Margot Delacroix
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| Margot Delacroix | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Margot Delacroix |
| Affiliation | House Subconium; Delacroix's Tomes and Treasures |
| Status | Active |
| Occupation | Owner, Delacroix's Tomes and Treasures; House Subconium legacy member |
| First appearance | Comply |
| Canon status | Confirmed |
About
Margot Delacroix (b. May 25, 1976) is the owner of Delacroix's Tomes and Treasures, Verdant's oldest continuously operating business, and a legacy member of House Subconium. She is the ninth generation of the Delacroix matrilineal line and the current holder of the family's House Subconium seat. She is the primary antagonist of Comply, where she places The Anklet of Inevitable Accord on Haley Wegner following a shoplifting incident. She is the thread connecting Comply directly to the occult machinery beneath Verdant.
Description
Margot has blue-green eyes, often described as mesmerizing. Her hair is dark brown with a silver streak; she frequently dyes it black while keeping the streak. She is 5'6" and 121 lbs.
Background
Margot was raised by her mother Eloise Delacroix with a serious education about the family's artifact collection, its history, and its dangers, but with a firm discouragement of any idea that the family practiced magic. Eloise framed the Delacroix role as pure custodianship. Margot rejected this framing, philosophically, at approximately age 16 when she discovered Eleanor Ashburne's original diaries hidden in the family vault.
The diaries laid out the full founding history of Verdant and the true role of the Delacroix line within it. Margot was furious at her mother's commercial approach to the shop and the buried history. In 1992 she sought out a journalism student at Eastern Tsuga College and gave them photocopied diary pages, specifically the entries connecting Tituba to Sarah Osgood. The article ran, contributed to Verdant's Safe Harbor rebrand, and created lasting friction with Salem, Massachusetts. Eloise almost certainly knew who the source was. The subject was never raised between them.
When Eloise died around 2007, Margot inherited the shop, the House Subconium seat, the vault, and no explanation. One of her first acts was to give Eleanor's original diaries to House Subconium for safekeeping, earning meaningful standing in the organization beyond the Delacroix name alone. She has spent the years since rebuilding the shop into a serious occult enterprise and deepening her understanding of the family's true history.
Personality and traits
Margot is polished, purposeful, and operating from genuine conviction. She respects the true history of her family more than anyone in her immediate bloodline and has worked to understand it independently since she was a teenager. She is not naive about the objects in her vault. She is also not someone who fully examines her own motivations when they align with what she already wants to do.
She believes in using the family's power rather than simply guarding it. That belief started at 16 in a vault, reading Eleanor Ashburne's account of what the Delacroix line had actually done. It is the belief that led her to remove the Anklet from the vault and place it on Haley Wegner, violating the principle her grandmother established in 1929 specifically so it would never be used again.
Her core tension is that she respects the family's history more sincerely than anyone and may be repeating its most dangerous mistake in a different key.
Role in Comply
When Haley Wegner enters Delacroix's Tomes and Treasures unaccompanied and is drawn to one of the Stones of the Rolekeeper, Margot catches her attempting to leave with it. The stone Haley drew bears the symbol for "to be controlled." Margot uses the incident as the trigger for placing The Anklet of Inevitable Accord on Haley's ankle, compelling her to return to the shop every Friday at 9 a.m. to work off her guilt.
The Anklet compels truth-telling and compliance with verbal requests. Margot removed it from the vault her grandmother had locked it in specifically so it would never be used again. Whether House Subconium is aware of this has not been established. The shoplifting genuinely offended her. Whether it warranted the Anklet is a question she has not fully examined.
Key relationships
Eloise Delacroix
Eloise Delacroix was Margot's mother and the previous owner of the shop. She raised Margot outside the Delacroix tradition in the same way her own mother had raised her, discouraging practice and withholding history. She died around 2007 without explanation. Why she chose to keep Margot in the dark, having understood the cost of being kept there herself, is the question her story leaves unanswered.
Marguerite Delacroix (Gen 7)
Marguerite (Gen 7) is Margot's grandmother. Margot knows she held the family seat and that the Anklet is connected to a death. She does not know Marguerite killed Elias Roarke with it, or that the vault was locked specifically so the Anklet would never be used again. She is acting against her grandmother's express intention without knowing it.
Haley Wegner
Haley Wegner is the protagonist of Comply and the person on whom Margot places the Anklet. Their relationship is antagonist and subject. Whether Margot has any genuine interest in Haley beyond the shoplifting incident has not been established.
House Subconium
Margot holds a legacy seat in House Subconium, inherited rather than earned. The organization respects the Delacroix name and its historical role but the inner circle's full trust is not automatic. Margot is aware she is still proving herself. Her handover of Eleanor's diaries was her most significant act of proof to date.
Affiliations
Owner, Delacroix's Tomes and Treasures. Legacy seat holder, House Subconium. Gen 9, Delacroix Family.
Canon notes
- Born May 25, 1976
- Whether House Subconium is aware she removed the Anklet from the vault has not been established
- The condition for removing the Anklet and whether only Margot can remove it has not been established
- Her relationship to Professor William Taylor and his activities at ETC has not been fully established
- Whether she appears in future SSU works beyond Comply has not been confirmed
- Her knowledge of the full Roarke story and Aetherion's role has not been established — she knows the Anklet is connected to a death but not the details