📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂 i wanna send more but i'll calm myself down
SEND “📂“ FOR A RANDOM HEADCANON. ( still accepting! )
1.) the ancient & noble house beneviento is not nearly as wealthy as one would perceive it to be, and it never truly was. there was a point in time, dating centuries back, where a fortune existed but even then, what few surviving records exist differ on the estimated value of it. regardless, that family was riddled with bad luck long before miranda got her hands on it, and the fortune was lost over time -- between alcoholics and poor gamblers, conniving relatives and inheritance who made off with it bit by bit, scheming spouses which led to a rumored poisoning or two. by the time donna was born, there was maybe a fraction of it left ( which would later be lost in the turmoil post - ww2 ) and so the only card the family had to play was their noble name and societal reputation, that was it. to this day, donna lives relatively moderate and modest, and perhaps the one good thing about her quietness is how no one really has any insight to the truth that house beneviento was in gradual decline.
2.) i choose to interpret the bernadette b. in miranda’s files as a beneviento, more importantly, as donna’s elder sister. born in 1929, she was the original heiress and known as the hope of house beneviento. bernadette was beautiful, clever, and kind-hearted; she had all the proper skills of an elite lady, but was never afraid to help tend to the poor and downtrodden, assisting in their prayers to the holy mother. miranda had tunnel vision on that girl, believing she would be her most successful experiment yet, and was heavily involved in dictating her upbringing. when she was twenty-one years old, she underwent the implantation, and all were confident she would be a success. instead, the cadou never took root, and she died within an hour -- it was said to be a gruesome scene. miranda, infuriated over the failure and that she’d bet on the wrong horse, could only settle her rage long enough to write the one page recording entry summarizing the results. donna, only fifteen years old then, was devastated to lose the elder sister who she admired and wanted so badly to emulate.
3.) donna’s father, giorgio, adored her dearly. bernadette was the firstborn with duties as both heiress and as being chosen by miranda. donna was secondborn and set aside, so at that time, that meant she got to be simply his daughter rather than the village’s daughter. ( borrowing inspiration from an actual quote tsar nicholas ii said at the birth of his daughter, olga. ) donna loved both of her parents, but his death is too painful for her to reflect upon, second only to her daughter’s. on the rare occasion that she thinks of him, she tends to refer to him, she tends to refer to him in the present tense.
4.) despite the temptation, donna has never used her hallucinogenic powers on herself to ‘revive’ any of her relatives -- not her parents, not bernadette, not any of the cousins she loved long ago, certainly not claudia. she learned a particularly harsh lesson with this through the usage of it on her beloved gardener, josef, with the good intentions of reuniting him with his own wife & newborn son that had passed from typhoid. she unintentionally drove him to madness becasue of his inability to accept the end to any of these sessions, it got to a point where he was convinced that his family had returned. he was not the same wise and benevolent man she’d always known at the time of his death -- a death which, arguably, she caused too. it’s sad knowing that even when she tries to do good, it can arguably end up with even worse results than that of her malicious visions.
5.) there once was an extended ‘secondary’ branch of house beneviento, giorgio’s sister, the widowed fiorella and her two sons, bruno & roberto. she fled italy in the late 1920s as m*ssolini transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship, failing to realize that an oppressive force also ruled her brother’s lands. she called herself a beneviento, in hopes of reaping the fame and lordship giorgio retained, but miranda paid little attention to her. her sons where closer to bernadette’s age, but cared for donna as well, and were fiercely protective of her from bullies that tormented her for her scars. they were both eventually executed on charges of blasphemy, when it was discovered they dd not truly worship miranda + spoke ill of the religion. donna was powerless to intervene, and worse, so deep in miranda’s clutches at that point as her officially adopted daughter, chose not to assist. fiorella died a bitter, old woman without grandchildren and emptied of what little wealth she had. there exists three unmarked graves in the cemetery, as donna’s subtle means of secretly grieving for them too.
6.) the music you can hear from the radio in the basement is reminscent of pieces played during underground parties which her cousins would secretly host. all the young townspeople who were in those friendship circles would gather to a particular house with a secret basement level to drink, party, and be merry until sunlight. the beneviento sisters were frequently invited, in which bernadette always flourished and danced with handsome suitors on tabletops, whilst a terribly shy teenaged donna would face her back to the wall fidgeting until the time came to sneak back to the manor. her cousins would lovingly bully and peer pressure her into ‘leaving that old ragdoll behind’, so she was not allowed the comfort of angie to pass the time. it wasn’t always a miserable time, though -- bruno would usually try to invite her to dance with him, and sometimes she’d oblige, and it was actually quite fun despite her nerves. ( think the irish third class party scenes from titanic. )
7.) because she chose to fixate on bernadette, miranda rarely acknowledged donna beyond necessary friendly obligations. donna was still important, in that, her existence was justified with historical examples about royal families always ensuring there was an heir and a spare. but just about everyone had no reason to believe that bernadette would fail, so miranda somewhat neglected donna and did not subject her to any special treatment the way she did for her sister. when bernadette died, among the many things that brought miranda into a frustrated tirade, was the horrible realization that she was fifteen years too late to mold & shape donna into something as perfect as bernadette was. she’d allowed the girl to grow up meek and pathetic, it was too late to do any real work, but there was no other choice. miranda adopted her not long after her parents took their own lives -- horrified by what happened to bernadette & realizing the same fate was in store for donna, powerless to stop it -- and devoted ten years to bettering donna. results were poor, there was little improvement in her confidence. by the time donna was twenty-five, already four years older than her sister would ever live, miranda had conceded that she was as close to ‘good enough’ as it was going to get, and could only hope for unexpectedly grand results. she somewhat got her wish.
8.) and to round off this rather depressing series of hcs with a single light hearted one: angie & donna regularly have tea parties. per angie’s request, donna will occasionally indulge and bake sweet biscuits or cookies for her. angie does have her own miniature dish set -- fork and knife included -- and she enjoys eating, or at least, what her interpretation of eating is. it’s a catastrophic scene like when cookie monster ‘eats’ cookies -- crumbs and pieces are flying, nothing is actually swallowed, angie just loudly mashes her jaw. it’s endearing for donna to see, probably disturbing to anyone else if they were ever an unfortunate dinner guest.
