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So there's this meme - several memes - going round about personal canon for characters, and I'm bored, so:
1: She was named Addison because it was her maternal grandmother's maiden name, and she always hated it because all the girls she knew had actual names and she just had a surname. Forbes is her mother's maiden name.
2: Almost all the Forbes women have been redheads; Addison's grandmother had a disconcerting habit of looking at her and saying, "Well, at least you got the Forbes hair".
3: Addison's favourite childhood book was Anne of Green Gables. She thought Anne was a kindred spirit.
4: Her parents divorced the summer she was eight. They thought it would be better for her if she wasn't around when they were dividing up the house and wanted to send her off to summer camp; her grandfather (paternal) stepped in and she spent the summer in Nantucket with him, reading books and following him about the garden. When she got home her whole life had changed and she wasn't quite sure who she was supposed to be any more.
5: She was sent to prep school because, in her parents' minds, that was what girls of her age and social status did (and also because her mother was having a very hot, torrid affair with a younger man and having a nosy kid around put a dampener on things). Each of her parents assumed the other would be around to take her to school on the first day; unfortunately her father was in London and her mother was in Chicago at the time, so Addison's old nanny and her father's driver took her to school. On the last day of term both parents showed up and she had to chose who to go with. She chose her father because she wasn't sure when she'd get to see him again.
6: She learnt to play the piano, violin and oboe as a child and eventually became first violinist in the school orchestra. She hasn't played since college and tells herself she doesn't miss it.
7: Addison likes nature; she just likes it controlled as opposed to Derek's wild and untamed version. She attributes this to that summer in Nantucket. Her biggest regret about the brownstone in New York was that it didn't have a garden and she tried to make up for it with houseplants. Sometimes she wonders if it would be extravagant to have her plants shipped to Seattle.
8: Her compulsory phys. ed. option at school was riding. It made her father happy because he got to wave his magic wand and buy her a horse that was really too good for her, but she always liked the smell of the barn and the freedom horses gave her. Sometimes on sunny days she looks out the window and wants nothing more than to go for a gallop up a hill.
9: It didn't really occur to her that everyone wasn't rich until she started college. Determined not be a spoiled brat she saved her allowance and tried to live off her wages from her part time job at a pizza place. She wasn't very good at it at first, and Derek had to teach her how to budget.
10: She did love Derek, and she believed she was going to get her happily-ever-after with him.
1: The school is the only place that ever felt like home to her. Following her father round Europe from post to post was great for her languages but it meant she didn't know where "home" was. Officially it was London. On tour, people often ask her where she's from. It's easier to say London, but if she likes the person she's talking to she says it's a lake called the Tiernsee, in the Austrian Tyrol.
2: Part of her is glad she left school before the Anschluss, and part of her regrets it. It means she can remember the school as it always was, before the move up the Sonnalpe, before the flight out of Austria, but she also feels like she missed out on an adventure. She has no doubt that Evvy, Corney, Hilary, Jo and the rest were scared out of their wits when they had to leave Austria without even a goodbye, terrified at every step that the Nazis would catch them up, but she still feels like she missed out on something.
3: Twenty years after she left school she went back to the Tiernsee with the rest of the Quintette. It wasn't anywhere near the same: they'd all grown apart and she didn't even realise it until the school's Coming of Age when she found herself having to ask Jo why Evadne had never married. But it's her four best friends and it's the Tiernsee and it's enough.
1: She was named Addison because it was her maternal grandmother's maiden name, and she always hated it because all the girls she knew had actual names and she just had a surname. Forbes is her mother's maiden name.
2: Almost all the Forbes women have been redheads; Addison's grandmother had a disconcerting habit of looking at her and saying, "Well, at least you got the Forbes hair".
3: Addison's favourite childhood book was Anne of Green Gables. She thought Anne was a kindred spirit.
4: Her parents divorced the summer she was eight. They thought it would be better for her if she wasn't around when they were dividing up the house and wanted to send her off to summer camp; her grandfather (paternal) stepped in and she spent the summer in Nantucket with him, reading books and following him about the garden. When she got home her whole life had changed and she wasn't quite sure who she was supposed to be any more.
5: She was sent to prep school because, in her parents' minds, that was what girls of her age and social status did (and also because her mother was having a very hot, torrid affair with a younger man and having a nosy kid around put a dampener on things). Each of her parents assumed the other would be around to take her to school on the first day; unfortunately her father was in London and her mother was in Chicago at the time, so Addison's old nanny and her father's driver took her to school. On the last day of term both parents showed up and she had to chose who to go with. She chose her father because she wasn't sure when she'd get to see him again.
6: She learnt to play the piano, violin and oboe as a child and eventually became first violinist in the school orchestra. She hasn't played since college and tells herself she doesn't miss it.
7: Addison likes nature; she just likes it controlled as opposed to Derek's wild and untamed version. She attributes this to that summer in Nantucket. Her biggest regret about the brownstone in New York was that it didn't have a garden and she tried to make up for it with houseplants. Sometimes she wonders if it would be extravagant to have her plants shipped to Seattle.
8: Her compulsory phys. ed. option at school was riding. It made her father happy because he got to wave his magic wand and buy her a horse that was really too good for her, but she always liked the smell of the barn and the freedom horses gave her. Sometimes on sunny days she looks out the window and wants nothing more than to go for a gallop up a hill.
9: It didn't really occur to her that everyone wasn't rich until she started college. Determined not be a spoiled brat she saved her allowance and tried to live off her wages from her part time job at a pizza place. She wasn't very good at it at first, and Derek had to teach her how to budget.
10: She did love Derek, and she believed she was going to get her happily-ever-after with him.
1: The school is the only place that ever felt like home to her. Following her father round Europe from post to post was great for her languages but it meant she didn't know where "home" was. Officially it was London. On tour, people often ask her where she's from. It's easier to say London, but if she likes the person she's talking to she says it's a lake called the Tiernsee, in the Austrian Tyrol.
2: Part of her is glad she left school before the Anschluss, and part of her regrets it. It means she can remember the school as it always was, before the move up the Sonnalpe, before the flight out of Austria, but she also feels like she missed out on an adventure. She has no doubt that Evvy, Corney, Hilary, Jo and the rest were scared out of their wits when they had to leave Austria without even a goodbye, terrified at every step that the Nazis would catch them up, but she still feels like she missed out on something.
3: Twenty years after she left school she went back to the Tiernsee with the rest of the Quintette. It wasn't anywhere near the same: they'd all grown apart and she didn't even realise it until the school's Coming of Age when she found herself having to ask Jo why Evadne had never married. But it's her four best friends and it's the Tiernsee and it's enough.
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