Lilli Nissen
Lilli Nissen is a famous actress and renowned beauty of the Empire and Marienburg. [1a]
Appearance
She has large dark eyes. [1b] One husband described her as having: the breasts of a pigeon, the lungs of a bansidhe, the morals of an alleycat and a brain like Black Mountain cheese. [1d]
Entourage
Lilli is accompanied by a black-skinned mute from the Southlands, whose scars proclaimed him as her slave and acted as her driver, bodyguard and personal servant. She also travels with Nebenzahl, her astrologer, a face-paint adviser and dresser. [1d]
History
She was said to have been the mistress to six out of the fourteen Elector Counts [1a] including the Grand Duke of Talabecland who gave her four priceless jewel-inset cut-glass goblets. [1b]
Detlef Sierck engaged her to play the goddess Shallya in his play: The True history of Sigmar Heldenhammer. but she refused to leave Marienburg when plague broke out amongst the vast army of extras. [1a]
Oswald von Konigswald invited her to play Genevieve Dieudonné in Detlef's new play Drachenfels. [1b] She reluctantly agreed, but suggested that rather than a vampire, the part be re-written as an elf but Laszlo Lowenstein scared her into withdrawing that request. [1e] Her only percieved rival in beauty and style at the dinner for the Emperor and his Electors before the performance was Emmanuelle von Liebwitz and she countered the Countess's vastly superior wealth by exposing even more flesh through mesh and cut out leggings. The two women were only united in their mutual hatred of each other. [1f]
An hour before curtain up she was sent a horrific gift, the eyeless face of Anton Veidt which sent her into hysterics culminating in her refusing to perform. [1g] She was replaced by Genevieve herself. [1h]
Following this disaster, Lilli was briefly married to a famous pit fighter and produced and stared in The Romance of Fair Matilda in Marienburg which was a costly failure. When she was offered her first mother role she retired from the stage. Several more marriages followed as well as an affair with a cousin of Radii Bokha before she finally retreated from public life to write her memoirs. [1i]
Quotes
| That fat, smug, oily monster! That foulest of worms! That viper-tongued tyrant! Only a personal summons from the grand prince of Ostland would persuade me to step into a room with pus-oozing vermin, let alone play opposite him in another of his rot-awful shitguts melodramas!
~ Lilli Nissen on Detlef Sierck.[1] |
Sources