La Dame Terrible
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| La Dame Terrible overlooks Aeon City | |
| La Dame Terrible | |
| Player: | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Mastermind |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Marguerite Marie Jarbot |
| Known Aliases: | La Perfection, La Cygne Rouge, Big Marge, La Chienne de Bayonne |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 35 |
| Height: | 1.83m |
| Weight: | 57kg |
| Eye Color: | blue |
| Hair Color: | red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | French |
| Occupation: | mercenary |
| Place of Birth: | Bayonne, France |
| Base of Operations: | Kazimer's bedroom, V.S.T.F Headquarters, Russia. |
| Marital Status: | Divorced |
| Known Relatives: | two brothers, five sisters |
| Known Powers | |
| none | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Proficient in most Nato, Russian, and European small arms. Proficient battlefield surgeon. Expert tactician and strategist in guerrilla warfare. Skilled in espionage and demolitions. Skilled dancer. | |
| Equipment | |
| Assault rifle, submachine gun, battlefield surgical kit. | |
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"I am not terrible. How can I be terrible? I am actually very polite--very loving--I do not want to live as I do. Circumstances, however, have given me little choice but to do the things that I have done. I do not relish it, but I am good at it. At least I am good at something."
Marguerite Marie Jarbot
"The Catching of La Dame Terrible"
Paragon City Gazette
June 5, 2007
Early Hstory
Marguerite Marie Jarbot
"Confessions d'une Madame Parisienne"
Voici
January 10, 1996
Translation courtesy of Dennis Ewell
Marguerite Marie Detcheverry was born on March 22, 1975 in Bayonne, France. Her father Luc was a confectioner, and her mother Sophie ran the small candy store that was the only source of income for Marguerite and her seven siblings. Times were hard, but this did not stop the family from enrolling young Marguerite in the ballet academy. She was a natural ballerina with long limbs, strength, grace, and beauty. Her firey red hair earned her the name La Cygne Rouge from the dance critics for her rendition of Odette at the Palais Garnier.
Though only sixteen at the time, she caught the eye of impresario Gerard Jarbot: owner of a successful hotel and restaurant chain. He had recently divorced his third wife, and was desperately infatuated with the young dancer. He showered gifts and praise on Marguerite and her family, but to no avail. A strict Catholic, Marguerite was offended at Jarbot's playboy lifestyle, and her father believed the Jarbot--a full three times his daughter's age--had no business making advances towards his teenage daughter.
This all changed when Luc Detcheverry was hospitalized with a heart attack. Unable to work, Gerard Jarbot stepped in to provide for Marguerite's family. He would give each child an education and brokered a deal making Detcheverry Cholcolates the exclusive supplier of all the confectionary needs for the Jarbot hotel and restaurant empire. His only request was Marguerite's hand in marriage. She accepted and they were wed on her eighteenth birthday: March 22, 1993.
The marriage was hard on the young bride. Gerard was too involved in his business to look after Marguerite, and she felt alone and unwelcome at Gerard's side. Relations with her stepchildren, some of whom were over twice her age, were stressful to say the least. Many thought she wanted to claim the Jarbot empire out from under them. To reassure them, Gerard promised his children not to have a child with Marguerite, which devastated her. She decided to go to university.
Interpol Database of Crimes
Distribution of subversive literature (1994)
"Yes, I know Henri Roux. No, I did not sleep with him."
Statement to Gerard Jarbot's legal team
May 29, 1994
Jarbot entered the University of Paris in the fall of 1993. She studied philosophy and sociology. After meeting an anarchist by the name of Henri Roux, Jarbot started to become more involved in the anarchist movement. She published and distributed several tracts, many of which advocated the violent overthrow of the French, Spanish, and European governments. Her husband, Gerard, was more or less ambivolent towards his young wife's increasing radicalism. "It's a phase," he said, "she will not know how wise it is to keep her mouth shut and look pretty until she starts opening it." She started to combine her thoughts about anarchism with Basque nationalism. In the spring of 1994, Henri Roux and Marguerite Jarbot were arrested for distributing subversive literature. Roux was dismissed from the university, but Gerard Jarbot was able to broker a deal with the university to fund a new arts wing, and Marguerite was allowed to stay on. Needless to say, this did not endear Marguerite to her radical comrades, who started to resent Marguerite as part of the very bourgeois power structure they rallied against. Desperate to try to salvage her reputation as a revolutionary, Marguerite decided to act.
Vandalism (1994)
"The world can be divided into two parts: people and things. Sometimes people serve other people, but people never serve things. This includes institutions, which are things that bind no man. There are those who would claim that we are to serve institutions. I say, they are there to serve us in whatever manner that is most suitable. Crime against institutions is not crime."'
