I am Caesar

1. Purple Armour

To be honest I really didn't expect to be one of the survivors. And then I didn't even participate in the actual games. I mean after the revolution. All our lives were threatened long before the escalations of the games, but what could I do or have done? Perhaps I knew more than most people in the Capitol due to family in the outer districts but that information had to be dealt with very delicately. My younger cousin Jetta who lived in District eight, worked with textiles like most people. We didn't write often but when we did we took care in using a polite day to day language due to the random opening of letters going in and out of the Capitol. Still we did develop some key code words over the years which helped us recognizing signals of the downfall before it began.

The mere construction of it all couldn't last. Only an idiot would believe that. And though most Capitol residents must have looked exactly like these kinds of stupid to outsiders, they (or we) were also victims of the creation of the system. Yes I know I will upset people by saying this but it still doesn't make it any less true. My hope is that my story can shed some light into our world – as we saw and lived it.

I was born and raised in the Capitol. My father, Ausonius, came from a long line of hair dressers and stylists. Already as a little boy I was fascinated with the magic transformation my father enabled his customers to experience. In the beginning I would assist with the simple things, fetching combs, curls and towels. Later on scissors and hair dryers and also starting to participate in the actul work. My father was always busy and as I reached my teens I realized he was rather successful, by then styling and trimming a large portion of the social and political elite. Naturally president Snow chose his own staff in any area after excruciating back up checks making sure he could rely on their complete loyalty and also making sure they didn't have any relations from the more plebeian districts. Magdalen was a journalist, writing for The Gazelle, a fashion magazine with some small, regulated bits of news thrown in. My mother hated all the unimportant advice on how to keep the body fit and the face rejuvenated, but what could she have done instead? If she needed real intel she would ask my father, who's many customers provided him with more knowledge than you'd might expect. Maybe her desillusion was the reason for me not getting any siblings. Even if it looked harmonious on the surface, the current society was a system relying on the participation from the other districts and if that "agreement" should one day fail? Well, that wouldn't be a stable place to put a new baby into, would it? So I was alone.