It was said that the Costiel name was cursed with bad luck. It was, according to legend, a curse that dated back to when the family was headed by Helgi Costiel, who had had a reputation as a womaniser. Back in that day, the family had been a wealthy and noble pureblood family, one considered to be full of talent and intellect, and overall treated with the utmost respect. Helgi, supposedly, had earned the ire of a young witch who was adept with curses, and even known to design her own. Essentially, the young woman was of exceptional talent, far more so than Helgi himself, or his siblings. The legend went that he had scorned her, some tellings even said he left the woman carrying his child, marrying a woman of higher social standing and ignoring his firstborn and its mother. So curses were weaved against the Costiel line, against those baring the noble Costiel name.
After Helgi, it was noted that every first born, every true heir to the Costiel family, was a son. There were no families of just daughters, so the name was assured to hold strong for longer.
It began with Creole Costiel, the illnesses that swept across the family. The crushing ill health that plagued him, his siblings and his own children. Frequent and incurable illnesses. Creole himself suffered for years with breathing difficulties, fits, blackouts and fever severe enough to send him into delirium. He was known, during these episodes of delirium, to become deeply distressed, and to even cause harm to his family, much to his own horror. He died young, but not before marrying and producing an heir, Farkis.
It was Farkis who lost the family their entire fortune. Through debt, gambling and poor choices, most said, but it really did seem to just...slip away from him. Suddenly everything was gone, and with no siblings to have taken a share of the initial fortune, nor a share of his debts and responsibilities, Farkis found himself destitute, and far from the top where he had started.
Tobias was born into wealth as the eldest child of Farkis, and was there when they were dumped into poverty. Starving and struggling to support his family, in a time when assistance would not be there for him to turn to, Tobias thought to do the unthinkable. In a moment of desperation, he throttled his youngest son and fed the meat to the family. As he seared the meat, he made a promise to himself that he would not think to do the same thing again. Not three months later, Tobias killed his eldest son, Erasmus. Once again, he ate the remains, finding it far more satisfying than before. The next year, he and his wife were blessed with a new child, a daughter, and he smothered her before they even registered her birth, before she had time to become thin and weak from deprivation. In the end, he was known to have murdered three of his children, his wife, and his only sister.
Hephaestus, taking over as heir upon the death of his elder brother, found his nights plagued by nightmares of the horrors he had seen growing up, and his days of flashbacks to being forced to eat members of his own family, of the constant fear that he would be the next one killed to satiate his father's insane desires. His mental state spiralled down continually, until he was left in an irreparable state. In the end, he lived out his days at the mercy of asylum doctors, treated as no longer human for the absence of rational thought within his mind. He died screaming.
Columbus Costiel was the one who decided to try and implement arranged marriage to improve their family's standing. Their reputation had been destroyed from generations of murder, insanity, illness and the like, but if they could join with families of higher repute, they in turn would find their condition improving. Columbus and his brothers worked hard to find a way to undo this curse believed to be upon them, and it was the youngest, Aenas, who found he could confirm without a shadow of a doubt that there was indeed some form of magic affecting their lives. Without a full knowledge of the original curse cast, however, he could not undo or dismantle it.
It was Columbus' great grandson, Genesius Costiel, who discovered that his cousins did not seem to suffer from the curse. His seven sisters were all murdered, some for being discovered as witches, others for finding love with a psychopath, and others still for angering the wrong person or even just being in the wrong place in the wrong time. His cousins, however, all born to his father's sisters, lived normal, fulfilling lives, and ones without illness, insanity or the overhang on various disaster. It was Genesius, therefore, who wrote of the belief that offspring of the Costiel line who did not hold the Costiel name were not afflicted by the curse. After this discovery, many of the younger sons chose to change their name at marriage and disappear into a safer family line, their cursed heritage eventually forgotten.