M. Jarbot
"L'Honneur de la Révolution"
Translation courtesy of André Depallier
European Union Bureau of Special Investigations
Marguerite Jarbot began a spree of vandalism and civil disobedience the likes of which shocked even the most radical Parisians. She began small, setting newspaper racks on fire and throwing bricks through windows. Her vandalism escalated to throwing fire bombs in government offices. However, her most notorious act was defacing the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in the heart of Paris. This act, caught on tape, caused such an uproar amongst decent Parisians that Marguerite Jarbot, the young wife of a successful businessman, became a household name. This negative publicity was of deep concern to Marguerite's husband, Gerard Jarbot, and he feared the negative publicity could affect his business interests. He immediately filed for a divorce.
Prostitution (1994-1995)
"What can I say about Gerard? He is what he is: a dirty old man--with more means than sense--who stole the innocence of a young Catholic girl from the provinces. The fact that I became a disappointment to him only affirms the truth of my observation. He wanted me, but he did not know me. How could he know me when I did not even know myself? But I must say, for the record, that I was faithful to that old man. You may think that a whore like me is not capable of keeping anything sacred, but I was not always a whore. I had to confess many things to my priest in my days with Gerard, but infidelity was not one of them. That all ended when he filed for the divorce. I did not see any semblance of sacrament in our matrimony after that. He wanted to be the first. He got that privilege. I, however, got his best hotel. Guess who got the better end out of the deal? That hotel turned out to be a gold mine."
Marguerite Marie Jarbot
"Confessions d'une Madame Parisienne"
Voici
January 10, 1996
Translation courtesy of Dennis Ewell
The divorce was a constant staple of the French tabloids for months. When the divorce proceedings were finally concluded in September of 1994, Gerard Jarbot had kept nearly his entire estate, save the crown jewel of Jarbot's holdings: the opulent Hôtel Rococo on Paris's Place de la Concorde. This would go to Marguerite as part of the divorce settlement. The young hotel owner showed surprising skill and drive, turning the struggling auberge into a world class resort.
She did this, in part, with the help of prostitutes. Jarbot started with the regular call girls who worked out of the Salon de Libellule on the first floor, offering them free rooms and full accomodation at the hotel in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. She then expanded her reach, enticing some of the most beautiful girls in Europe to become paid escorts for dignitaries, aristocrats, businessmen, and travellers. It is suspected, but never proven, that Jarbot herself personally serviced some of her clientèle.
Whether or not the young madame engaged in prostitution herself, word soon spread that the Hôtel Rococo was the place for a man about Europe. Word spread so far that the American CIA became interested Jarbot's enterprise from an operational standpoint. Jarbot quickly became, if not a major player, a significantly important personality in the post-Cold War intelligence community. She would assist in sting operations, blackmail, the identification of spies, and the collection of evidence through the use of videotapes. In exchange, Jarbot was offered protection from law enforcement and a generous stipend from the US government.
Things were looking good for Jarbot until late in 1995 when she took an offer from the Russian SVR to shelter some of their operatives. When the NSA found out about the operation, they saw it as a betrayal. The Ministry of the Interior started to conduct an investigation of the Hôtel Rococo early in 1996, and it was only a matter of time before a case would be filed. Jarbot fled the country and left the Hôtel Rococo to its management staff.
Drug smuggling operation, French Guiana (1996-1997)
"Exile is the price all the children of the revolution must pay if they are to fulfill their destiny as vanguards of history. When going into exile, I recommend no better place than the global South. Observing the people in the developing world will give the revolutionary a greater appreciation of the rightness of the cause. Here are people who live by their own traditions and customs--some of which have existed for thousands of years. You see a mismatched baseball cap here, a concert shirt from some pop act that died on the charts decades before, costumes made out of plastic shopping bags. They wear the West as the mismatched absurdity it has become."
M. Jarbot
"Enfants de la Révolution"
Translation courtesy Olivia Chung
Details are sparse on how Marguerite Jarbot ended up in South America. One rumor has it that Jarbot carried on an affair with Formula 1 World Champion Hernando Allegro, who offered to take her out of France to his native Brazil. Another rumor has her boarding the private yacht of one Paolo Estoban: drug kingpin and a frequent guest at the Hôtel Rococo. One thing is for certain, Marguerite Jarbot became involved in smuggling large amounts of cocaine on planes from Colombia to French Guiana. From there, it would board ships headed for Europe. This scheme ended in 1997 when the French authorities discovered the contraband. With the authorities hot on her trail, Marguerite Jarbot fled to Brazil alongside Roger "Fi Fi" Gascogne: a member of the foreign legion that Marguerite met in French Guiana.
Hostage taking on board the San Marquez ocean liner (1998)
"You may ask, for example, why I boarded the San Marquez. There was little monetary value in what I did. The operation cost me far more euros than I got in return. But I had already made a killing in South America, so money was of little concern. On the surface, there seems to be little difference between a criminal and a revolutionary. Both commit transgressions against the civil law. This, however, does not tell the whole story. When the criminal commits crime, he does it to enrich himself. When the revolutionary commits crime, it is to fund the activities that are necessary for the greater cause. And when I say the raid on the San Marquez was for the greater cause, one may understand that the reason was not for financial gain. So why, exactly, did I board the San Marquez in the summer of 1998? Ask your CIA."
