Rosara Thawn

Childhood

As a child, Rosara Thawn was quickly found to be intelligent and telepathically powerful, and this alone could have secured her a good life on Betazed amid the beating heart of the Federation. Unfortunately for Rosara Thawn, she was also a daughter of the Twelfth House, and all of three years old by the time the Dominion occupation of the world ended. Rebuilding was long and arduous, though it didn’t affect her chances of good schooling or a comfortable life. It did affect the mentality of her family.

Many of the ancient lines of Betazed became fixated with restoring what had been lost to, and reinforcing what had been threatened by, the Dominion. Anatras Thawn, the ambitious matriarch of the Twelfth House, was keen not only for her family to emerge from the ashes powerful and influential, but for tradition to be upheld and rebuilt, and not lost in the practicality of reconstruction. To that end, young Rosara was not permitted to merely be a capable child – she was a vessel into which her house’s political hopes could be poured.

When she was less than ten years old, Anatras arranged her betrothal to Adamant Rhade, a son of the Seventh House. While such an arrangement had no legal weight behind it, it promised a close bond between the families and a fine match of two young people expected to have the best interests of Betazoid traditions at heart. Even though the arrangement itself did much political good, whether or not it was ever followed through, decisions of this ilk proved to mark Rosara’s entire life.

Where she studied was decided for her, who she was friends with was decided for her – even her interests were all but decided for her. As a child, Rosara was meek and eager to please, with her telepathy making her quick to avoid disapproval she would easily sense, and capable of easy communication that made friendships straightforward. With the family committed to ideas of duty and honour, she was encouraged – told – to join Starfleet, expected to serve less than ten years and then return with her experiences, principles, and commit the rest of her life to Betazed – to the Twelfth House.

Life in the Federation

Leaving Betazed for the Academy was a shock to her system in many ways. Interacting with non-telepaths had her almost relearning from scratch how to socially interact; it was unacceptable to read their thoughts, and her telepathy was strong enough that it was often easier to block people out entirely than to risk seeing more than obvious surface emotions. She had never learnt to rely on body language or tone, and now it was all she had.

She also had more freedom at the Academy than ever before. Rosara found this overwhelming for much of her first year; while she was exceptionally talented, she found she wanted to do everything, or at least she was very bad at refusing anything. She took on too many courses and commitments, and shut herself away for long months to study a workload that would have bent-double any officer candidate. Only with intervention and guidance from her instructors was she directed to do more than identify what she was good at, but commit to what she wanted.

Wary of people by now, she threw herself into her talent with computer systems and starship management. Protocols and programming were both reliable absolutes, and training as an operations officer let her rely on these to shape and support her interactions with other people. She quickly became less socially clumsy, but still established herself at the Academy as brusque and no-nonsense, a bit of a kill-joy, even as much as she was brilliant and committed. One trait which she had never shed, after all, was her ingrained fear of disapproval of her superiors.

Early Career

She graduated high in her class, and was assigned to the USS Genoa as an Operations Officer. On a mission of deep space exploration, the Genoa was an isolated posting, and while Thawn thrived professionally, she struggled to make many social in-roads. Early on she fell foul of her department head, correcting his protocols for breaching regulation despite his insistence they were suitable and practical for the tasks at hand. She won few friends by reporting the matter to the ship’s XO, who was forced to take action but somewhat unkindly suggested she should trust her superiors and stick to the chain of command.

Thawn thus racked up many notes of being highly competent, but when she was eligible for promotion to lieutenant junior grade, the Genoa jumped at the chance to get rid of her. Her record sparkled on paper by now. This drew the eye of Captain MacCallister needed a Chief of Operations to help iron out the kinks  of the recently-commissioned USS Endeavour, and was eager to select officers not made cynical by inward-focused Federation politics.

Endeavour proved a different experience to the Genoa. MacCallister was kindly and astute, and knew how to get the best out of even the most difficult officers, always making sure her opinions were listened to and his answers explained if he disagreed with her. First officer Valance was almost as fastidious as Thawn herself, and thus she thrived in an environment where her talents were appreciated. Even socially she began to settle, becoming firm friends with the patient and cheerful helmsman Noah Pierce, who proved difficult for her to offend and dogged in spending time with her.

Into the 25th Century

Of the survivors of the catastrophe on Endeavour which lost the ship MacCallister as a captain and claimed the lives of many, including Lieutenant Pierce, Thawn was perhaps the most deeply-affected. In the ensuing pursuit of the pirates responsible, she became short-tempered and intractable, lashing out against new arrivals as she struggled with her grief. She had never acted on romantic feelings for Pierce because of her arranged betrothal, and with his death she was left heartbroken over losing him, guilty for never acting, and tormented for having felt that way in the first place.

She began to make peace with her loss with the aid of her shipmates, only for Endeavour to soon take on more crew. Among these was Adamant Rhade himself, ostensibly a stellar addition to the senior staff but frank that proximity to her had contributed to his choices. He had no intention of following through on the arrangement yet – but if they were to decide whether to go through with the marriage, they would need to spend time together, to get to know one another.

Lieutenant Thawn has received several commendations for original thinking while aboard Endeavour, and grown in experience as an officer and as a team player. She acted as second officer during the Tkon Crisis of 2399, including during a rescue mission for Captain Rourke, and in late 2399 was promoted to lieutenant for her service.

Thawn’s next year of service on Endeavour included only greater heights, with more commendations for her work saving the settlements of Whixby from an ion storm and her role in the Blood Dilithium Crisis in the Delta Quadrant. In early 2401, she and Adamant Rhade were finally married. Thawn served briefly under Karana Valance on the Pathfinder before returning with her to the USS Endeavour. Not long after, she seized new opportunities in her life and career, embarking on a months-long diplomatic and anthropological away mission embedded with local communities in the Midgard Sector, a move which coincided with her filing for divorce from Rhade. These bolder choices in her personal and professional life eventually made way for greater change, when a brief tenure as acting chief engineer became more permanent.

After years of being described as ‘promising,’ but being held back by inexperience and a lack of confidence outside of her comfort zones, Rosara Thawn appears to be finally becoming the officer she always had the potential to be. She is not, necessarily, any more liked by her shipmates.