Witch

The final character that is part of the circus story cast is the villain of the story the witch Manon. She is the one who cursed Aristide and by that started it all.

Manon is a very powerful and influential witch. She made a fortune by selling her services as a spell caster and made many influential friends that help her hide her more sinister side. She might help people on the surface but her services always come with a price other than money too. However she wasn’t always that way. She comes from a family of witches that specialized in healing magic but was poor, as the real money lies in curses and spells. Her mother worked for Aristides sick mother and due to this, the two of them grew up together or rather next to each other. Manon admired Aristide from day one watching him from the sidelines as he practiced ballet from his early childhood on. However Aristide hardly every acknowledged her and always just saw her as the weird daughter of his mothers nurse that stared at him. As the years went by Manon kept watching Aristide and slowly fell in love with this young man who was everything she couldn’t be. Even after his mother died and Manon and her mother had to leave Aristides home, she saved all her money to watch him dance in his many performances. Despite her support Aristide, who turned into a proud and selfish man under his fathers strict guidance and without his mother, considered her beneath him and unworthy of the attention of a talented and beautiful Artist such as himself. He kept ignoring her until one day she finally snapped after he openly pretended not to know her in front of his acquaintances. Enraged she broke into his home that night and for the first time revealed just how powerful of a witch she grew into. She cursed him and left with the words that he made her feel invisible all her life and that he now will finally experience how that feels.

Originally she planned to let him suffer for a while and remove the curse when he learned his lesson, but he unexpectedly ran away and Manon became obsessed with finding him and making him love her. She searched for years and grew more twisted and obsessed as time passed by. Finally she discovered the circus, but seeing the kind and caring man Aristide turned into made her snap completely. Now all she wants is to destroy the new life Aristide built himself.

Aristide accepts his guilt for treating her badly and being a bad person back then, but Manons repeated effort to hurt the people he cares about and by that bringing innocent people into this crosses the line. Her once justified rage blew way out of proportion and into blind hatred and hunger for revenge. She especially hates Rose for seemingly getting what Manon always wanted, however she refrains from directly attacking the circus because she is afraid of Argider so she uses more Guerilla tactics.