Mama Brigitte and Papa Bundia

Lord Pierre Bonfils- Sugar plantation owner in Haitian colony of Port au Prince in 1763. Impregnated his slave Martine, a vodou practitioner and healer, who worked on his plantation as a slave doctor and cook. When a hurricane hit the island in 1779, followed by crop failures, the people blamed Martine's witchcraft and had her hanged. Violine, the daughter of Pierre and Martine, already 16 and beautiful, was smuggled out of the country to Pierre's relatives in New Orleans to save her from the same fate as her mother. Pierre was killed in the Haitian slave revolt of 1791.

In 1781, at the age of 18, Violine married Remy de St. Martin, a nephew of Pierre. Violine had continued the tradition of voodoo helping usher in the religion to New Orleans. She would continue this throughout her life until her death in 1829, at which time her position as the resident voodoo queen of New Orleans was filled by the famous, or infamous, Marie Laveau. Violine and Remy had 6 children, the youngest of which, Marie Claudette de St. Martin, born in 1811, showed great promise in the ways of voodoo, including an uncanny ability to see people's intentions, and perform as a medium for spirits and the dead. How much of this was real and how much faked is unknown. Marie kept her secret until, alone at her mother's death bed, she told the old woman a secret that shocked Violine into a fatal heart attack. Marie Claudette was a changeling.

18 at this point, Marie Claudette decided that instead of becoming a public figure of her religion like her mother and Leveau, she would go underground, performing her art in dark smoky rooms and not advertising her gifts. A man named Julian Yves Roch de La Fayette, a French plantation owner's son, sought the girl out in curiosity about the ways of voodoo, and in time revealed to her that he as well was a changeling. A quadroon girl and a voodoo practitioner, despite being of a good family, his father refused to sanction their marriage, so she agreed to sell herself to him as a slave. She taught Julian the ways of voodoo and in time, they brought down the House of La Fayette, making themselves very rich in the process. Other family members blamed Marie for the collapse of the family and put warrants out for the arrest of the couple. Knowing that if caught Julian would be imprisoned and Marie executed, they took what money and belongings they could and vanished into the night.

Julian was born in 1793 in the Chauvaniac region of France. Part of an offshoot of the de La Fayette family who fought with General Washington in the revolutionary war, they made their fortunes in trade and plantations, same as most immigrants to the New World during this time. Julian came to the colonies with his father at the age of 18, to help learn to manage the plantations. It may or may not be a coincidence that his first step onto the soil of Louisiana coincided with Marie's first awareness of her world. They had both been exchanged as infants, and so by this age, Julian had little knowledge of his true nature, though he did suspect that he was different from normal people by an early age. He noticed quite young that some people seemed to avoid him, shunning his presence with no real reason to do so, and that he could at times sense their loathing, and even occasionally read their thoughts, though he wouldn't truly develop this skill until later in life, and partly through the help of Marie, who through the use of voodoo realized her talents, and her nature, long before she reached adulthood. Until then, Julian would use his talents rather capriciously, becoming somewhat of a successful gambler, for which he was forced to learn to duel, to defend himself from disgruntled losers, who of course accused him of cheating. He excelled at this, like everything else he tried, but as such became somewhat of a pariah, ostracized by his peers and rejected by even the brothel women, who feared him even though he was quite handsome.

Thus he began to frequent the bayous and slave towns and poorer quarters, searching for people who would accept him or might be able to explain his abilities further. He met and studied with voodoo conjurers, both men and women, usually elderly, and gained a working knowledge of the culture. Through them, he learned who and what he really was. Julian, age 36 and very wealthy at this time, heard a rumor of a very talented conjure woman, who was reputed to be young and beautiful, and sought her out. He was stricken with adoration at the first sight of Marie Claudette, and vowed to learn all he could from her, and to have her as his own. She was a quadroon however, descended from slave blood, and his family forbade the marriage, so he took her as a slave, which was still legal in those times. Furious with the position she found herself in, though she loved and did not blame Julian for it, she convinced him to punish his father for his slight against her, and together they wrought horrible vengeance on that branch of the family. They were still young though, and not careful enough. Their machinations were discovered and warrants issued. Facing imprisonment and execution, they took everything they could and left.

Since then, they have been traveling the world, spending time with Indian mystics, where Julian took the name Papa Bundia, homaging both his Bayou roots and his love of Indian culture and food, the name being a type of traditional sweet dessert. This tickled his fancy, because though being sweet on the surface, Julian was anything but beneath. Marie adopted the name Mama Brigitte, for the voodoo goddess, and an homage to her Celtic roots, as Brigitte is the only white Loa in voodoo, and many of Marie's ancestors are white Gallic Celts. The name signifies also strength, and a love of heat and spices. It fits her spicy personality and her deep quiet strength, with which even after over a century of marriage, she serves Julian in all things, as his wife and slave.