Madame Vera — ageless, glittering, and quietly omnipotent — is the world’s most exclusive matchmaker. She trades in contracts and curated life trajectories, not lust. She operates like a citadel of taste and consequence: clients come for love, legacy, or trophies; everyone leaves bound to a fate she drafted.

Character sheet (quick)

Appearance: always immaculate couture from the current season; statement hats, long gloves, a fan of capes and slim cigarette-holder-like pens (she never smokes). Skin and hair that have the same luminous, slightly translucent quality in every decade. Watches the room with the calm of someone who’s already made the decision.

Age: indeterminate — looks 55–75 and has looked that way for decades. Passports say different things.

Voice & accent: “acquired” Mid-Atlantic — clipped, elliptical, almost cinematographic. Hints of foreign vowels on certain words. Speaks slowly so everyone feels placed in a film noir.

Demeanor: charming, implacable, indulgent and maternal one moment, quietly judicial the next.

Bases: LA and New York offices; small, perfectly run satellite in London and discreet connections in Paris and Toronto.

Logo/prop: a solid-gold apple with a stylized “V” atop it — displayed on her desk and sewn into certain private invitations.

Modus operandi: invitation-only + referral + “special quality” exception. She surveils, intervenes, files binding contracts drafted by her lawyers, and enforces social penalties (exclusion from her network).

Core rules of Madame Vera’s business

No escorting. Companionship, compatibility, and long-term arrangements only. If you want something transactional and fleeting, she refers you elsewhere — and then bans you.

Consent & law: she obeys local marriage/consent laws (she is bureaucratically clever). She uses jurisdictional differences where advantageous, but never crosses the line into criminality in jurisdictions she controls.

Her decisions are final. Dispute her and you lose access. (This is social as much as legal — the world she serves enforces it.)

Clients & compensation: most pay in cash; some pay in favors, access, introductions (especially younger or less wealthy matches). She accepts network currency when useful.

“Best” is subjective but absolute — she decides what’s best for the client and for the network she’s nurturing.

Rumors, possibilities & suggested backstory threads you can use

(keep options ambiguous — the power of Madame Vera is in the not-knowing)

Family line of “matchkeepers”: an old guild of arrangers going back centuries; the gold apple is a family emblem.

Occult lineage: legends say the apple is enchanted and binds the contract. (Make this ambiguous: one old client swears it’s true; her lawyers call it metaphor.)

Immortality theory: she’s been photographed in the 1930s and now; small details (a scar, a ring) persist. Or she simply pays extremely well for photographic manipulation.

Body doubles / bi-location: she uses identical agents or clone

jaybee3

Published Stories