Marguerite Marie Jarbot
"The Catching of La Dame Terrible"
Paragon City Gazette
June 5, 2007
On June 14, 1998, Jarbot and three operatives boarded the luxury cruise liner San Marquez travelling from San Fernando to Cyprus. Within thirty minutes, Jarbot had the vessel under her complete control. The motive for the hijacking seemed to be political. Several Spanish officials were on board, and Jarbot's statement to the press contained an appeal for Basque sovereignty, asking for the release of several Basque separatists held by the Spanish government. That is what Jarbot stated publically. However, she also demanded that CERN turn over some data collected in the spring of that year. The actual destination of the data remains unclear to this day, but several papers from faculty at Aeon University published in the subsequent years contained models that could only be formulated with access to the CERN data that were taken by Jarbot.
Bombing of five buildings in Tunisia (1999)
"It is tempting for the revolutionary to foster relationships with the great powers. Guerillas are able to do things that the great powers choose not to do. Great powers can provide the material and financial backing that is often difficult to obtain. Such relationships seem mutual but, in actuality, they are by their very nature unequal. It is not that the great powers cannot do what you do, they just choose not to. And the moment you do whatever they ask, they are under no obligation to fulfill their end of the bargain. What's more, the more you do for them, the less rewarding the service. Selling one's revolution to the great powers is like selling one's soul to Satan. Once you do it, they own you, and they would rather you die on the battlefield than come back with stories to tell."
M. Jarbot
"L'Honneur de la Révolution"
Translation courtesy of André Depallier
European Union Bureau of Special Investigations
Jarbot fled to North Africa after the San Marquez incident. It was here that she expanded her cadre of mercenaries to include several of Fi Fi Gascogne's contacts from the French foreign legion. Andre Bové, Pierre Voynet, and Jacques Toussaint all joined Jarbot at this time. Her plan was to lay low, train, acquire funds, and build up contacts. However, she was approached by the CIA once more to carry out an assignment in Tunisia. She was tasked with bombing five buildings, making it look like the work of dissident political groups. She was promised a handsome sum of gold and weapons in compensation. The plan worked out well, and civillian casualties were kept to a minimum. Save one photograph from an amateur photographer, no evidence of Jarbot's involvement surfaced. However, the weapons and funds Jarbot was promised never materialized. On the contrary, Jarbot was pursued by the Tunisian government. Her men escaped to an abandoned Legion barracks in Algeria. She escaped by tagging along with a Carmelite sisterhood on their way south.
Theft: medical supplies, Republic of the Congo (2000)
"There are those who say we revolutionaries have hearts of steel. If you wish to see a hearts as black and cold as steel, look to the state and its minions. We children of the revolution are the opposite. Where they hear the call of the law, we hear the call of love. It takes great love--the greatest love--to be a child of the revolution. Just as a child is conceived in love, so too is history conceived in love. A mother bears the pain of birth out of love. So too must we bear the pain of revolution, to give birth to a new way."
M. Jarbot
"Enfants de la Révolution"
Translation courtesy Olivia Chung
Jarbot learned medicine at a UN aid station in the Republic of the Congo during the Second Congo War. Before this time, she was proficient in first aid, but after she left the Congo she had enough theoretical and practical training to perform surgical procedures normally reserved for medical doctors. While she tended the sick and injured, her mercenaries continued to operate in the Congo and neighboring Rwanda for the better part of a year. In perhaps the one documented case of compassion, Jarbot stole bandages, sutures and medicine reserved for soldiers in order to care for refugees displaced by the conflict. While this would normally be something that would be overlooked, Jarbot's criminal record soon became known, and she fled with her entourage on a plane bound for Europe.
Insurrection, Basque separatists (2001)
"[A]nd so the press says, 'Madame Jarbot, why don't you just go home?' I honestly could not tell you where 'home' is."
Marguerite Marie Jarbot
"Confessions d'une Madame Parisienne"
Voici
January 10, 1996
Translation courtesy of Dennis Ewell
Kidnapping, Paris Opera Ballet (2002)
"Oh the ballet premire? That was especially fun. I had spent nearly a year planning it. Of course, the hardest part was infiltrating the cast. It was hard to go back to pointe shoes after being in combat boots for so long. But if you've tendue'd at the barre for as long as I have, you don't forget so easily. A quick dying of my hair and a name change, and nobody suspected anything. The funny part about it is that they gave me a standing ovation...right before my men barricaded the doors!"
Marguerite Marie Jarbot
"The Catching of La Dame Terrible"
Paragon City Gazette
June 5, 2007
Hijacking of EU motorcade (2003)
Drug running, Kashmir region (2004)
Armed robbery of the Monte Carlo casino (2005)
Espionage, Maryland, U.S.A. (2006)
Torture, U.S.A. Joint Chief of Staff, Maryland, U.S.A. (2007)
Prison break, Zigursky Penitentiary (2008)
Quotes About La Dame Terrible
