Ghyll:Bavarian Creame
Lady Bavarian Magdelene Creame (formerly Sinch, formerly Smallwood, neé Wallinger) has always been known as a driven woman. Born to the aristocratic Wallinger family on -69/04/12 EC, she was said to have been destined for great things from the very start. Her ancestral home of Undivaggen, in the leafy village of Marsh Gibbon (approximately 10 sugro-nanits north-west of Folktown) has been lovingly restored to its former splendour by her and her two younger sisters. Since the estrangement from her latest husband, Windsor Creame, she's returned to her family seat and retreated from the public gaze.
Educated at the exclusive Mandeville Girls School in nearby Sejfeld, she first came to note when she was admitted to the Amphitheatre aristocracy at the age of just 9 years. Proving to be a vigorous yet politic public speaker, after leaving the University in Curno (with a first-class degree in the Social Arts) she embarked upon an energetic and controversial political career.
Beginning as a councillor, she met her first husband (Claude, now Baron, Smallwood) as part of the Folktown social season. Their marriage was to prove her longest. They were famously married in the middle of the renowned Grand Mall, the gardened pedestrian driveway that stretches between the Folktown Council Hall and the Folktown Amphitheatre. After their marriage, her career rapidly progressed. She became a Core Advisor to (then) Mayor Hew Loan and served at that rank in a number of offices. She was perceived as Mayor Loan's 'troubleshooter' and was widely viewed as responsible for preventing the destruction of museums, jobs and even preventing several wars. When she inherited her father's title and became Lady Smallwood, her succession to the post of mayor seemed inevitable as high society's golden goose.
Unfortunately, it appeared that her success in managing the subtleties of society weren't matched by equal success with her private life. Two years after becoming Mayoress of Folktown, she and her husband separated. The divorce proceedings grabbed as many headlines as her marriage, especially as the arguments continued for many months. The final divorce agreement was signed by both parties twelve years to the day after their marriage. Baron Smallwood retained the title he gained through the marriage, and the extensive library and vineyards in the picturesque Evesque Valley, whilst she retained her family fortune and her two young sons and baby daughter (who took their mother's maiden name with the agreement.) A skillful politician, she gained even more support and praise as a result of the separation and continued to be adored in her public office.
Two years after her divorce from Baron Smallwood, she astonished society by announcing her impending marriage to Sir Bartholemew Sinch. A famed, but extremely elderly, lawyer, he was possibly the most frail bachelor in the city. Their wedding was a private affair held in the Folktown Amphitheatre and she imposed a ban on photographs of society weddings. Trade in these pictures has become a black market, with collectors (known as sociophiles) spending thousands of Quezloos for the rarer snaps. In spite of her new husband being well-known to be infertile, she surprised the world when she announced her pregnancy with her youngest child, Siam Sinch.
A few days after Siam's birth, Bartholemew Sinch died of what was recorded as 'natural causes'. In spite of her exhaustion, she insisted on a swift and dignified cremation. His ashes were scattered over the Grand Mall ("the preened ground from which he served his land so well" as Mayoress Sinch put it in her eulogy) a week after Siam was born. It wasn't long afterwards that she resigned from public office, blaming the stresses of recent events and her desire to be a good mother to her daughter.
For the next twenty years, she became heavily involved with charitable works and academic research. Her researches regarding the hitherto fringe field of the Alezan pantheon are considered some of the finest and most obsessively exhaustive ever accomplished. She has often said she was "searching for the final pieces of the grand puzzle of our world". Her youngest daughter, showing the same prodigy in the arts that her mother did, attended the same school, and made a 'good match' with the statesman Gabson Foyle. In spite of the laws Lady Sinch had herself passed, Siam's wedding became a media frenzy.
Her older daughter, Niala proved to be less successful in love. She began dating the much-younger son of Lady Sinch's future husband's sister, Alessa Mboya (neé Creame). Niala Wallinger and Daniel Mboya kept their relationship private thanks to Lady Sinch's influence.
Eight years ago, trouble struck Niala's relationship with Daniel. Suddenly and unexpectedly they broke up, to much comment from society, and Lady Bavarian Sinch and Windsor Creame announced their engagement. It is widely believed that Niala couldn't cope with the idea of her mother marrying her boyfriend's uncle. Indeed, the relationship between Niala and Bavarian remains frosty, especially since Daniel's recent and tragic death at the hands of the uncle Bavarian married.
Since the trial and imprisonment of Windsor, Lady Bavarian has retreated from public life once more and refuses to entertain interviews. In the last public interview she gave, she described her marriage to Windsor Creame as "a terrible mistake, as women in passion are likely to make". Her friends in the Amphitheatre aristocracy have rumoured that she's thrown herself back into her academic studies with her obsession of the Alezan pantheon deepening.
Citations: Agony uncle, Folktown Council Hall, Undivaggen.
--Fingest Arnia 18:40, 17 Sep 2004 EDT
