Alexander Rhodes
Alexander Rhodes commands Melbourne's political waters with the same certainty his ancestors brought to shipping empires and colonial governance — a certainty that's beginning to crack. The patriarch of the Rhodes dynasty built his influence on control and respectability, which is precisely why he cast out his sister Eleanor when her occult studies threatened the family reputation. He cannot see the hypocrisy in his condemnation, cannot recognise that the tempestuous force he wields in boardrooms and political chambers is anything more than natural charisma and the strength of his convictions. When negotiations shift like tides in his favour, when his rage brings storms to committee meetings, when his very presence makes others feel they're drowning in his authority — he attributes it all to breeding, education, and force of personality.
Now his daughter Scarlet rejects everything he's built, and Alexander interprets her defiance as corruption by bad influences — likely Eleanor's doing, he's certain of it. His protective instincts manifest with increasing intensity, every attempt to guide Scarlet back to her proper place in the dynasty becoming a riptide that threatens to pull her under. He genuinely believes he's saving her from the mistakes his sister made, protecting her from dangerous forces he doesn't understand but instinctively fears. The irony that his own supernatural nature is the very thing he's trying to shield her from remains utterly invisible to him.
The cracks are showing, though. His carefully constructed world is slipping through his fingers like water, and beneath the politician's polished exterior lurks a terror he won't name — the fear that everything he is, everything he's built, might be founded on something he can't control and doesn't dare acknowledge.