The Jackal Protocol

Voice role: Gealag

Gealag was born Unseelie and raised in the Seelie Queen’s hall. Light-court manners sit on dark-court blood; both must be audible.

When she is the Queen’s little lady, she is bright, careful, and a shade too polite (“If it please you, sir”). When the child slips free, she is wilder: a laugh that lasts too long, questions that come out too blunt. She cannot lie, and no one taught her to withhold what she sees. By the last scene she should sound like any child on a rock with a fish she has just caught.

Voice

Light Scottish Highland—Inverness / Black Isle colour, not Shetland, not generic “fairy.” Soft consonants. Comfortable with silence.

Voice role: The Queen of Elphame

The Queen of Elphame is the Seelie Court. She is summer, beauty, and gifts. In the ballads the Seelie are the dangerous ones because they are lovely. Her courtesy never slips. Her generosity always carries a price. She has never once had to raise her voice.

Refined Borders Scots with an old aristocratic polish: crisp, unhurried, no contractions. Mic her close and warm, as if she is leaning in to tell a secret. That closeness is the trap. The faintest sound of bells may sit under her lines. Cut her breaths. She loses control of her voice twice only—on “She is my child” and “No other.” Let those two moments crack. Everywhere else she is perfectly calm, and that calm is what should frighten the listener. Forty-four lines.