Cattleya Baudelaire

About Cattleya Baudelaire

Cattleya Baudelaire is the star Auto Memory Doll of Violet Evergarden, CH Postal's most requested letter writer and the standard every other Doll is measured against. Confident, glamorous and completely professional, she shows Violet, and the audience, what mastery of the Doll's strange trade actually looks like. She travels constantly, handles the company's most delicate clients, and treats the private feelings inside people's letters as something sacred.

Appearance

Cattleya is a beautiful woman with long, wavy black hair, composed features and the confident posture of someone used to being the most capable person in the room. She wears the CH Postal Doll uniform with more polish than regulation requires, carries herself like a film star doing office work, and is usually framed travelling, arriving or leaving with luggage and admirers in her wake. Next to Violet's stiffness and Iris's eagerness, Cattleya's calm glamour marks her as the company's finished product: this is what a master Doll looks like.

Personality

Cattleya is self assured without being arrogant about it: she knows she is the best Doll in the building and sees no reason to pretend otherwise. She is warm in a grown up, unsentimental way, teasing Hodgins, tolerating Iris's rivalry and giving Violet straight answers instead of comfort. Her pride is professional rather than vain. A Doll's work is other people's most private feelings, and Cattleya treats that trust as sacred, which is why clients request her and why her rare praise carries weight with the younger Dolls. Clients sense it within minutes of meeting her.

Background & Story

Cattleya, named like all the famous Dolls after a flower, was already the CH Postal Company's most requested Auto Memory Doll when Violet arrived: the one clients ask for by name, the one sent across the continent for the work that needs discretion, speed and perfect manners. Her history before the company is kept light by the story, which presents her instead as the standard Violet has to reach, a professional at the very top of the trade. Within the company she is Hodgins' most trusted Doll and his favourite argument. Their teasing has the rhythm of people who have worked together since the early days, and she is one of the few who can tell the president when he is wrong. With Violet she is neither motherly nor cruel, just honest: she treats the new girl as a colleague who will either reach the standard or not, and her quiet approval, when it comes, means more because of it. The films keep her where she belongs, at the top of the profession as the Doll era begins to fade.

Powers & Abilities

• Elite ghostwriting: Cattleya handles the hardest commissions at CH Postal: letters where one wrong word could end a marriage, a career or a negotiation, delivered perfectly.
• Social mastery: Nobles, artists, officers and merchants all relax around her. She can enter any household on the continent and belong there within the hour.
• Professional speed: Her reputation rests on volume as well as quality: she completes more requests than any other Doll while travelling constantly between clients.

Key Relationships

• Claudia Hodgins: Her employer and favourite sparring partner. Their flirtatious arguments sit on top of years of trust; she keeps him honest and he knows it.
• Violet Evergarden: Her junior colleague. Cattleya refuses to baby Violet, and her respect, when Violet earns it, is one of the quiet milestones of Violet's growth.
• Iris Canary: The ambitious young Doll who wants Cattleya's crown. Cattleya finds the rivalry more amusing than threatening, which annoys Iris even more.

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