#anyway. there's a universe where nic's living succession irl. glad we're not there!

[monomythic]

THIS IS THE LONELIEST JOB IN THE WORLD : TO BE AN ACCOUNTANT OF THE HEART.

DOMINIC LEPOULT SERVEILLE ( JACOB ANDERSON ) is a THIRTY year-old POSTDOC FELLOW / PROFESSOR in OXFORD, GREAT BRITAIN. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only NINE. They are known as THE SCHOLAR because they are PERCEPTIVE but also ALOOF. Let’s see what choice they make regarding the fate of Woodrow House.

BASIC INFORMATION

Full Name: dr. dominic lepoult serveille, ba, mphil, dphil

Nickname(s): nic. please don't call him dom.

Date of Birth: october 3

Age: thirty

Occupation: postdoctorate researcher / junior fellow at oxford university

Current Residence: oxford, united kingdom

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Hair: black

Eyes: brown

Height: 5'11" / 178 cm

Notable Features: right pinky is slightly crooked; nic broke it falling out of a tree as a child and it didn't quite heal straight.

PERSONALITY & BEHAVIOR:

Strengths: perceptive, empathetic, principled, patient

Weaknesses: aloof, noncommittal, flighty, critical

Quirks: speaks with his hands when impassioned, otherwise quite still. doesn't use filler words—will just straight up pause in the middle of talking. writes all his lists on post-it notes. this has never come back to bite him, literally ever. deadpan sense of humor. more sentimental than you might think.

Vices: fruity gummies, with a particular weakness for sour worms. caffeine addict. a friend took him to get manicures once and he's been hooked ever since.

INTEREST & HOBBIES:

Interests: runs through fixations like the seasons—some notable ones include the mythology era, the coffee era, the cooking era that was actually mostly just a german knives era, and the yoga era. ask him what he's into lately.

Hobbies: reading's the obvious one, but also enjoys baseball. has been following soccer since moving to the uk.

Special Skills/Talents: near-eidetic memory. printer whisperer. rolls a mean joint, though few are privy to this information.

BECOMING A WARD

[ CW : MENTAL ILLNESS (POSTPARTUM PSYCHOSIS), SUICIDE, ALCOHOL USE, ALLEGED FRATRICIDE, PARENTAL DEATH ] the serveille family is (was) notorious for two things: their wealth, and their curse. the former is what brought them into richard woodrow’s circle, while the latter is what brought dominic into richard’s care. the wealth is a story you’ve heard time and time again: a successful family business that became a family dynasty. what began as the serveille family general store has grown into a national franchise chain—though the family is no longer involved with running the day-to-day operations of the business, they still maintain significant stock interests. realistically, the curse is just a series of undiagnosed mental illness, though dominic’s family does have a preternaturally poor track record of boat deaths on his mother’s side. in an ironic twist of events, his mother died of mental illness (killing herself after making an attempt at drowning a newborn dominic in the tub in an episode of postpartum psychosis), while his father died after he fell overboard off a yacht. rumors abound that his brother, the last person to see him, pushed him, but these were never substantiated. in the scuffle after his father’s death, dominic was shuffled around between relatives, each of whom wanted him for the inheritance. richard was ultimately contacted as a neutral, “objective” party (with no skin in the game, so to speak) that could handle dominic until the inheritance matters were settled. nobody quite expected that dominic would be insistent on staying with richard after everything was sorted out . . . but that’s a story for another day.

LIFE AS A WARD

dominic became a ward quite young and was particularly reserved at the beginning of his time at woodrow house, hyperaware of his status as a serveille and (what he believed to be) the contingency of his stay as a ward. even after becoming more secure in his continued status in richard's care, he remained just a touch too self-aware, i think. dominic is the sort of person to equate proximity as proxy, particularly when it comes to things like love and companionship, and sees life more as something to be observed than lived. dominic demonstrates love (and people and experiences and the world as he sees it) by attempting to understand it. this makes him empathetic and levelheaded (usually). this also makes him detached and clinical (often). this often places him a step removed from the rest of the world (certainly the rest of woodrow house), particularly because nic is not the sort of person to seek answers by asking⁠; he is driven by the act of discovery as much as its fruits. there’s so much you can glean from the world by looking, you know; the world is full of so many beautiful details people miss because of how caught up they are in their personal melodramas. among the wards, i imagine him to be the person with answers to every question—i also imagine him to value this greatly. i could see some of the other wards thinking that dominic believed himself to be better than the others because of it (or because of his wealth, or because of his proximity to richard, or because he never really got in trouble. pick ya fave.). re: richard woodrow iii — richard favored dominic, and dominic liked the attention. if you wanted to be uncharitable, you could call dominic sycophantic, and i don’t think you’d be entirely wrong. richard would often treat dominic more like a student than a ward, for better or for worse, and nic never really pushed for anything more. their talks were almost always academic, and functioned more like office hours than any sort of parental interaction. for him, it was a comfortable, uncomplicated dynamic; he likes to imagine it was similar for richard, as well. it perhaps speaks to his privilege that he doesn’t really get other wards with more complicated relationships with richard. richard is literally just the guy who took them in. anything beyond that was something you weren’t entitled to, but something to be cultivated, instead.

AESTHETIC

professor stereotype lol. his hair is always a little messy, no matter how diligently he styles it. style-wise, takes quite a few notes from the late, great richard woodrow iii; nic's wardrobe is primarily ralph laruen sweaters / the more casual end of the brand. whether this is an unconscious emulation of richard or a sense of laziness vis a vis discovering his personal style or a genuine enjoyment of the brand and its aesthetic is one of the few questions dominic finds himself uninterested in pursuing.

EDUCATION & EXTRACURRICULARS

studied at woodrow house until secondary school, at which point nic attended private school, mostly at richard's behest. played on the baseball team as a shortstop/second baseman. was also in the chess club. dominic was somewhat obsessive about researching programs; though he had some reservations about moving to another continent for undergrad, he ultimately felt that oxford's program was the most closely tailored to the research he wanted to do. probably had to be talked into it a bit by one of the other wards. he stayed on for his doctorate because in part because of the opportunities the school afforded him, but also in part because he's collected a lot of junk in his flat, and the idea of moving really does not appeal to him.

THEIR LIFE NOW

dominic has always thrived in academia, but in some ways it's enabled the worst of his habits. he's always told himself that he likes to live as a watcher, that it lends himself a certain objectivity about the world. but an albatross carries weight, even if you're the one to place it on your shoulders. currently, he's completing research—on the psychology of grief and beliefs about death, ironically—and teaching undergrads. just ok as a lecturer, but his tutorials are strangely popular. the fact that he's handsome is a coincidence, surely. the last time dominic visited the house was four years, six months, and fifteen days ago⁠—not that nic’s been counting, or anything. it had been at richard’s behest⁠—some foundation event that he wanted dominic to speak at. the distance isn't all that surprising. dominic was never the most sentimental of the wards, nor the most demonstrative with his affections. he has a tendency to get lost in his research, to eschew the literal for the hypothetical. and don’t get me wrong; he did care. does care. he cares very deeply, in fact, dominic keeps meticulous track of all the loves in his life, past and present and future⁠—for dominic, to be known is to be loved. but to be an accountant of the heart is lonely, it’s been said. to keep score is not necessarily to participate, and dominic, for all his intelligence, has never really understood that life and love are participatory acts as much as they are observable phenomena. he does recognize them as finite resources, however, which is why his research is so important to him. we only get so much time on earth, at the end of the day. there's a joke here about richard's death. but we can save that for later.