someone has to stand against tyrants ( jane headcanons )

This is a permanent starter call for Jane de Bac / Beckett of Pirates of the Caribbean explicitly. The older sister of Cutler Beckett presented to us in Price of Freedom, whose apparent death has been grossly exaggerated.

These calls give me a heads up on who is open to interacting with whom ( which is handy for those who have exclusives among my crew! ) and gives me an excuse to kick you starters whenever something crosses the mind, or blow up your inbox knowing who would be most wanted.

These calls also serve as a final tag dump – when this call is posted it indicates a character has been fully moved into the blog and is ready for action!

For other starter calls, check the tag HERE.

Jane has a phenomenal – if at times slightly wicked – sense of humor. She genuinely loves to laugh and even more than that, she thrives on bringing laughter to others. Her favorite smiles belonged, of course, to her dear brother – and his were ever so increasingly difficult to unearth that Jane felt compelled to develop a wit beyond herself in order to find them.

What tends to make or break her is often the overall delivery of anything she knows is meant to draw forth a smile from someone. It has taken her years to perfect the deadpan drops of her puns and double entendres, but there are times when her lips will pull before she has finished and laughter will bubble behind her words and give her away.

The worst are when she starts laughing before she even delivers what she was about to say – and is too beside herself to finish. It’s never quite as funny as she found it after the hysterics, much to her incredible chagrin.

Other times, she will find her statement has gone unnoticed and won’t be able to stop the grin from spreading, and upon the realization of what she did, Jane has the rather lamentable habit of giggling at her own cleverness.

Through her marriage to Sébastien de Bac, Jane gave birth to three children. First among them was her daughter, Victorie, who was born six months after their marriage as a result of having been conceived at sea. Two years later, her sons were born – twins, Henri and Cutler – heirs, of course, that their paternal uncles were far from genuinely fond of.

The boys only had their father for three years before he perished ( and in truth, merely thirteen months of that time what with his seafaring ways )but Jane was a present constant for all of her children, as were her closest friends. Sébastien’s allies – those of whom who had become close to Jane on her own merits – were also fairly present in their lives and with his death, provided a shocking amount of support Jane had not anticipated being able to rely upon.

Before making her arrangements with Captain Fatinent, Jane arranged matters so that her children would be looked after in her absence by those she trusted absolutely to protect them from their uncles and from the greater affairs surrounding them. In the end, it was Comte Michel de Luc himself who agreed to house the three, as well as their nurse and guard – knowing, as he did, that with himself at the helm the de Bac men would not dare to move.

Comte de Luc keeps Jane as updated on her children as can be appropriately managed, and has endeavored in many ways to treat them as he would his own. Possessing no heirs, his position is considered somewhat worthy of gossip, for it is believed that the Lady de Bac would make a fine match for him, if only she would settle from her sailing – and that his waiting is at once gallant and foolish.

By the boys estimation, the comte is the only father they have ever known; what is more, neither he nor Jane have dissuaded them from addressing him as such. Victoire is a bit less sure of this, and simply refers to him as her uncle. Despite all of this, neither Jane nor Michel have any desire to marry one another and are, in fact, merely the dearest of friends. ( Jane often laments that she has closed doors on him, and he insists that should he wish to open any, he has more than enough charm and looks to manage it and overcome any jealousies that may arise! )

At Jane’s bequest, Victorie receives the same training as her brothers, as well as her own deportment lessons. Due to this, Victorie is often able to help her brothers remember Jane while she is away and the three hold a very tight bond.

Victorie takes after her mother, with blonde hair and fair complexion, blue eyes and a smattering of freckles that reveal themselves when the sun touches upon her for too long. Her lips are narrower and her chin sharper, and she has her father’s laugh – a sound that comes all the way up from her very toes – which is, to Jane, perhaps the most charming memory of him there can be.

By contrast, Henri and Cutler take after Sébastien, with shocks of unruly curls so dark a brown to nearly pass for black, soulful brown gazes and skin of carmel hue even in the dead of winter. From their mother they gained full lips and charming giggles, as well as ( According to the comte! ) a penchant for mischief and an absolute gift for getting out of trouble.

By the time she reunites with her brother, Victorie is nearing nine and the twins have just turned seven.

LISTEN. Jane is ferociously protective of Cutler, and she is not afraid to be petty as all hell about it. If you think she wouldn’t pay off people to randomly cut a man off in public to kick him in the balls – repeatedly, many people, for a series of days – just for upsetting him one time Imagine How Much More She’d Put Mercer Through.

