cursedfool

Name: Charlotte Wells
Door: Door Pass – submissive - https://duplicitymemes.dreamwidth.org/11113.html?thread=23213161#cmt23213161

Canon: Harlots
Canon Point: End of Season 2

Age: It’s never explicitly stated in canon but she’s about 22-25ish
Appearance: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/31/a4/0f/31a40f8c70dca2bd3d7357714c4aba46.png

History: WARNINGS FOR sex references, prostitution, child prostitution, rape, and the sex trade.


Charlotte was born around 1742 in London, England, to Margaret Wells, a prostitute, and an unknown man. Margaret became a bawd when Charlotte was an infant, and Charlotte grew up in the brothel. She always knew that she was fated to be a prostitute as well, and was quite comfortable with the idea. After all, what else could a woman do? As she got older, she began to resent both her mum and her career more and more. Charlotte had a younger sister, Lucy, who had been cosseted and was Margaret’s favourite, and Charlotte resented her mother for this, though she remained close with Lucy

When she was 12, Margaret sold Charlotte’s virginity to Lord and Lady Repton. They were a perverse couple, pedophiles who enjoyed virgins in particular. Though Charlotte has never explicitly stated what happened, she implies that they were rough with her and it wasn’t at all enjoyable. Nevertheless, Charlotte was good at disguising her fear and distaste and soon wound her way into the highest echelons of society. She was courted by many aristocrats, but became a harlot for Sir George Howard, a minor member of parliament and all around bore. Charlotte despised him for his idiocy and his devotion to her, but milked him for all she was worth. Charlotte lived at his house in London, and had so enticed him that he paid her vast gambling debts, and bought her expensive clothes and jewels. For his part, George was obsessed with Charlotte and regularly flew into jealous rages when she was seen even talking to other men. Margaret tried to pressure Charlotte into signing a contract with Howard that would officially make him her keeper. Charlotte constantly refused both her mother and George as she didn't want to be ‘property’. George was outraged, and her mother was disgusted, calling her stupid. Charlotte started to show her resentment for the career that her mother had pushed her into, even slapping Margaret in her anger.

George became increasingly jealous, especially as Charlotte became friends with a male prostitute, Daniel Marney, who was obviously attracted to her. George humiliated Charlotte refusing to allow her to go to the opera, and when she went anyway, yelled at her and shouted insults at her, and placed a bid on Lucy’s virginity. He again humiliated her by forcing her out of a party of other aristocrats, and he began to flirt with Lucy as a form of revenge. Charlotte saw and was furious at being slighted, and so allowed George’s manservant, Haxby, to have sex with her.
Charlotte also taught Lucy how to pretend to enjoy sex with patrons, something that Charlotte was particularly good at, even dubbing herself ‘Queen Pretend’. George saw her at a moment when her mask had slipped and overheard her making fun of him, enraging him further.

Charlotte attended her mum’s Underworld party, having tempted several lords there. George saw Daniel flirting with her and again, George was furious. In revenge, he slept with Lucy and made sure that Charlotte saw it.

Daniel, meanwhile, tried to convince Charlotte to run away to America with him. Charlotte refused but by this point, George’s obsession with owning Charlotte had reached it’s climax. Charlotte told George that they were through after what happened with Lucy. George told her that she is his property, hit her, dragged her to the bed, pinned her down and quite violently raped her. He then forced her to his friend’s dinner party, where she was a prostitute amongst the ladies. Her presence was unwelcome in the gentile room and once more, she was humiliated. When she was unusually subdued, George gleefully told his friends that he made her behave for the evening, leading to Charlotte disclosing the rape and trying to humiliate him.

Charlotte left George, which left her penniless. She went to several of her aristocratic ‘friends’, offering her services. She even went to the Reptons, though she detested them, but they said she was too old for them now. Penniless, she went to her mum’s friend’s (Nancy) bawdy house. Nance encouraged her to go to her mum’s but she instead went to Daniel’s attic and slept with him, acknowledging that she might actually have feelings for him. Daniel encouraged her to go back to George’s to get her things, but Haxby, vengeful now, refused her entry.
Meanwhile, George had gone to Margaret and offered a sum to be Lucy’s keeper, saying he was tired of Charlotte. Margaret accepted, but Lucy was upset. She tried to refuse but George tried to force himself on her. Lucy fatally stabbed George, though Margaret finished the deed to save Lucy from the noose. Charlotte found out what was happening and was petrified for herself as George was blaming her. She was furious with her mum for selling Lucy when Lucy was so obviously uncomfortable and accused her mum of not caring about either girl, and especially herself. Margaret encouraged Charlotte to start a new life in America, planning to let the blame fall on her daughter to save both her and Lucy from the noose. Charlotte was obviously upset about her mum’s lack of care and her resentment towards her mum and her career came to the fore. Charlotte was dragged to prison, accused of murdering George. Daniel was also arrested, and whilst Charlotte blamed her mum for trying to pass the blame, it was actually Lucy. The judge tried to convince Charlotte to say that Daniel did it and she was an unwilling accomplice, but she refused. Lydia Quigley, her mum’s rival, petitioned for Charlotte’s freedom and took her to her brothel. Charlotte decided to stay with Lydia. Daniel was freed when George’s wife, Caroline, spoke for him. He asked Charlotte to go to America, but she refused, saying that she was going to ruin Lydia’s brothel from within in revenge for Lydia destroying Margaret, and in turn her own and Lucy’s lives.

