Donovan Desmond

Perfectly round, sunken eyes that never seem to close give Donovan an unnerving stare, and he has no eyebrows at all. His black hair is shaved close, graying visibly along the left side, and a dark mustache sits above his lip. Scarring lines the sides of his head, both ears are pierced, and a ring circles the fourth finger of his left hand.

Tall and lean in middle age, he dresses in a tan suit over a white polo, his black tie fixed by a brooch bearing a golden star-shaped mark, with brown shoes below. Old photographs show him with far more hair and a few loose curls at the hairline, while during his Eden Academy years he sported a disconnected bowl haircut and a visibly brighter expression.

Suspicion governs Donovan. Loid Forger, meeting him for the first time, finds him impossible to read, and since losing the premiership he has shunned the public eye almost entirely, appearing mainly at Eden Academy functions for his elder son Demetrius while four bodyguards ring him at all times. When Loid presses for an invitation to the manor to apologize properly, Donovan turns him down twice with polite finality.

The family name matters to him; he warns his younger son Damian never to stain it. Yet his priorities baffle even his children. Anya Forger striking Damian draws no anger from him at all, and he waves off Loid's apology as a squabble between kids. Achievement seems to be his real currency: he pays attention to the accomplished Demetrius while giving the struggling Damian little more than a long, exasperated sigh, and when the boy lists his recent successes at school, the response amounts to a flat "Good for you." That neglect is precisely what fuels Damian's hunger for recognition.

His worldview is bleak. As a student he spoke of wanting peace like anyone else while insisting that human beings lie and that war will never leave them, and decades later he tells Loid that genuine mutual sympathy is impossible, calling even his own children essentially strangers. Loid suspects this conviction underlies an appetite for war and for controlling others through military force. Melinda remembers a different man: sometime between their sons' births, Donovan collapsed from an illness and emerged with a changed personality, pushing everyone away and barely speaking. Occasional gestures cut against the pattern, such as granting Damian a meeting once the Imperial Scholars mixer ends, something Loid interprets as an effort to understand his estranged son and Donovan himself dismisses as a whim.

Donovan passed through Eden Academy in his youth and earned Imperial Scholar status there. Even then his cynicism ran deep: he bluntly told Henry Henderson, freshly disgraced at the time, that he considered him a fool, adding that nothing should be expected of people whose foolishness has let you down once before.

He went on to lead the National Unity Party, serving simultaneously as its chairman and as prime minister of Ostania throughout the nation's Second East-West War of Unification, with his wife Melinda beside him as First Lady. For reasons never disclosed he resigned while the war neared its end, the party fell from power, and he withdrew into seclusion. He remains the party's chairman and the leader of the opposition, while his household, Melinda and their sons Demetrius and Damian, has grown estranged around him.

Operation Strix exists to probe him: Twilight's mission centers on getting close to Donovan, and the assumed Forger family life is the vehicle for it. The spy finally comes face to face with his target at the Imperial Scholars mixer in Eden's Tower of Wisdom, using Damian's spat with Anya as the pretext for a conversation. The exchange yields only Donovan's chilling philosophy, and as they part, the two men trade quiet glares before Donovan turns his attention to his son.