Zelda was born to a rich southern family at the start of the twentieth century. Her mother was a southern belle and her father was a remote and strict man. Both doted on and spoiled Zelda, an active girl who enjoyed swimming, the outdoors, and ballet. As she blossomed into a teenager she became quite wild for the time: drinking, smoking, and spending all of her time in the company of various boys. She hungered for the attention of others and did anything to attract it; things like dancing the Charleston (it was a very different time) and wearing flesh covered swimsuits so people thought she swam naked. Through it all her reputation never suffered thanks to the facts that she was extremely attractive and her family was very wealthy. Zelda first met F. Scott Fitzgerald when she was eighteen and he was twenty-four. Scott was stationed at a nearby military base and was a self-assured man who dreamed of being an author. The two fell in love, but Zelda refused to marry Scott because he was unattractively impoverished. To correct this, Scott simply wrote his first book which made him an overnight success. Scott swept Zelda away to New York City and the two were soon married.
Scott and Zelda were the toast of New York, or rather the toast of the city's most famous drunks. Their lives, despite Prohibition, revolved around never ending parties fueled by an unquenchable thirst for booze. They'd go to parties and drink until they passed out. They'd swim in public fountains, get thrown out of hotels, and pass out in random houses. The newspapers loved them. Soon after the publication of Scott's second novel, Zelda gave birth to a daughter who was quickly handed off to a series of nannies and boarding schools. The next year Zelda became pregnant again, but got an abortion in order to save her figure. Behind the couple’s public facade was a shit show of bitter fights, heavy drinking, and rampant spending. With Scott's writing career on the rocks, the two moved to France where Scott concentrated on his writing and Zelda concentrated on an affair with a French pilot. Before long Zelda demanded a divorce, which Scott dealt with by locking her in the house until she changed her mind. Though Scott soon published his third and most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, things quickly fell apart from there. Zelda tried to kill herself with sleeping pills and Scott double downed on his alcoholism.
Zelda got back at her husband by telling him that she disliked having sex with him because he had a tiny penis and was most likely a homosexual. This prompted him to show his penis to Ernest Hemingway for his opinion. Scott sought revenge by having sex with a prostitute, which somehow proved his masculinity. Upon discovering this, Zelda purposefully threw herself down a flight of stairs at a party, but her husband pretended not to notice. The two became increasingly miserable. Scott's writing wasn't going well and Zelda was decidedly bored and lonely, which she coped with by doing crazy antics to get Scott's attention, which he dealt with by guzzling booze. For a while Zelda took back up ballet dancing, practicing herself into physical and mental exhaustion every day, but Scott called it a waste of time because of her age. The two still partied, but fewer people wanted to be around them. Zelda became increasingly erratic until Scott finally had her shut up in a looney bin. The headshrinkers there diagnosed her with schizophrenia. It was around this time that they moved back to America, with Zelda transferring to a better, more American mental institution soon after their return.
Zelda's time as a crazy person wasn't wasted. She wrote a book which enraged her husband since she used many tales from her own life. Scott believed that if anybody was going to write about Zelda's insanity and his alcoholism it was going to be him. The book didn’t sell well, nor did the many art pieces that Zelda painted. Over the next several years Scott finished his fourth novel, but spent most of his time living in Hollywood, having an affair with another woman and taking any writing job he could get to help pay for his wife's medical bills. Zelda meanwhile underwent numerous shock therapies, completely lost her mind, and started having conversations with many long dead historical figures. Near broke, the pair continued in a strange love-hate relationship for the rest of their lives, barely ever seeing each other. Their last time together was a vacation to Cuba where Scott was beaten up for trying to stop a cockfight and became so intoxicated and exhausted that he had to be hospitalized. Two years later he died at the age of forty-four. Zelda, newly released from the insane asylum, missed both his funeral and her daughter's wedding. She soon returned to the familiar comfort of the asylum where she died at the age of forty-seven when it burnt to the ground.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zelda_Fitzgerald_circa_1919_Retouched.jpg