In Season 2, Charlotte was working for Lydia and became her right hand man. She was strangely close to Lydia, despite hating her. Lydia began to think of Charlotte almost as a daughter, and placed a lot of trust in her and favoured her above the other whores. When Margaret had Lydia arrested, Charlotte appealed to Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam to help secure her freedom. Lydia’s house was still lost so they moved to Mrs May’s house. Charlotte, Lydia, Isabella, Isabella’s brother and their friends tried to get the house back.

Charlotte became friends with Isabella, with each woman confiding in the other. Both revealed their hatred for Lydia and decided to team up to destroy her. She united with several other women – her mum (she had somewhat reconciled with her), Nancy and another prostitute, Emily, who had been mistreated by Lydia.

Lydia brought Charlotte with her to find a virgin to essentially trick into a life of prostitution. Charlotte, uncharacteristically cold, went along with the ruse of the girl being hired as a servant, and helped Lydia procure her. Upon realizing how wicked she was becoming, and how Lydia was just using her when Lydia allowed Lord Fitzwilliam to hurt her, she plotted with her mum to arrange a man to bid on the girl and save her. This way, Lydia would also be ruined and arrested for kidnap. The plan was foiled when Lord Fitz recognised a necklace being used as payment. The girl was sold into prostitution, for which she blamed Charlotte, and ‘cursed’ her. Charlotte herself was locked into a room, and when Lydia found out the full extent of the betrayal, they had a fight and Charlotte ended up trying to choke Lydia to death. She was stopped by Margaret, who took her home and apologised for making her a prostitute. Charlotte convinced Lydia’s son to have her put in Bedlam.

Margaret, meanwhile, had confessed to George’s murder and was set to be hanged. Charlotte asked Isabella for help and they slept together as Charlotte was determined to make her see that sex could be nice. Margaret’s execution day came and Charlotte spent time with her in the condemned cell before being pulled away by Nancy.

Meanwhile, Lucy was in massive trouble with the devious aristocracy. Lord Fallon murdered one of Margaret’s girls and was blackmailing Margaret as he knew that Lucy killed George. The nefarious man, who had been leading a group of aristocrats who had been raping and murdering girls for sport, was eventually captured by Charlotte and Nancy. They prevented Lucy from killing him, but Charlotte tortured Fallon until he gave a list of names of people involved in the murders. They left him to deal with the grief of Margaret’s execution. Charlotte took control of Margaret’s brothel and the aristocratic gang that Fallon was involved with vowed to bring her down.




Personality:
“Her extravagance would scatter the fortune of any but the most ambitious keeper. But her eyes dart delight. Her bosom enchants to rapture, and her wit makes her the very meteor of the hour."

Charlotte comes across, at first glance as a shallow, albeit witty girl who is out to get as much as she can out of the men with whom she crosses paths. She’s an attractive woman, and she knows it and is definitely not afraid to use her physique to get exactly what she wants. Throughout both series, Charlotte is seen to enjoy gambling (and is ridiculously bad at it), running up humongous debts which she manages to convince her lover to pay for her through her good looks. She enjoys silk clothes, good food and expensive jewellery. She enjoys indulging in the latest fashions (see towering wigs) and is quite at home amongst the aristocratic men of London. She’s flirtatious, perhaps even outright sexual, with the men around her, and apparently always up for a laugh, a drink and a game with them.

But this is the personality that she aims to present – clever enough to impress with her witty tongue and her infinite innuendos, but not so intelligent that the men think her a challenge to their standing in London. Charlotte refers to this overtly sexual, fun side of her personality as her mask. She wears it constantly, and many of the aristocrats would have little idea of her true personality. In this sense, she is incredibly manipulative. She allows herself to be seen in these shallow terms to succeed in her job as a harlot. She tells her younger sister that the most important harlotting she does is that with her clothes on – she has to make people want her in order to command big rewards for her services. For her, harlotting, being witty, even gambling, is all part of her job – and a vital part if she is going to earn a lot.



