"Then to your chambers! Go!"
"Oh, Papa, you must, you must, you must, you Absolutely Must bring me home from this horrid place at once! It is an awful place full of terrible, ugly people who do horrid, horrid things!"
—Alissabetta
Silenziosa
is a web comic created by Vox Day and written by Day and Chuck Dixon. It is published on the Arkhaven site.
Alissabetta, Princess of the Blood, daughter of His Majesty King Charles Arthur III of Inghiltar, Yrlandia, and the Skotian Isles, has come of age. She intends to serve her royal house as a dressmaker but her parents have other ideas. They instead send her to the Silent academy, where she will train to become royal assassin—a position recently vacated when her uncle Roderick was killed in action.
She is not best pleased with this, being a gentle soul given to neither violence nor subterfuge.
The creator describes the series as "The Punisher meets Little Women, with a dash of Narnia."
This series provides examples of:
- Assassin Outclassin': The Queen dispatches her husband's would-be killer with an axe.
- Badass Bookworm: Silent students are expected to learn not just the scientific aspects of assassination, but the histories of the various royal and noble clans, the better to understand their future targets.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Yrina offers this behind Alissabetta's back:Yrina: Alissabetta is sweet, good-natured and earnest. I despise her.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Alissabetta is dismayed at being presented with an array of assassin's implements, King Charles talks up their exquisite high quality, not to mention their presentation box.
- Deadly Euphemism: Assassination is referred to as "silencing", hence the name of the academy.
- Doomed New Clothes: Subverted. Olwyn manages to remove the bloodstain and get Alissabetta's dress dry in time for la presentazione.
- Drama Queen: Our heroine, established in the very first panel.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Raffaella invokes this, saying Alissabetta's innocent-looking face would be an advantage for an assassin. Yrina does the same, falsely convincing Prince Krisztofer of Alissabetta's hidden guile.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The setting resembles pre-industrial Europe. Alissabetta's homeland appears to be an equivalent to Britain, with a touch of Italy.
- Go to Your Room!: When Alissabetta persists in her refusal of her assigned duty, King Charles banishes her to her chambers.
- Go, Ye Heroes, Go and Die: King Charles uses the attempt on his life to impress upon Alissabetta the importance of her assigned role. She concedes the point, but ponders with growing alarm that she might suffer just as grisly a fate as her father's would-be assassin.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: When Alissabetta pricks her finger she exclaims "Son of a misbegotten woman of ill repute!" She immediately apologises to the women present for her language.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: The ladies' fencing instructor, after one of their lessons.
- I Will Show You X!: Alissabetta's fears about where her vocation may lead get very little sympathy from her sister.Alissabetta: I might leave our home only to one day die on a stranger's floor one night.
Iolanda: You'll die this night if you do not stop prattling and let me sleep. - Insistent Terminology: Alissabetta is a dressmaker, not a seamstress.
- Meet Cute: Alissabetta inadvertently backs into Neville Lestrange, who is carrying a stack of books.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Both Alissabetta and her parents are firm believers in this. Alas, they have very different ideas of what that something should be.
- Sneeze of Doom: A cloud of dust from a library book triggers a sneeze from Alissabetta, and away rolls Neville's ladder.
- True Blue Femininity: The dress Alissabetta makes for her presentazione is blue.
- Violent Glaswegian: Bordilla Mac A'Phearsain, an aggressive hothead whose accent and verbal tics are very Scottish-sounding.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Marquessa Yrina Karavayev, a ruthless, devious bully who is willing to make a very early start to her vocation as assassin.
