Roman Sionis (ME-1)



"I ever tell you why I wear the mask? At all started with my parents; they the ones who started Janus Cosmetics. Y'know, to help women put on a mask to make men think they're prettier than they really are. Then they had me, and I learned that everyone wears masks; make people you hate think ya love and respect them when your secretly hoping they die. As fuckin stupid as my parents were they got one thing right: masks are useful. Y'see, people fear what they don't understand, and what's to understand about a man with a black skull for a head?"

We All Wear Masks
Born to a wealthy Gotham City family, Roman Sionis grew up with parents that cared far more about their own social standing and reputation than about the well-being of their child. When the infant Roman was dropped on his head mere moments after birth, for instance, his mother refused to sue the doctor, unwilling to slander the Sionis name in a "common lawsuit". Thereafter, people - including Roman's parents - would note that Roman's eyes contained a "strange dullness". Roman's childhood proved to be one of pretensions as well as luxury. Countless times, his parents would don "masks" of courtesy and respect for similarly wealthy and influential guests that they privately loathed, including the Wayne family. Soon, Roman grew resentful of both the "masks" and his family's high-society "friends", not to mention his parents themselves, who would often pressure him into donning a "mask" as well. When he turned nineteen, Roman's parents employed him in the family company, Janus Cosmetics. Starting at the bottom (So his parents could push the pretense that they believed in merit), Roman managed to work his way up to the position of vice president in a month due to his natural intelligence. Shortly thereafter, Roman fell in love with a young model working for Janus Cosmetics' " Circe" line of make-up. Though Roman hastily hired and proposed to her, his parents - still in charge of Janus Cosmetics - forbade him from associating with such a lower-class woman, and planned to fire her as well. Roman pretended to accept this, managing for the first time in his life to successfully don one of the "masks" his parents loved so much. However, that weekend, his parents burnt corpses were found on their demolished yacht.