Charlotte often speaks before she thinks. She’s brutally honest (when not harlotting) and will happily tell people if they’re annoying her or if she dislikes them. It can, and has, led to confrontations, in which Charlotte gives as good as she gets. She likes to have the last word (and rarely gets it!). Charlotte has a fiery temper, and she is quick to raise her voice in arguments, even with her clients. This is seen in her continuous arguments with George, with the pair of them sniping and even yelling at one another in public. She often forgets her place, whether in society or in her family and thinks of herself as equal to her elders or her social betters. She tends to say exactly what’s on her mind until she’s reminded to keep her opinions to herself. This is shown early in the show when she is listening to Sir George rehearse a speech he is giving in Parliament. She challenges him on it, and is swiftly reminded of her place as his demeanor changes. She then has to coax him by claiming her ignorance on the subject (though she actually knows more than he) and win his favour by gratifying him with oral sex. Charlotte is particularly good at antagonizing people with her bluntness.

Charlotte often feels out of place amongst the aristocracy, and in particular with the gentile women. She feels look down on her and when she is forced to interact, her Cockney accent is exaggerated and she is particularly rude. This is particularly shown in a scene with Lady Caroline Howard, George’s wife. Caroline asks Charlotte to stop spending as much as it’s actually her money that Charlotte is spending. Charlotte is antagonistic, goading Caroline with George’s preference for her, Charlotte, and even spitting cherry stones onto the floor at Caroline. She rudely asks Caroline to leave so she can dress, and shoves the remaining bowl of cherries at her, saying that they really belong to Caroline. It riles Caroline, who restricts George’s, and therefore Charlotte’s cash flow.

Charlotte is reckless. She has a temper. Those two combined mean that she embarrasses people.

Charlotte’s impulsive and reckless in her actions and often acts without thought of the consequences. In Series Two, Charlotte falls out with Lydia and loses her trust after she tries to prevent the rape of a young girl. Charlotte physically attacks the much older and weaker Lydia, hitting her and knocking her to the floor before trying to kill her. She doesn’t think of the consequences of her actions and completely lets her emotions rule her. She often gives in to her emotions; her jealousy and anger at seeing George having sex with Lucy drives her to allowing Haxby to have sex with her, and her disgust and fury with Lydia for destroying her life, and her mother’s, drives her to infiltrating Lydia’s house to bring it down from within. Charlotte rarely has a solid plan beyond her initial grand idea (eg. ‘bring down Lydia’ – but she has no idea how.).

Charlotte’s fiery temper comes to the fore most often with her mother, Margaret. She resents Margaret for pushing her into life as a harlot and blames her for the lifestyle that she has to endure. She’s also keenly aware that Margaret favours her younger sister, Lucy. Compared to Lucy, who’s 16, Charlotte’s virginity was sold at 12 and she’s been working steadily since. Lucy, on the other hand, was cossetted by Margaret, and completely protected. Charlotte feels this particularly when Lucy and Margaret murder George and Margaret essentially lays the blame on Charlotte and urges her to flee the country. Margaret chooses Lucy over Charlotte and Charlotte, for a long time, cannot forgive her mum for the betrayal. Despite everything though, Charlotte is ultimately loyal to her family, vowing revenge on her mum’s behalf and later, comforting her mum in her final hours.

Charlotte’s temper, combined with her Achilles’ heel of speaking without thinking leads her to embarrassing George in front of his friends and their wives by revealing that he had beaten and raped her. Whilst his friends react jovially after the initial shock, she becomes even more alienated from the women. She realizes quickly that she should have kept her mouth shut but once more it is she who is hurt through her temper.


Charlotte is headstrong and rebellious . She rarely listens to advice and reason and will continue on her own path, consequences be damned. This is apparent when she stands accused of George’s murder. Her mum tells her not to go to George’s house to collect her things, but Charlotte refuses to listen and ends up arrested for his murder. Again, in prison, the judge offers Charlotte an escape, telling her to blame Daniel and say she was an unwilling accomplice, which would give her her freedom. Charlotte refuses to listen to that, condemning herself in the end, to the noose. She rebels too in her role in life. She finds it difficult to conform to social standings and is quite modern thinking in that she believes that people are equal and that women can be just as intelligent as men.