Fursey Costiel, a further few generations down, was known to suffer from a great paranoia. He believed his younger brother, Viti, to be having dealings with what he referred to as unnatural creatures. Werewolves, vampires, veela and the like - this wasn't entirely false in and of itself, as Viti did in the end have a child with a veela woman. The true paranoia came in the form of Fursey's increasing belief that Viti wished to kill him and become the heir to the family himself. Nothing could quell his intense fear and distrust building toward his dear brother, especially not once Fursey had it in his head that his brother had allowed himself to become a vampire. In the end, Fursey turned to a good friend of his, Orestes Lang, whose family were strict in tradition and well trained in the art of vampire hunting. He begged Lang to take care of his brother, and Lang conceded. Viti was then abducted by Lang and three others, and despite the four agreeing he was most certainly not a vampire, they tortured the man to death without a second thought.
Fursey's second son, Garridan, was then formally executed by Lang, alongside his lover, after they tried to elope together. Garridan's lover, Ebony Lang, had disobeyed her family's traditions, and had chosen to elope after becoming pregnant with Garridan's child, knowing she and her child would likely be killed anyway simply for the pregnancy, or for having any relations with a man not chosen for her by her father.
Gundulf Costiel was publicly scorned for his own child born out of wedlock. An illegitimate baby boy whose birth killed the mother. His resultant wedding to a miss Gardenia Hubbard, said to be of exquisite beauty, a wedding arranged by the parents of the two, was known to be terse and unfriendly. They never shared a room, and never produced a child. Gundulf's family did not wish for his illegitimate son to become head of the family, but that is exactly what happened.
By the time Scipio Costiel was head of the family, the arranged marriages once suggested by Columbus had began to bring good fortune once more to the family, if only by a slim margin. Scipio lived within comfort enough that he felt no undue stress over his survival, his lack of finance or the idea his family might starve. Scipio also was known to believe that naming his children names intended to bring good luck would protect them from the curse.
He was wrong.
In the end, all but two of his children died in childhood. Fortunato and Prospero, the surviving brothers, did extensive research into curse protection during their lifetime, and wrote that they believed that actively naming one's child after a place, a city or a street in which they once set foot, would form some sort of protection from the curse. A Costiel would not be fully protected, and would still suffer the effects, but it was thought to drastically reduce the severity. Much of their research was later destroyed in a flood. All that remained for the next few generations to work off was that if they used street names for their children, words on road signs they had seen in passing, their children would be safe.
By the time Woodbine Costiel was leader of the family, things were really looking up. He needed only to marry his eldest son into the right family, and they would be back to the wealth they once held. Ruxley had always been rather rebellious, in all honesty, but he was in good health and had a good head on his shoulders. If he could stand still and do as he was told long enough, he would undoubtedly be a very successful man, and potentially the saving grace of a family once thought to be doomed. Alas, his rebellious nature won over when he eloped with a woman named Mel, who was not only not of a noble and illustrious family, she was not even of magical blood.
Ruxley had run off with a muggle woman, much to the disgust of his family. And it was Ruxley whose family experienced the worst run of luck in many generations, because he'd heard the stories of how the children would suffer if not given the 'protected' names, and though he thought it silly, he still named his eldest son for a street. Only after that, the husband and wife decided that they should be able to name their children as they wished, no curse could stop them.
Ruxley's second son, Lexius, fell ill in childhood, was often kept inside for his health, and was known to cling to his elder brother for his own lack of social skills. The one time he ventured out without permission, he was attacked. It seemed the worse his luck became, the more he dragged down the wellbeing of his siblings. It was no wonder his family withdrew from him. He lived the rest of his life often feeling hunted and alone. The drag down on the other sons of Ruxley slowly pulled them into illness, fear and distrust of each other. The home would become stained red with the family's blood all too quickly.
The next heir would be Rosebury's first born. He too would be cursed.
Luck was overall a very fickle thing, and difficult to grasp hold of. The curse would rage on many generations more, attempting to overcome any barrier the Costiels put to it to protect themselves, before one day someone might find a way to lift it.
Perhaps the secret to undoing the curse lay with the descendants of the witch who first cast it.
