Who's Who - The Greens

Legendarily wealthy, every Green considers fame (or notoriety) their birthright. Some have higher profiles than others, of course...

Hazel Green

    If ever there was a genuine belle dame sans merci, it was Hazel Green. But where Keats's mythical icon of female dominance used magic and mystical arts to ensnare others, Hazel prefers to rely on her own, considerable, skill. For, while she inherited much of the wealth, the banks, the corporations, the networks of subsidiaries, the well-oiled political lobbying machine, and the power...oh yes, most certainly the power...are her own achievement. One she is considerably proud of.

Born, with the deepest irony, during the mid-sixties as the Summer of Love blazed full force, one of Hazel's first acts after assuming the reigns of the family black-ops programs was to destroy or alter as many records of her birth as possible. Later tampering erased those of her children as well, while a steady stream of bribes keeps medical staff and government officials quiet, removing any who suffer from an unwise tendency to open their mouths. Her father went to his eternal rest safe in the knowledge that his daughter was carrying on a fine family tradition of accelerating inheritance – for all the good it did him. The Green family staff have always closed ranks around their employers, and exactly what Hazel thought of her parents is not recorded, but Speculation do know her adolescent fling with a high-school crush made headlines, both when the tabloids broke the news and when her father haphazardly tried to break up the couple with hired muscle (The paparazzi responsible for some infamous topless photos during the scandal disappeared shortly afterwards. Fairly solid rumor hath it that a number of statues around the Green estate are not stone all the way though...)

Now married young, and pregnant with her first (and possibly only biological child), Hazel appears to have thrown herself into the family's line of work with considerable enthusiasm. Modernizing and re-organizing the myriad Green cartels came easy to her, as did iron discipline and a ruthless streak a mile wide. Various grandiose acts of brutality cemented her growing criminal empire together, earning her the now-infamous underworld nickname "Dragon". Her husband didn't last much beyond Michael's birth, but perhaps a lingering fondness for him explains why he's still breathing and/or sane.

Her interest in medical science, however, is harder to explain. Whether she saw an opportunity in the scientific castoffs of the USSR and made an investment, or sought some way to preserve her powers of persuasion when time inevitably eroded her charms, the activity itself may well be her strongest legacy. Maintaining the research and equipment costs ruinous sums, but Hazel has her brain labs...and, perhaps, finally the ultimate secrets of the control over others she has sought.

Strangest of all (and perhaps linked), however, is her attitude to her children. Whether it was loneliness or a wish to have children trained from birth in the harsh lessons of the street that led Hazel, after divorcing her husband, to take in and formally adopt a bevy of "orphans" (read: street children), mostly from South America, remains unknown. This act baffles Speculation, but the family keep their counsel. Conveniently, none of the children have any documented background whatsoever. The Board continue to ponder this – certainly no medical records exist suggesting sterility, and Michael's birth was apparently complication-free - but it does raise interesting questions...to say nothing of revealing a few chinks in that mental armour after all.

"Thaddeus"

    The first and last person (guards are merely furniture) any legitimate caller upon the Green family encounters is invariably their butler, confessor, and all-purpose major-domo Thaddeus, master of the household and gentleman's gentleman - although he'd be scandalized if you used that last descriptor in public. Madame is most certainly a lady.

Thaddeus is a butler of the Old School (is there really any other kind?), keeping his mistress's innumerable dirty secrets with an emotionless expression and unflappable personality. To her children, he is far more of a parental figure than their distant father or mercurial, dominating mother, running the household with well-oiled efficiency, a silver tongue, and the classic ability of any butler to be a paragon of smoothness above stairs and an unholy terror below them.

For all he appears a sympathetic figure, it must be remembered what kind of household Thaddeus runs – he may well have personally overseen enough violence to fill a battlefield. Certainly he has never interceded on behalf of Hazel's victims, perhaps seeing it as not his place to question such matters. He is certainly more than willing to lead squads of Hazel's black-clad thugs when Unpleasantness is called for, although he does view overt bloodshed in the mansion with a degree of distaste - and has made this known to several would-be intruders with objects ranging from a kitchen poker to Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

And yet, for all his cultured appearance and unshakeable veneer, Thaddeus may well support his mistress for more personal reasons. He appears fixated with her, hiding his growing obsession as mere diligence and expressing his feelings in veiled terms of courtly love (to say nothing of several volumes of unpublished poetry).

Whether Hazel is aware of this is unknown, but highly likely. She may well have engineered it - certainly it allows her to keep him on a short leash and circumvent that classic revenge of an angered butler, the embarrassing memoirs. Whether such touching loyalty redeems him for turning a blind eye to the crimes of his employer...is perhaps in the eye of the beholder.

Blue Green

The second-youngest child (and only known daughter) of Hazel Green, Blue exemplifies the traits that make up her mother – beauty (or at least, the 16-year-old equivalent of such. Although gangly now, Blue will be quite striking after more time to mature), an iron will, and enough rat-cunning to topple governments.

So far, so Green - but as the only girl in a generation of boys, Blue has had to grow up fast. Chafing under the self-given authority of her older brothers has fuelled her ambition and granted her the skills for a brutal degree of mental cruelty and mind games, as a self-defence measure if nothing else. Her mother's constant, nagging interference has fuelled plenty of resentment on that front, too - Blue has been spared the worst excesses of Hazel's mental regimen, it seems, but at the expense of much independence.

Surrounded by this dynastic nightmare, Blue has grown very close to Michael, possibly the only one of her pack of adoptive siblings not to view her as a rival (Or, in the case of Jay, far worse). The pair have an us-against-the-world attitude that allows them to effectively dominate the household. Despite Hazel's efforts to reassert her authority by breaking this up, she views the alliance with a sympathetic eye – after all, she did the same.

This doesn't stop her keeping Blue on a short leash, however. For all Blue's complaints, Hazel views her as a child with delusions of grandeur and crippling naiveté, going through little more than the normal adolescent rebellion. Blue is clearly intended to carry on her mother's legacy as a Green femme fatale, and any threatening influence to this is ruthlessly crushed.

Case in point, her currently romantic "link" (recently upgraded to rather more than a link) to David Jones...much to the bemused disapproval of her mother, who has brutally expressed this more than once. Given Blue's love of playing with fire, some Boardies hope a little of Dave's notorious luck will rub off on her. With Jay beginning to view her as rightfully his, she may need it.