Charlotte doesn’t suffer fools easily, which is part of the reason why her relationship with George is so tempestuous. By all accounts, George is an idiot, weak-willed, ignorant and not at all intelligent. Charlotte’s own intelligence far outstrips George and she has to play the dumb harlot constantly to satisfy him. She finds him idiotic and laughs about him behind his back with her sister. Unfortunately for her, she’s also not very careful about it and invokes his ire. She favours people, and especially men, who are similar to her – who speak their own mind and are not afraid of negative consequences.
Charlotte is quick and clever though. Her wit is brilliant – she is quick to pick up on what others are saying and twist it into a (usually bawdy) joke. She knows lot about current affairs, apparently from listening to the men in the clubs she frequents. She is cultured in that she knows about opera and theatre, and she can read, write and count money, which wasn’t particularly common in the eighteenth century along lower class women.

Charlotte is emotionally intelligent. She’s able to read people’s emotional state quickly and adapt her behaviour accordingly. This trait is probably why she’s so successful as a harlot. She can be flirtatious or apologetic, play dumb or pretend to be in control at the drop of a hat. She reads George’s emotions easily and CAN adapt her behaviour to suit. When he comes back from his travels and tries to pressure her into signing his contract to become exclusively his, Charlotte manipulates him away from the subject by using sex. He gets his fill, she gets to keep her nice lifestyle and her freedom.

Charlotte is completely self-destructive. She finds the concept of utter happiness difficult to comprehend. For Charlotte, her's is a world full of traps, where the wrong move can cost her her home, or her wages or indeed her life. She constantly walks on egg-shells, trying to anticipate the moods of the people who control her world. Though she desires to control her life, she is inextricably tied to her world and her fate, and therefore the people who control her. She refuses to leave when given the chance by Daniel: her loyalty to her family prevents that escape. Charlotte constantly lurches from one trouble to the next, often without pausing to reflect on what she's learned from her last disaster.

Charlotte is lonely. She doesn’t fit in anywhere. The girls at Margaret’s brothel are socially below her. They service the working class and lower middle class at best and although they are friendly to Charlotte, they regard her as something ‘other’ than themselves. She commands a higher class of clientele and is somewhat of a celebrity and quite separate to them. Her childhood friend, Mary, dies penniless of the French pox (syphilis) in Charlotte’s bed, again illuminating how completely different and separate Charlotte has been forced to become. In turn, at Lydia’s high class brothel, Charlotte is again made the ‘best girl’ over some that have been there much longer, and tableaus performed by the harlots are centered around her. Charlotte is alienated by her closeness to Lydia and Lydia’s apparent fondness for her. She doesn’t fit in to the harlots’ world easily. In terms of the aristocracy, Charlotte is alone there too. Ladies look down on her as a whore, a commoner and Charlotte is humiliated by them. For the men, she’s a plaything, an object to be used to bring pleasure. She’s been forced to become independent from an early age because her mum simply hasn’t been there for her. During an argument, she tells her mum ‘ Oh go fetch a rope, Ma. You’ve ruined me with kindness’. Charlotte has never known kindness or love from her mum or her keepers. She feels she is just an object, to be sold and owned and used and passed on. Her desire to be seen as a person with a voice and wants motivates Charlotte and ultimately dictates the rest of her personality. She rebels because at least when she is in trouble, she is seen.

Charlotte’s loneliness also explains her quick and deep bonds with both Daniel, Lydia and Isabella. All three offer Charlotte love, something she is completely inexperienced in and ultimately condemns her to her biggest troubles. Lydia offers her a mother’s love and Charlotte is so enchanted that she even forgets her mission to destroy Lydia. She’s brought back to reality when Lydia sells her to Isabella’s brother and allows her to be battered. Even still, Lydia’s love and care for her after it turns Charlotte’s head enough to help her ensnare a virgin to be raped. It is only when Charlotte realizes the devastation that the girl will suffer, and understands that she is condemning the girl to a life that she hates, is the spell with Lydia truly broken. Her infatuation with Isabella and Daniel is similar. Isabella cares. She sees Charlotte as a person and actually listens to her, and values her as a person. She is only the second after Daniel to see Charlotte as herself rather than as a commodity.

Overall then, Charlotte is a rebellious, headstrong, independent woman with a wicked sense of humour. She cares deeply for her family and friends. Motivated by her desire for freedom and to be seen as a person over a commodity, she often ends up in trouble for speaking her mind and refusing to conform.

Powers and Abilities: A ready wit,
The ability to pretend. Charlotte is a great actress. She is brilliant at convincing everybody that she loves being a harlot, that she’s a gay, fun, witty thing when actually, she loathes most of her life and her job.

Inventory: A small black coin bag with a couple of shillings in it.

Samples: Charlotte's thought process: https://cursedfool.dreamwidth.org/939.html

Charlotte's voice: https://duplicitymemes.dreamwidth.org/11113.html?thread=23213161#cmt23213161

https://duplicitymemes.dreamwidth.org/11113.html?thread=23254121#cmt23254121