Fanon:Victorine Dortheimer

Victorine Dortheimer is a member of the 18th generation of the rich Dortheimer legacy. She is best known for being the mayor of Sim City and Minister of Finances from Simnation, who has been involved in many dubious cases.

Biography
Victorine is the third daughter of the medium Didier Humberta and the college professor Simone Dortheimer in Riverblossom Hills. Her parents being very busy with their careers, she and her three sisters Marie-Gabrielle; Sandrine and Alexandrine were mostly raised by her grandfather the genius scientist Henri Savarnay, and her grandmother Germaine Dortheimer,who however passed away rather soon, as well as their father. She was encouraged to learn skills very early, mostly by playing the piano and stargazing.

When she was a child, her eldest sisters Sandrine and Marie-Gabrielle went to college, and she became jealous at them since she wanted to go there too. However, Victorine and her family was really saddened to learn that Marie-Gabrielle died struck by lightning during the first semester of her sophomore year.

Victorine worked very hard at school and when it was her turn to go to college, she got two scholarships: the Tsang Footword Award and the SimCity Scolar's Grant. She rejoined Sandrine in her small Dormitory and took the Economics major.

Victorine became during her college years a money grubbling woman, who dreamt about new ways to acquire money. And she also found a bitter enemy in fellow stingy student Manfred Sterling and the two had brawls everytime they met. Despite this, she managed to successfully studying and get the best possible grades.

Sandrine and Victorine welcomed their youngest sister when the latter also became a young Adult, and the three were inseparable and they helped each other when studying. The three managed to graduate with the honors and they all returned home.

While her two sisters got happily married, Victorine was not that lucky. She effectively got married to the businessman Vincent Legarant, but the two quickly got bored and their relationship ended when the two werent even friends anymore. They divorced and Victorine decided to never get married again. She decided to focus on her career in the politics.

She joined the Democratical Sim Union party (DSU), and started as a deputy's secretary. There, her strong combativness and intelligence led to her ascension in the DSU. She was third on the DSU list for the Senate elections became a Senator. Finally, she got participated to SimCity's municipal elections, and won.

Victorine and her sisters then became among the three most powerful Sims in SimCity and even SimNation: Victorine as the mayor of the biggest town of thee country, Sandrine being a media mogul who owned three quarters of the media outlets, and Alexandrine being the biggest actress in the country who had a whopping impact on the population. Sandrine used her medias to promote her sister's political career, and discreditate the latter's opponents, and Alexandrine encouraged the Sims from SimCity to vote for Victorine. This triangle led them to uncalculable riches and fame. They sold their rather small, old house, and bought the largest one in town.

They also used their influence to help Sandrine's daughter Ludivine and Alexandrine's daughter Célestine to have magnificent studies and they went to the most prestigious university: the Academie Le Tour.

When presidential election time had come, she competed in the DSU primary election against Whiskerton mayor Marozie Poncelet and the deputy of Huntsville Robert Ménard, who was married to Fabienne Bourdon-Ménard, step great-great-granddaughter of Tiara Dortheimer. She arrived second behind Mr Ménard. She then lead a large campaign to aid the primary elections winner along with many other members of the DSU including Fabienne's elderly distant cousin Stella.

Robert Ménard competed against 10 candidates and arrrived first, before the actual FHS president Michel Dragarlon. Before the second round of the elections the DSU increased their efforts to discreditate their opponents, as during the latter's mandate, they already had criticized him whatever he did and wanted him to become really unpopular. This led Robert Ménard to the presidency of SimNation with 54 percents of the vote. He rewarded many of his staff members with a Ministry. Victorine got the Finances, while Stella got Education and Marozie Poncelet got Justice, among other.

As the Minister of Finances, Victorine might be best described as competent. Her knowledge in the financial world acquired as SimCity mayor enabled her to manage financial crises and she considerably ameliorated SimNation's turnover. She however concealed some doubious deals, remaining true to herself.

She was highly criticized when she wrote a bill aiming at diminishing blatently the taxes of the biggest businesses in the country. She was accused of doing so only to help out one of them, MorcuCorp, which heaquarters are in Barnacle Bay, and owned for centuries by the Dortheimer family. The law was finally rejected by the National Assembly despite it being domined by the DSU.

