The Viscountess
Lady Samantha Sudbury (1752-1836)
History describes British Governor Strype as a capable but overmatched commander eventually driven out of Freedom by the wilier Joseph Clark. This version of events omits how Strype quickly realized he was losing the intelligence battle and turned to help from a most unexpected source.
Formally, she was Lady Samantha Sudbury, descendant of a line that had served the British monarchy since the Restoration of King Charles. The only child of the Fifth Viscount Bayning (the last of the Baynings, after an unfortunate incident during the Rising of '15), she had been taught to shoot, hunt, and ride as well as any man, and had full expectations of following her father William into the service of King George. Until, a few days after her seventeenth birthday, she learned the wonderful news that her father's pretty young second wife had given him the male heir he'd wanted for so long – and that Samantha herself could have the excellent marriage to a well-connected man that so many Bayning women had had over the years, just as William was sure she'd always wanted.
She and her husband had been married five grim, tedious years amid his tedious friends in London before he took a command in the Americas and they left London for the miserable hellhole of the colonies – where they served not even in Philadelphia or New York, but among “the devils of New Jerfey”. If she drank, if she took lovers, in Britain and in the colonies, was it any wonder? Her husband Richard was a tiresome fool who tried to turn his friendly relations with the young King George III into a military command in the colonies – only to find himself assigned to a post as Strype's chief of staff when it became clear that he was fit to command nothing more than the dinner table.
Given a new purpose in life after being approached by Strype as the 'real' head of intelligence in the colony (his father having known her father in the Rising meant that he knew full well her native abilities), the Viscountess donned a black leather outfit of her own design and used her husband's money to purchase Satan, a magnificent black stallion that could “ride faster than the Devil”, and adopted for her masked nomme de guerre the title that should have been hers, that could have been hers – Viscountess.
No one who ever met the striking, raven-haired, voluptuous Viscountess ever forgot her, especially the countless men who she defeated in hand-to-hand combat, becoming among the most feared agents of the Crown in the 13 Colonies during the War. Perhaps she couldn't fight oddities like Minuteman and Lady Liberty in hand-to-hand combat without an escape route and preparation in advance – but few could match her stealth, her speed, and her unmatched abilities in espionage.
During the war, she developed a special hatred for Joseph Clark – strange freaks like Minuteman and myths like Lady Liberty were one thing, but losing to a man with no strange gifts, no bizarre blessings, and no talents of his own was a constant source of ire for her. A woman of the Enlightenment, she found the blessings placed on Lady Liberty to be a source of tremendous frustration. She waged a continuing war of secrets with Lady Liberty, with neither gaining the upper hand. Their conflict carried on throughout the colonies until Lady Liberty’s demise in an ambush orchestrated by the Viscountess – a shame it had to be that way, but that was war.
Her victory was short-lived however, as soon after, the “contemptible traitors” in the colonies won their independence. But there were other kinds of victories to be had. Shortly after their return to Great Britain, her husband Richard, who had recently suffered a fall from his horse that had left him with a permanent limp, chose to devote himself to maintaining and organizing their estate in Suffolk, leaving his lady wife to manage the family's affairs in London.
Wife of a famous war hero and from a respected family of the genry, through hard work and ruthless dealings, Lady Samantha became one of the reigning queens of London Society at the dawn of the Regency, center of a network of influence and spies that would last long past her death in 1836. Her three daughters Charlotte (1785-1865), Elizabeth (1791-1823), and Victoria (1797-1867) would all play their own role in the history of Great Britain and its empire...
Author's Note:
This is an alternate version of the canon NPC created by Christopher McGlothin in Worlds of Freedom
Edited by Avenger Assembled
