Profile

User Name/Nick: Claire
User DW: diabolicalfiend
AIM/IM: n/a
E-mail: biffingprincess@yahoo.ie
Other Characters: n/a

Character Name: Francis Ewan Urquhart
Series: House of Cards (UK)
Age: 64
From When?: After The Final Cut

Inmate/Warden: Inmate

It’s really quite simple. He has committed multiple counts of blackmail, murder, extortion, terrorism and rose to power and created a tyrannical regime where the homeless are stepped upon and the poor ignored. It’s what he considers the game of politics and takes whatever challenges are put in front of him with relish. He is capricious and merciless when he is upset by someone and charming and seductive to those he likes and feels he can use.

Item: n/a

Abilities/Powers: completely normal human. Extremely charismatic and very, very smart. Served as a soldier and a spy in the British Army and can shoot to kill from a distance.

Personality: “You might think that - I couldn’t possibly comment.” is the phrase Francis Urquhart, also known as FU to his cabinet colleagues, friends and enemies, delivers with a dry, cool tone on a number of occasions.

When he was a mere Chief Whip (a job he saw as ‘keeping the boys in line, putting a bit of stick about’), Francis was reasonably content at the job. He saw his colleagues as pathetic wastes who needed him to pull them out of hot water and keeping them toeing the line. By and large, however, his colleagues thought of him as some unambitious school master, not to be respected.

It was this, plainly inaccurate, assumption that led to Prime Minister Collingridge to making his first mistake: passing Urquhart over for promotion. It woke a smouldering rage in him, as he felt his work and talents were unappreciated and, with the urging of his faithful wife, Elizabeth, decided to bring him down.

Later, when Urquhart is in charge, he becomes an obviously cool, vicious character, not suffering fools gladly and even to the point of alienating his one other ally beside his wife, Tom Stamper, ironically by the same means that prompted Francis’ rise to power in the first place: passing him over to keep him as Chief Whip. He enjoys cracking jokes at the expense of others who may have been hurt by his schemes.

Francis also has something of a taste for younger women: Mattie and Sarah were both much younger than he and, with the permission of his wife, he takes both women, by then obsessed by him, to his bed. Still, what attracts him to them is not their youth, but their youngest - they’re innocent to his methods and means, even if in the case of Sarah, believes otherwise, and both women wish, genuinely, to learn from him.

In exchange, Francis allows his more vulnerable side to come out: he expresses (albeit vaguely) his fears and concerns to both women and even guilt about Mattie’s death to Sarah, though he doesn’t admit until he’s confronted with the tape that he’d killed her at all.

He is genuinely regretful about Mattie’s death, as he continued to have flashbacks to the murder right up until he was killed himself. And he does genuinely appreciate his equally machiavellian wife, who encourages him in all his endeavours - her similarity to Lady Macbeth made by the man himself. They do not appear to have a sex life themselves, likely seeing their partnership as sufficient satisfaction and display of their love for each other. He tells her everything about him and she advises him as best she can.

Barge Reactions: Initially, Francis will be deeply shocked and disorientated for having found himself on The Barge. To begin with, he’ll have come from his own assassination and having died in his wife’s arms. Then when the myriad different kinds of people on board start to emerge, it’ll come as a great shock and he won’t know what to think. Being told he’s a prisoner will rankle him as part of the reason he was assassinate was to avoid this sort of thing and he certainly won’t be pleased by the idea that there will be a file on him that will tell all.

He will soon adapt, however, once he realises that perhaps this was what he was looking for: a challenge. He will start to gain allies and contribute to the Barge, giving the appearance of a model citizen so he can start to gather blackmail material and information about his fellow passengers. He’ll be a little irritated never to find out much about the Admiral, but will use the lack of information to alienate people from the system.

With a warden, he will take them to be his ‘confessor’. Not necessarily sharing all his feelings with them, but definitely some and will try to use their talks to bring them on side with him. If it’s with a man or a savvy enough woman, he’ll attempt to foster a conspiratorial relationship with them. If it’s with a more naive woman, he’ll also lead up to an affair, likely with the knowledge that it would serve to diminish them in the eyes of their fellow wardens and thus create a hold over them.

He will miss his wife very much though and will cope, but feel the more vulnerable for it.

For floods and ports, the fact that the passengers all, more or less, share the same experiences will soften the blow, though he’ll be as disorientated as most will be on the Barge.

The fact that people come back from the dead will mean that he may resort to other means to warn people off, so it’s unlikely he’ll be particularly physically violent but may still order hits if someone actively makes an enemy of him.

Path to Redemption: Francis can’t resist a good challenge. It’s important that a warden phrases his redemption as a worthwhile challenge. The passive boredom of the Barge should help, he’ll start to go stir crazy and would probably be better prepared to listen.

He will attempt to subvert his warden and get personal with them, even possibly seduce them. This is not necessarily a bad thing and can be used as an opening. The one person he has flashbacks about is Mattie Storen, an innocent young reporter with high ideals. She trusted him just before he’d killed her, unlike Stamper and Sarah, who had started to turn against him.

He values loyalty, perhaps even more because he rarely shows it himself, and if someone shows it even after he makes that clear he may even start to show it to them. He also values discretion. A warden that blurts out his inner secrets to anyone will do so at the price of his trust and do it often enough, he’ll consider them an outright enemy.

A genial warden will work best for him as he’ll not take any notice of anyone trying to push him about and obviously press his buttons. And he’s likely to scoff at moralistic rhetoric - be logical and cunning if you’re to gain his respect.

But above all, remember: Francis does genuinely want to make Britain ‘great’. He’s done all he’s done in service of that goal - if a warden can make him understand that a society is only as good as its weakest link - a link that Francis effectively stamped into the ground, then the warden will have made a lot of progress. Examining his legacy will therefore be very helpful to Francis’ redemption process.

History: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Urquhart”>here</a>