Your Web Hostess: Lady Keela Shanri
Accessing classified personal files...please stand by...
Full Name: Keela Shanri
Rank/Position: Lady to begin with; currently a waitress
Physical Description: About 35 years of age in Human terms but looks a bit younger, 5' no inches tall, slender, slight of build, with delicate, bony features, a bright red ponytail, and large bright green eyes. Attractive, but not drop-dead gorgeous. She speaks Human English very well, usually with a British accent, as that's the way the man on the language-lesson data crystal talked, but in times of great emotional stress, she reverts to her ORIGINAL accent, which is about the same as Londo's only toned down a bit. The British-accent version she taught herself, as an adult, whereas the Centauri-accent version is how she learned to speak it as a small child, so it's more ingrained. She is left-handed.
Personality: She is basically a quiet person, but if you push her, she will push back--the EXACT same amount. She likes things to be even and fair, and believes that different groups should have equal rights. She has a tendency to always root for the underdog. Unlike most Centauri, she does not HATE Narns, but she IS afraid of them, knowing what they think of her people. She usually tries to stay out of politics and just keep to herself. When it's roused, her temper can be a formidable thing, and she is a lot stronger than she looks. She is a creative person, and like all creative types, she tends to be a bit absent-minded and not very good at keeping specific hours. She often jumps from one topic to another with no warning while talking.
Relationships: Her parents, her two sisters, other assorted relatives. She is a good friend of Vir and knows Londo in passing. Vir may be the only person who can help her out of...well...read on.
Loyalties/Alliance: She is, first and foremost, loyal to her friends and family. After that, she is very patriotic towards the Centauri Republic. The only time she would turn against them would be if they started hurting people for NO reason at all (instead of say, in an all-out war), and even then, she would hold on on Centauri customs and culture even if she DIDN'T hold with their politics. No matter what happens, she is very proud to be Centauri.
Background/Story: This is gonna take a while, bear with me...
Lady Keela Shanri is my own character, NOT one from Babylon 5 itself. She is the Head of House Shanri, which goes back to the days of the very first Emperor. The first Shanri was the first Emperor's appointed Court Minstrel. Since then, they have evolved over the centuries into a borderline noble House known for music. They are high up enough the ladder to get invited to the really big parties that the Emperor throws at the Royal Palace to celebrate major holidays, for example, but they're on the D-list, and when they get there, the other nobles tend to laugh at them behind their hands. Kinda like "country squires". But there are two things that set House Shanri apart from all the other Houses of the same rank--their genetic streak for musical ability, and their rarer one of prophetic abilities.
Keela was hit by BOTH.
She did not have her prophetic abilities as a child, which is why the Royal Seeress's Guild did not raise her, but rather they showed up when she was a teenager. She then did not tell anybody about it, because while it IS a huge honour to be a Seeress (they are outside the law!), it would mean she'd have to leave the quiet lifestyle at her mansion. All she wanted was to be left ALONE to write her operas and study Human culture. That was not to be.
Keela, you see, was to be the Head of House Shanri as soon as her parents died. Now, normally, this position would go to a MALE child, but they had none in the direct descendant line this generation, only three daughters, and Keela is the oldest. So she was taught all the stuff that the Head of a Noble House needs to know in order to defend the House's honour, making her not exactly the typical whiny noble Centauri Lady. She was taught how to fight with the ceremonial Centauri short-sword, or Coutari, and carries one with her often; she was taught how to pilot the family warship, she was taught diplomacy and languages for several different major alien cultures. But none of this is what REALLY disrupted her life.
No, that came in the form of her husband.
Her family was threatened one day by a mere middle-class family that they had some MAJOR dirt on House Shanri, and if they did not allow their son to marry their oldest daughter--Keela--they would tell it to everyone. And so Keela was married to someone beneath her rank, giving the position of head of the House to a COMMONER, because of a blackmail deal!
