Allison Bronte

Allison is our viewpoint character. Allison is a serious nerd about Knights, magic, and Fairies, and sometimes gets carried away with enthusiasm for the subjects enough to be a little reckless. Outside of those moments of indiscretion, she tends to have a decent amount of common sense.

Allison is both knowledgeable and clever, and tends to be fairly responsible--but not abnormally responsible. She's more than capable of giving in to childish urges or selfishness from time to time, though generally only in certain areas of her life, like in regards to her obsessions. She's a good student, and while she tends to get high grades, she's not the sort to freak out over a low grade every now and again.

Allison's best subjects are English and Literature, but she does well in most of her classes. She struggles in math, and her average often drops down into the C's in math classes. She's too embarrassed to ask for help though.

Allison loves reading and writing, but her biggest passion is stories about Magic, especially in regards to the Knights who protect the City of the Firefly. She has a not-at-all secret ambition to become a Knight one day, and it's always been a dream of hers to find the long missing and presumed dead Knight of Mirrors and become her apprentice, and eventual successor.

Queenly Ambitions
Allison is actually pretty damned happy just getting a chance to be a Knight. At least at first. Allison has her pride though, and it's when she starts getting a reputation for being a magical weakling that she decides she wants to excel in the Succession and become the Crown Princess, just to prove she can. At first she's not sure she's into the idea of being Queen one day, but Vivi eventually convinces her that she would be a great leader, and to believe in her claim to the throne.

Relationships
Her mother is a powerful force in her life, but her mother disapproves of Allison being so into Knights and the like, fearing Allison will get herself hurt one day following her passions. She seriously does not want Allison to become a Knight. When Allison becomes the Knight of Vectors, she tries to keep it secret, and they begin to become a little distant because of how much Allison begins shutting her out of her life. Allison's father died before she was born, and her mom gets so down in the dumps when she asks about him that she has never had the heart to learn much about him. She does keep a sword on her wall that belonged to her father--an old, Cold Iron dueling Epee. She's curious about her father, but hates seeing how sad her mom gets when she asks about him too much to press the issue.

Allison's best friends are Vivi Goodall, who becomes the Knight of Sunflowers at the beginning of the story, and Simon Adams, a boy they go to school with. The three have been friends for years. Allison has started to develop feelings for Vivi by the start of the story, but probably has not realized it yet when the story starts. Allison was not aware of Vivi being related to Daisy, and seriously nerds out over it. Vivi's both flattered and feels a little weird about Allison's hero worship once she becomes a Knight.

Simon is also crushing on Allison pretty hard, a fact she's aware of but when asked says she isn't sure what she feels about it. She says that until he plucks up the courage to actually tell her how he feels, she's not going to think about it. If she were to be honest with herself, she's completely uninterested in Simon romantically, but she hasn't figured out her feelings about the matter when the story starts.

Powers and Abilities
Allison has a number of abilities or pieces of equipment in her repertoire over the course of the series.

Magical Mimicry
Allison is a Wild Talent with the power to mimic the magic of those around her, especially those with whom she shares a close personal bond. When she asks her mom where the talent came from, her mom tends to change the subject. When pressed on the issue, she's mentioned that she thinks one of her great grandparents might have been a nymph or something. Allison is not sure if her mom has a Wild Talent of her own, but she has expressed more knowledge of magic than most people would have from time to time, so Allison privately suspects she does--just one she's embarrassed about for whatever reason.

Wild Talents are uncommon but not actually that rare in the City of the Fireflies, so while it is a useful asset for a Princess to have, it's one that's accounted for. It gives her an edge in fights, but she is not the only Princess with a Talent, and her own lack of magical muscle makes it more useful for the surprise factor than as a trump card. As she begins to become known among the other Princesses, the surprise factor is reduced, though even those who know of her power ahead of time are often surprised by the ways she puts it to use. She is especially good at combining the powers she copies with her other powers to create unique synergies that opponents could not have prepared for ahead of time.

Knight of Vectors
Main Article: Knight of Vectors  Once Allison becomes the Knight of Vectors, she finds that she is not especially powerful in terms of how much raw strength she can put behind her magic. Mostly this is an issue of endurance--she can actually put a fair bit of power into a single spell if she needs to, but it will leave her gasping for breath to do so. She might be able to manage more raw strength in a single spell than Vivi, but Vivi could probably spam spells that are only a bit weaker for a lot longer--and when Jill goes all out Allison doesn't compare at all. Allison's main strength as a Knight is in her cleverness and her ability to do a lot with only a little bit of power. She also has a knack for creating Artefacts and self-perpetuating spell constructs.

Allison's Cold Iron Epee
Allison's sword, a dueling epee which she inherited from her father, is made of Cold Iron, and can therefore inhibit or even destroy magic, and hurts both fairies and powerful human practitioners badly when used to attack them. It can even ignore magical toughness entirely. However, it's not a catch-all by any means. Shee are the most vulnerable to attacks with her sword, as unless they're very clever, they can rarely work around the danger of the sword. But intelligent Fairies, once they realize what they're dealing with, can generally find ways to still threaten her with magic, such as by using it indirectly--the sword might be able to dissipate blasts of elemental power, but it can't do anything about a building falling on her because the fairy took out a support structure with their magic. And because Succession Duels are forbidden from being taken to lethal extremes, she can't use the sword for direct attacks against Princesses either.