When her niece Ludivine came back in town with her degrees, she joined the DSU. Like Victorine, she was politically quick-witted and the DSU thought it might be a good idea to invest her at the Representative elections. However, Riverblossom Hills DSU deputy was highly placed in the DSU and he had almost no chance not to be reelected. They therefore could not let Ludivine take his place. They then carpetbagged her in one district in her aunt's town, SimCity. The district was however historically acquired to the FSH, being one of the few non-DSU districts in the said town.

She was put against the FSH cador Sebastian Vanderburg, who came from Hidden Springs. Victorine got involved in her niece's campaign and tried her best to dynamite Sebastian out ouf his deputy's chair, helped moreover by Sandrine's opaque media nebula. Aside from Ludivine, Victorine also supported all the DSU candidates for the elections. The DSU won the elections and was the majority once again, and Ludivine was elected.

Shortly afterwards, though, Robert Ménard and his wife died in a freak plane crash and SimNation thereore became presidentless, and anticipated presidential elections had to be held. The DSU had once again to choose someone to stand for the elections. Victorine decided to apply once again, and she competed against Marozie Poncelet once again. And this time, Victorine won.

However, the president seat was much harder and stressful for the DSU to obtain. First, some allies of the DSU, who have a similar electorate, also appointed a candidate for the elections, and therefore, their votes could be divided between the DSU and the other parties, severly hindering their chances of winning. Moreover, the FSH appointed a really popular leader: Twinbrook's mayor Sergine Colin-Debastre. Therefore, the polls predicted Mrs. Colin-Debastre's victory.

To get things worse, Sergine Colin-Debastre, who was an ancient judge, led a really aggressive campaign against Victorine and her party. She constantly reminded the citizens of Victorine's and fellow DSU leader's affairs and condamnations.

Victorine therefore had to resort to her secret weapon: her sister Sandrine. Thanks to her, she could manipulate the electorate as her sister ordered her underlings to repeat endlessly the same things on every possible media: the DSU shall win, and the others must not. Luckily for her, it worked and she narrowly won against Ms. Colin-Debastre after the second round.

Victorine was ecstatic and immediately nominated her friend and mayor of Sunlit Tides, Marie-Noëlle Sanetti, as her Prime Minister. The next day, Sanetti unveiled her list of Ministers, almost all of which being members of the DSU.

She had a full and blind support from the DSU parlementarians who validated her reforms without any second thoughts. And most of those were purely electoralist, such as the legalization of the adoption for same-sex couples, which solely aimed at getting all the LGBT votes during the next elections. Yet many DSU deputies, like Garden Height deputy Mélusine Merteuil or Urbzville's Liliane Savonnet, slipped and revealed by accident their true thoughts about the subject. These placed the said deputies and by extension the DSU under the lazzis of the FSH, who pointed out the total discredit the DSU placed on itself. Despite all this, and thankfully, the reform was voted.

Despite Victorine's promise of not taking care of the internal problems of her own party, she did so when at the next representative elections, two DSU members arrived first and second after the first round in Mesa Flats, and therefore had to compete against each other for the second round. One of them was the former mayor of Port Abrel and one of Victorine's closest friend, Pascal Moulins. He aimed at being nominated as the President of the National Assembly, but he had been invested by the DSU in Mesa Flats. He was opposed to the dissident Marie-Odile Delombre, who had local roots and refused to withdraw. Victorine decided to support her friend and tried without success to convince Mme Delombre to retreat.

However, Victorine's sister Alexandrine, who was in notably frosty terms with Pascal Moulins, publicly declared that she supported Marie-Odile Delombre. This vaudevillesque situation turned into a national psychodrama and every DSU minister tried to help Moulins. Without success: Marie-Odile Delombre won the election with a large majority, denying Moulins of the National Assembly Presidency. And the FSH mocked the DSU and the government, which, according to them, ridiculized SimNation all around the World.

After all these events, Victorine's popularity never ceased to decrease and soon less than 20 percents of the populations had a good opinion on her. She vainly tried to invert this fall but she finally was forced to give up and she retired from politics. The DSU also underwent a serious snub at the following presidential elections.

These events totally destroyed Victorine: after years and years of success and power, She was really bored and meancholic. She spent her retirement by playing golf with her ancient secreteries and her sisters.

This suffering did not last long, however, as she peacefully died of a heart attack during her sleep. Despite her lack of popularity at the end of her career, she still benefited from a national funeral and was honored by many otther politicians as one of the greatest and most powerful woman of her time.