Jane was twenty-three when her youngest brother, Cutler, stood up to their father and fled the household. At her age, she was well aware that the only reason she was not yet wed was that their father was waiting for the opportune moment; the most lucrative arrangement possible. Her only hope of escaping that fate lay in her little brother – unfortunately, time was not in their favor.

Sébastien de Bac was a captain in the French Navy and the patriarch of the de Bac estate. A noble of the sword, he and his family held a large swath of lands in the Pyrenees along the Mediterranean side and held considerable dealings among the Spanish. He was in a good position to offer Jonathan and the Beckett Trading Company safe passage in waters that could often be treacherous for English trading vessels, but his price was too high.

Jane – unwittingly – made effort to speak to him only in his native French, and her flawless diction as well as her beauty caught his attention. Jonathan noticed – and swiftly made a bargain. This could have ended terribly for her, but Jane was smart and she recognized her chance for freedom and took it. She charmed Sébastien at every opportunity, showing genuine interest in the workings of his ship, the way he ran it. During quiet periods in his cabin, she would recite for him all manners of poems in exchange for learning how to sail.

Unbeknown to her, Jonathan saw an opportunity in this trade to cause her brother harm, and spread rumor of her death – as, part of his bargain with de Bac was that she never again be seen on English soil. Sébastien never mentioned the true nature of his deal with her father and was subtle about his interests in Jane – though he could have just made her his, de Bac preferred his women willing. Jane recognized she had additional power as a result of his particular nature, and she wielded it adeptly.

By the time they made port, Sébastien was prepared to wed her and she was perfectly familiar with how to sail. She saw no reason not to marry him – he was a well respected captain of particular nobility, after all, and she wasn’t returning to England any time soon. However, she had no love for him and recognized this as a matter of convenience that could have long term benefits toward the taste of freedom she longed for. Jane was set up as the lady of Sébastien’s household after the wedding, and he returned to sea. Now the Lady de Bac, Jane began to learn her way through French society and soon discovered it to be a tiresome political mire full of shifting desires and allegiances.

Curiously, when de Bac died at sea it turned out he had named her as his successor of estate matters. They had spoken often of his brothers and the danger Sébastien felt they presented to his King; in their five years of knowing one another, she became his fastest confidant and was well situated to take his place thanks to his care in connecting her to his friends and associates. Jane continued to manage matters after his death and proved to have a good eye for business.

However, for all her contempt for her father and brothers ( Save, of course, her dear Cutler! ) she remained British at heart. She made good friends among the midwife community in Paris during her frequent visits, and became familiar with some of their arts in between managing her dead husband’s estate. Eventually his brothers started showing up, each more annoying than the last, and Jane realized she had some choices before her.

Her first possibility was to marry yet another Frenchman and continue this long charade of not-quite freedom. As the Lady de Bac she was well positioned to marry high ( which Sébastien’s brothers deeply feared she would do, for she was noted to have become fast friends with a comte from the north who would surely be trouble if he held control of the de Bac estate ) but as it happened she had no desire to dance between men all her life.

She could have slipped away among the midwives, made her way to Paris and disappeared entirely among their kind, but in the end Jane chose to remain the Lady de Bac and go attend to matters at sea previously managed by her husband; of course, she did not travel as the Lady de Bac but rather as Jacques Erart aboard a frigate captained by an old friend of her husband’s. Her transformation between Jacques and Lady de Bac at port were managed through his aid, and she was able to both see the world and maintain the power that marriage to Sébastien wrought for her.

Jane served under Captain Fatinent for two years – during that time, they were attacked by pirates no less than three times. The first, she aided the surgeon and through her assistance and familiarity thanks to her time with the midwives, was able to save several men from certain death. The second saw her badly wounded, causing a scar from her shoulder, through the center of her breasts, and out her side. This of course revealed her nature to the men, some of whom believed the attacks they faced were her fault, while others decided she was why they had survived the attacks at all, insisting she was a good luck charm.

Captain Fatinent was forced to claim ignorance to her gender, but he did play to the men who saw her as good luck and she was allowed to remain aboard so long as she kept her head down. Sadly, the third pirate attack saw Fatinent killed, and Jane taken prisoner thanks to the men who saw her as a curse revealing her.

It would be aboard the Venganza that Jane would find her freedom once and for all, and was able to maintain herself as the Lady de Bac by explaining her situation to Captain de Sevilla. She would be Lady and Pirate for three years, before learning at last what befell her brother Cutler. Though she was familiar with the EITC, she had little reason to know many of their employees and the news of his position came to her through Jack Sparrow. She begged travel with him to Calabar, and from there her story may cause changes as we all see fit.