on the island with Will, she is clad in a black tunic. In the scene set ten years later, she is wearing a long skirt and a double-breasted brocade waistcoat over a white puffy-sleeved shirt, probably cotton or linen. Fictional biography The Curse of the Black Pearl Throughout the trilogy, Elizabeth Swann is portrayed as a spirited, intelligent, and independent-minded character who often chafes at the restrictions imposed on her gender and social rank. Early on in the first movie she often fantasizes about pirates and life at sea. This may have been fueled somewhat by her association with another character, Will Turner, who eleven-year-old Elizabeth met when she and her father, Governor Weatherby Swann were en route to Port Royal eight years earlier. Will, also about eleven, was found adrift at sea, the sole survivor of a pirate attack. During his rescue, Elizabeth briefly glimpsed a mysterious ship slipping into the mist—a vessel foreshadowing her destiny. The story continues eight years later, and Elizabeth is now a marriageable age. Back then, as matrimony was a common means to forge strategic political alliances and advantageous social connections rather than loving unions, she is expected to wed a respectable and prosperous man equal or superior to her in rank. Elizabeth prefers marrying for love, and she may secretly harbor feelings for Will Turner. But Will, a common blacksmith, is an unsuitable match for such a well-born lady. And although Will secretly loves Elizabeth, he knows his place and keeps his feelings deeply hidden. Governor Swann, meanwhile, desires that his daughter marry Commodore James Norrington, a respected Royal Navy officer who Elizabeth admires but does not love. Ironically, it is Norrington who sets events into motion that not only alter Elizabeth's fate, but also his own and Will's. During Norrington's marriage proposal, Elizabeth, whose tightly laced corset nearly suffocates her, faints and falls off a rampart and into the bay. Her unlikely rescuer, and the catalyst for her transformation from a demure lady into a daring pirate, is the notorious Captain Jack Sparrow, newly arrived in Port Royal to commandeer a ship. Despite Sparrow's gallant actions and against Elizabeth's protests, he is promptly jailed for piracy and sentenced to hang. That night, a pirate ship, the Black Pearl, raids Port Royal. It is the same ship Elizabeth spied in the fog eight years earlier. When she is taken hostage it is discovered