Pitch: Shakespearean gender disguise comedy in Generic Small European State, with a side of Musketeery swashbuckling.

The Beloved: Don Vesuvio / Jimena Artaud (Sam). Laughs At Danger, Undefeated, Legendary, Razor-Sharp Wit, Flamboyant, Fashion Sense.

Raised in an obscure corner of the kingdom, Jimena now masquerades as Don Vesuvio, gentleman adventurer and everything that a nobleman longs to be.
Opportunity: Big arrival at court; Vesuvio is a newcomer and making waves.
Obstacle: Jimena's family are already at court. (As it turned out, this didn't really become the focus.)
Dream: Become Grand Marshall of the Hosts, the most prestigious appointment in the kingdom.

The Prize: True Love (less than three less than three less than three)

Suitor 1: (dammit, lost the bit of paper) Cabot (Jasmine)
Dandy but Spendthrift
Replies Too Late but an Expert Writer
Courageous but Strategic
Conflict: Crushing Debt
Person: Lord Cabot, his father
Place: Deer park
Thing: Incendiary Manuscript (never came up)

From an established family in the court, but a bit of a wayward son and painfully aware of it; much of his arc was about rebelling against/proving himself to his controlling father.

Suitor 2: Abelard (Ben)
"Country Fashion" but Knows It
Imperceptible Innuendo but Abstruse Allusions
Sweats at Danger but Self-Sacrificing
Conflict: Prove his Fallen Family Name

Person: Elodie, his older mistress and patroness at court
Place: Academy of Letters
Thing: Family Sword

Abelard was, clearly, more of an outsider and an idealist; too shabby for court, uneasy with martial prowess, he struggled to find ways to earn his place and with disillusionment.

Because (as it turned out) Vesuvio's gender never got revealed, both suitors primarily admired Vesuvio for being everything they wanted to be, but there were a great deal of Confused Lingering Gazes and the like. Also, the plot ended up being more about political manouvres and less about wacky comedy-of-errors things, which I hadn't entirely expected.

This was the first time I'd played the Beloved; it's kind of tricky, as it turns out, and there are a lot of things that I really regret not doing better. There's a tendency, when you're playing a character of Total Awesomeness, to overfocus on what they're doing, struggling to work out what the hypercompetent thing to do would be, rather than focusing on what's going on under the surface. Ben was particularly good at drawing out underlying stuff, but we ended up being fairly hurried at the end, and I found myself just narrating what happened rather than what position that represented on Vesuvio's arc. (In particular, I didn't really take a breath and work out what victory meant for the relationships between the characters, including the dead one.)

That's a very smart analysis Sam. But I also think you should cut yourself some slack: you were facilitating, which can take *a lot* of energy and attention and make it much harder to focus on play. I catch myself making crappy Shock protagonists because I'm so busy helping other people work out a good story goal that I'm not spending enough time thinking of my own. I think there's also a danger as the facilitator of feeling too much like you're responsible for making the game fun (which you aren't) and being the beloved / center-of-the-story would just increase that feeling.

One thing that I've really embraced to make facilitating easier is having someone else read the rules aloud from the book. That takes away some of the burden of explaining everything and also lets you catch your breath and sit back for a bit. Of course that only works if you can find concise parts of the text to read.