What makes a woman ‘unconventional.’ In my opinion, it boils down to one word: self-determination.  And Titanic passenger, Charlotte Drake Cardeza embodied the word to the max.  She did her own thing, in her own way.  She refused to let society or anyone else dictate what she could and could not do.  Her sense of herself as being capable of doing more than what was expected of her as  a proper Victorian woman is part of the reason I used some of her traits to build the Nicolette Legarde character in Titanic: The Untold Story.  In fact, Nicolette Legarde’s drive to be more than someone’s wife while still maintaining her femininity and love of beauty was culled from my research on Charlotte Drake Cardeza.  When her husband James Warburton Martinez Cardeza had an affair, instead of tolerating it as so often happened during this time period, she divorced him, took her son and began to travel the world.  She went to Africa and hunted wild game, rode in rickshaws in China, and went around the world several times in her own yacht, Eleanor. Although she was born into a wealthy and proper American family of English lineage, Charlotte hailed from Germantown, Pennsylvania.  But Germantown could not hold the likes of this woman.  She had a gusto for living that had to be satisfied.  In contrast to her gun toting persona, Charlotte had another glamorous side.  She loved the opera, was well read, and could hold her own in a conversation with anyone on the subjects of music and art. And imagine this - wherever she went, be it desert, rainforest, mountains or sailing, Charlotte travelled with 14 trunks of  designer fashions and jewelry.  In fact, she had the most expensive set of rooms on the Titanic and received the largest settlment for her losses from the White Star Line.  Of course, Charlotte was wealthy and could easily afford to do the things she did.  But that’s not my point. My point, is that though she could have lived in the lap of luxury every day of her life,  she chose to get out into the world, to see it, touch it, feel it and taste it.  Though she was a woman born during the period history now calls the Gilded Age, Charlotte refused to stay in a gilded cage.  She had to be free.  She had to be who and what she was, an ‘unconventional woman.’