Scandals and Affairs
Victorine and her sisters were involved in countless shady deal during their careers and were even convicted sometimes.

When she was a Senator from SimNation, Victorine was one of the thinking heads of a bid rigging occuring on the southern-East region from Simnation, directed bu the DSU. In this region, which includes the towns of Twinbrook and ToadVille among others, the DSU collected secret funds for the upcoming elections, by granting most of the construction transactions to the concreting company Beton Inc. In return, the company had to reverse 5% of its benefit to the party. The party gained millions of Simoleons before the enterprise was uncovered by an independant investigative newspaper, and the DSU was condemned to pay a 5000000 simoleon bill, and its director Eugène Tirgrard de Borée was condemned to a suspended sentence of 2 years in prison. As for Victorine, she received a 10000 Simoleon fine.

Victorine and Sandrine were also convicted in a case of diffamation against one of the most popular deputies of an opposing party, the FHS, and future Education Minister Christiane Desbores. At the time, the FHS party, experienced a case of embezzlement, and one of Sandrine's media received a document which supposedly proved Christiane Desbores' culpability in the case. Authorities claimed the document, and incriminated Miss Desbores. Her party also banned her.

Later however, investigations unearthed that one discrete member of the FHS, Nicolas Remington, was actually an ancient journalist from one of Sandrine's medias. This interesting information led to other discoveries: further researches on the ex-journalist revealed that he was a mole from Sandrine's businesses, and later he was convicted for having embezzled the funds Christiane was suspected to have stolen. Finally, Nicolas confessed everything, and revealed that Sandrine wanted him to steal money from the FHS and then create documents accusing Christiane in order to get Christiane out of Victorine's way. The two were convicted with 2 year in jail, but the they paid a whopping bail to remain out of the Big House.

As a mayor, Victorine was first accused of touching some bribes from various companies, mostly the ones who worked in construction for letting them priority on current contracts. However, no one could ever prove this, as she had hidden bank accounts which haven't been discovered yet.

Victorine was also involved in a huge political and financial scandal, which aimed once again to gain funds for the DSU and finance the upcoming presidential elections. She helped the DSU first Secretary to placed twenty ghost workers at the town hall who in fact were DSU activists. They were paid by the municipal council and reversed all the funds to the DSU treasurship. The party gained more than 15 millions Simoleons until a regular employee discovered the fraud. Victorine was charged with misappropriation of public funds, like some other DSU directors. She got 10 years behind bars in a suspended sentence.

Lately, she also has been suspected of favoritism when she placed her nieces in valuable houses at Academie Le Tour for a preposterously low rent.

Her case provoked a large debate at the National Assembly about the cumulation of mandates. When additioning her salaries of mayor of SimCity, Minister of SimNation and Senator, her monthly paycheck reached vertiginous amounts of money. The opposition wanted to forbid mandate cumulation but the majority supported Victorine and the other one in similar (but not as spectacutlar) situations, and the project was dropped.

Victorine also had no care at all for environment. She tried, as SimCity mayor, with the help of DSU senator Berthe Merleroi, to build a massive mall in the Sim City surroundings. The problem is that the said site was a woody area with many rare species of birds, endemic to the region. The site was moreover protected and no constructions were allowed on it. Berthe and Victorine tried to secretely declassify the site to build their money-bringing yet nature-endangering site.

However, investigative journalists unearthed the case before construction started and this cause a huge outcry from SimCity dwellers and ecologists. Some Greenies parliamentarians (the ecologist party, that was usually the DSU's strongest ally) like Hortense Jardin, Fenrir Eriksson, Ernest Merle and René Florennat were outraged and demanded Victorine's and Berthe's ban from he DSU, else they would break the alliance between the DSU and the Greenies. However, DSU first secretary Eugène Tigrard de Borée did not want to sack two of the DSU's most powerful parliamentarians and ordered the two to drop their project. He then tried to reach agreement with the Greenies by promising them some parliamentary seats for the next elections in exchange of their support.

Trivia
She has interests in Money, Sci-Fi, Fashion, Entertainment, Culture, Health and Politics.

The case of of the ghost workers is very loosely based on a real-life affair which involved the town hall of Paris.

The SimNation politics are based on the French system. Victorine and the entire DSU party would be Sim-equivalent of the french Socialist Party, which I utterly loathe. Just a personal thought though.