireland to the Stuart Era. Siobhan was then 26 and achieved the only thing they thought they could ever wantâbut still felt like something was missing so she did the only thing she knew how to do: Siobhan buried herself further into her career. She left her long-suffering partner, Adam, and began applying for professorial positions across the UK and Ireland. Shiv wound up taking an adjunct position at Trinity and began writing a book on Empress Matilda, researching the relationship between Matilda and the concept of power. She finished her research by 28 and published her book at 30, then being promoted to a full-time faculty member at Trinity College. Maybe now she could settle down.
4. Siobhan would visit occasionally taking a RyanAir flight to London and riding the train up to the Cove where her parents had purchased an estate. Even she admitted it was quite a nice placeâa place where maybe even sheâd be happy living. It was all short-lived, however. In the early Summer of 2018, her mother began complaining of headaches and suffered from bouts of confusion; in July doctors discovered a glioblastoma and by September she died. Siobhan was heartbroken at the loss of their mother and offered to move in with their father to take care of him. However, he refused, assuring Siobhan that he was in the best shape of his life. That wasnât true, though. Since 2011 heâd been hiding from Shiv a diagnosis of Parkinsonâs Disease for fear it could interfere with their schooling. By December 2018 he started struggling with buttoning his own shirt and taking care of the farm animals on his own and needed to tell Siobhan. Siobhan was heartbroken and continued to try and convince her dad to let her move in and take care of him, but he refused. He would not be the reason she gave everything up. Still, Siobhan moved back to England anyway and got a job at the University of Yorkâs Medieval History department. After over a year of living in York and visiting her father on weekends, her father died in April 2020. Siobhan sold her apartment in York and moved into her parentsâ estate in the little town of King Arthurâs Cove.
SIOBHAN OâSULLIVAN is played by KATHRYN and their FC is ROSE LESLIE
