Ghyll:Bavarian Creame
Lady Bavarian Magdelene Creame (neé Sinch, neé Smallwood, neé Wallinger) has always been known as a driven woman. Born to the aristocratic Wallinger family on -59/04/12 EC, she was said to have been destined for great things from the very start. Her ancesteral home of Undivaggen, in the leafy village of Marsh Gibbon (approximately 10 miles north-west of Folktown) has been lovingly restored to its former splendour by her and her two younger sisters. Since the estrangement with 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 Advisors to the 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 seen as responsible for preventing the destruction of museums, jobs and even preventing several wars. When she inheritted her father's title and became Lady Creame, 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 own 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 (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 she 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 as unable to have children, she surprised the world when she announced her pregnancy with her only daughter (and 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 fifteen 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 accompolished. She has often said she was "searching for the final pieces of the grand puzzle of our world". Her daughter, showing the same prodigy in the arts that her mother did, attended the same school and began dating the son of her future husband's sister, Alessa Mboya (neé Creame). Siam Sinch and Daniel Mboya kept their relationship private thanks to Lady Sinch's influence.
In her fifteenth year, trouble struck Siam'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 Siam couldn't cope with the idea of her mother marrying her boyfriend's uncle. Indeed, the relationship between Siam and Bavarian remains frosty, especially since Daniel's sudden and tragic death at the hands of the uncle Bavarian married.
Since the trial and imprisonment of Windsor, Lady Bavarian has retreated from the 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 with the Alezan pantheon deepening.
--Fingest Arnia 23:18 20040917 BST
