Why Belle Époque Paris, 1893

If you want to write a woman who lives inside a performance, you set her down in the most looked-at city that has ever existed. Paris in 1893 is electric light, posters on every wall, a society running on spectacle, and a whole industry devoted to deciding which women were worth watching this season. Being seen was a profession there, with rules and rivals and a shelf life everyone politely declined to mention.

What the research kept turning up was the machinery behind the shimmer: the hours of preparation for one entrance, the careful management of who saw you where. A performance that total needs somewhere to stand and operate itself from. That small backstage self, the one running the beautiful public woman, is where Reine actually lives, and where the feeling finds her. Paris just built the theatre around her.