The guy was an absolute CREEP. When they went anywhere socially, he milked his new status for all it was worth and openly flirted, right in front of her, with other women of the same rank or sometimes a bit higher. He treated her like she didn't exist, both at home and in public. But if that wasn't bad enough, he also STOLE her operas from her! She would leave the manuscripts lying around, so she could get to them easily when inspiration struck her, and her husband would wait until they were done, then run off with them and put HIS name on them! Keela tried to tell herself that all that really mattered was that people were indeed listening to, and LIKING, music that had come out of HER brain, but that wasn't enough, and the hatred still festered...
Then one night, she had one of her prophetic dreams. (Unlike Seeresses with more developed powers, she always had her visions asleep rather than while awake as well). She saw her husband coming after her with a knife! He struck down on her back and--
She was awake.
Keela was greatly disturbed by this. For one thing, her prophetic ablilities were rather limited--they only showed her a short way into the future. Things that she saw in her vision-dreams would usually come to pass, one way or another, within a month. And secondly, she KNEW that her husband was greedy for more status and was constantly trying to climb the ladder...and that one of the steps UP that ladder would be to get rid of her so he could inherit the entire estate of the House and marry again, higher! So she BELIEVED the dream. It would happen, and it would happen SOON.
The only question was, when?
The next morning, she and her husband were having breakfast together, a very rare occurrence as they usually avoided each other's company like the plague. While Keela was turned around to get a drink, her husband picked up a large cleaver. Now, he MAY have been only going to get a slice of meat, but we'll never know, 'cos the instant Keela saw the glint of that knife out of the corner of her eye, she turned around, WHIPPED her sword out from underneath her robes, and WHACK! Her husband no longer had a head!
Horrified, Keela decided to just run. It wasn't as if she really had a case. Because of the thing with the operas, in addition to other things, she had a strong MOTIVE for murder, and the only evidence that she had that it was self-defense was from an UNREGISTERED psionic power! So in defending herself, she would get herself in trouble. Either way, things looked very bleak, so Keela just packed up as fast as she could and RAN.
She put as many supplies into the family warship as she could in a short time, splashed paint over the family crest on the wings, then took off. Once she got out of Centauri space, she decided to take the long way around (as opposed to using jumpgates) to let her hair grow out, to study up on her Human English, and to alter her clothes to look as much like Human fashions as possible. See, she was going to not only run away, but create an entire new identity as a different SPECIES. She figured that would be enough to throw most people off.
At one point during her journey, she came upon a small Human ship with only one person aboard. She pretended to be horribly damaged and signalled for help. The guy docked his ship with hers, and the instant he came on board, she injected him with a powerful knockout drug--enough to keep him out for several hours. While he was out, she transferred as much of his stuff to HER ship and vice versa as she could, and also left instructions for how to operate her ship--in English. After all, even though she WAS stealing his ship, she was not a JERK, and he was getting the better end of the bargain anyway...
Now, she had a Human designed ship to go with her new "Human" image. And so, once she finally arrived at the huge, mixed-race space station Babylon 5, months later, "Lady Keela Shanri" was (temporarily?) dead and "Sharon Kelly" had been born. Her new identity was that of a hard-luck Human orphan who's family had all been killed in the Mars Riots and who had no-where else to go. That was at least partially true...Since she no longer had her family's accounts supporting her, and did not have enough time to bring much money with her, she is now rather poor, and had to get a job on B5. However, seeing as how most of her skills would raise eybrows on someone of such seemingly lowly station (such as, how did a poor Mars orphan girl learn diplomacy and sword-fighting?) she had to get a lowly job befitting her new persona.
So now, if you go to Babylon 5, you may meet a small, feisty, redheaded woman, named Sharon Kelly, with a crew cut, a funny ponytail, and a British accent, waiting tables at a really scrungy dive in the Down Below of Brown Sector, called "The Severed Head". She is now living a lie, in total misery, cut off from her own people and their culture, desperately homesick.
Will she ever be able to come back to Centauri Prime and be a Lady again?
Time will tell...
Click HERE to return to The Purple Files.
Click HERE to return to Centauri Prime.