#madison2

amber followed in her older sister katie [cassidy]’s footsteps. impressed by her older sister’s panache, amber herself set on a somewhat rebellious route. with her mother’s smothering possessiveness over her children and her growing violence towards them, fighting back against nicole [kidman] seemed like the only logical thing to do. but while amber had the independent, rebellious streak in her, she was also more sensitive to her mother’s exploitation and reprimanding. her childhood was spent skirting around her mother’s rules, but often getting caught and slapped around for it. unlike her older sister, however, amber never grew to be quite as resentful of her parents - despite nicole’s violent outbursts and daniel [craig]’s overseas affair that left amber with two half-sisters. daniel’s affair and her half-sisters’ true parentage became the family secret, the elephant in the room that no one was allowed to talk about. despite all of that, she never truly resented her parents. until they decided to marry her off.

chris novak [pine] was a polish visitor in america. a distant relative of her great aunt meryl, chris had been brought in as a suitor for amber’s cousin, tamsin [egerton]. but tamsin had always been somewhat of a wreck; she tried to throw herself at chris and thoroughly disgusted and scared him off. the madison family, not wanting to let a catch like chris get away, turned their eyes to the next marriage-aged girl in the clan - and with katie gone off doing her own thing, it was naturally amber who fell to the blade.

amber, who’d wanted to go to college, was instead married off to chris, a cold, calculating, older polish man. her wedding brought madison corporation property assets in warsaw and an union of two powerful families, but left amber with a loveless marriage. amber, emotionally fragile after being forced into marriage, gave in to nicole’s pressures. she got pregnant less than a year after their wedding, eventually giving birth to three kids over the years - tomasz, five; teodor, four; and kasia, two. her own little form of rebellion in her marriage comes from her calling her kids tommy, theo and kassy respectively, if just to annoy chris.

as with most of the cross children, jensen was born into a happy home to two very loving parents. he came in six years after his older sister, lena headey, but despite the age difference, have always been close. his childhood was typical, if not idyllic. his father was a fisherman and his mother a nurse. arguments with his older sister were resolved after quick tussles in the mud, fights that he almost always lost as a kid. he grew up with a healthy interest in cars, the outdoors, girls and the family-instilled belief that he didn’t need money to be happy, just loved ones around him.

he was particularly close to his cousin, clara [jaime king], with less than a year separating them. as they entered adolescence, their summers were spent drinking and causing havoc, running around doing all the typical teenage things expected of them. the two of them were a team, utterly inseparable. they took clara’s younger madison cousin, josh dallas, under their wing, treating him like their kid brother.

at sixteen, jensen knew that clara was troubled, if brilliant. she’d made it a point to tell him about her family’s batshit plans of finding her a suitor and marrying her off to help expand the madison family business. she confided in him about getting to know one of the suitors. about how they had sex. about how, several weeks later, she found out she was pregnant. 

clara came to him, asking to borrow some cash and divulged her plans of running away and settling in maine. hesitant as he was, he followed through with her request, bidding her goodbye in the dead of the night and making her promise to stay in contact.

over the next eighteen years, a lot of things changed in his life, but he never stopped loving his family as fiercely as he did. he opened up a garage with his cousin, jeffrey [dean morgan]. he watched his sister struggle to raise her daughter, shelley. he helped when shelley herself became a teenage mother. he stood on the sidelines, unable to do anything as his father slowly but surely succumbed to alzheimers, losing his memories of who they all were. clara came back to providence once in a while, mostly during the summers, dropping off her twin boys at his place while she ran off to do whatever her little heart pleased.

he went through his share of women, found himself in good relationships and bad. but none turned out to be such a mix of both the good and the bad until he met katie [cassidy]. she was a madison and part of her wanting to date him was to piss off her parents. she was hot, she was funny, jensen was all in with her. but what started out as a meaningless fling quickly became more. their relationship was heated and passionate. they found themselves fighting as often as they fucked. their relationship moved too fast and flared too hot. they would break up and then make up, going through these endless cycles till he was left feeling exhausted.

five years ago, he had a chance meeting with annaleigh [leighton]. though just twenty at the time, she was pregnant with her first baby, the wife of an influential madison. they built a gentle friendship, and jensen found himself adoring the younger woman, with all her spirit and warm smiles and heart. his affection for her grew over the years, until slowly, it dawned on him that his love for her wasn’t purely platonic.

it was around the same time that his relationship with katie hit another roadblock. after six exhausting years of being with the high-maintenance, expensive katie, their relationship had reached its lowest point. he was ready to ask her to move out of their house, to call it quits for the last time. until she told him she was going to have his baby.

he was floored, devastated and happy all at the same time.

always having been the good guy, he decided to stay, to help raise his unborn child with katie.

rebellion runs in katie madison’s veins. with a mother like nicole [kidman], who could blame her? katie, the oldest child of nicole and daniel [craig], always had a feeling that there was something amiss in her parent’s relationship. that love, that spark, that she’d grown so used to reading about in fairytales and seeing on television, didn’t sparkle between her parents. while her dad played the part of the good cop, always having been caring and adoring, nicole was definitely the bad cop. her mom ruled their household with an iron fist, using violence to enforce discipline. of course, all of that went on behind daniel’s back, giving nicole the opportunity to appear like the perfect mother when she was anything but.

katie developed a fuck-it attitude early in her life. after the whole fiasco with her half-sisters samara [weaving] and sasha [pieterse], katie lost a lot of respect for her parents. the harder nicole tried to reign her in, the more katie rebelled. she became a total party girl in school, staying out late, sleeping with boys, drinking and drugging and fucking and doing everything she could to piss her mom off.

when she moved back to providence after college - she went to wvu instead of the madison family alma mater, brown, just to spite her mom - nicole did her best to set katie up with a respectable suitor. katie, not wanted to be forced into an arranged marriage with some guy she barely knew, refused. she flew the nest again, leaving younger (and marriage-aged) sister, amber [heard], in the dust. the next time katie returned to providence was to attend amber’s marriage to chris [pine].

fast forward a few years, katie still hasn’t gotten rid of her rebellious streak. she does what she wants, when she wants. she even started dating jensen [ackles], a member of the cross family, because she knew it would get under her mom’s skin. what katie didn’t count on was how genuinely amazing jensen actually would be. she fell for him hard and she fell for him fast. while her dad gave them his blessings, katie and jensen’s relationship wasn’t exactly paradise. their personalities clashed and they fought as often as they fucked. their relationship went through endless cycles of breaking up and making up again, breaking up and making up, rinse and repeat.