Though her family trails their lineage to the once-Archduchy of Lorraine, Marie's father was a poor gentleman and courtier in the hall of Emperor John VI, prior to the Empire's dissolution as per Aurelius Horen's bloody coup. Her father, though an aristocrat by blood, was a poor and lowly gentleman, his life riddled with illness and misfortune. The estate which he claimed to own was of the most decrepit condition, with only sickly servants to occupy it. This man had somewhat of a reputation amongst the folk of the empire for his continual misadventures, the estate which his nascent family resided in being almost wholly mortgaged at this point. One day, whilst on a trip in Adelburg, he received news that his estate had burned to the ground, and his wife with it, though his children were safe.
This news practically drove the man mad, and, in this overwrought fever, he perished shortly while under the eye of the town doctor. The remaining land of the estate was sold back to the crown, his two children taken under the wing of a family friend by the name of Louis - a plump and arrogant man. Circumstances lead to the youngest of the two children to die by consumption, the other, Marie, raised with Louis' own children. Louis, a foreign advisor, was often out and away at some location unknown, tending to matters of business, though whenever he returned he was completely inebriated, and beat and verbally abused Marie without holding back - unbeknownst to his own children, of course.
One fateful year, approximately 1641, the state of affairs on Axios permitted Marie to escape from the family through the passage of sea to the new continent of Atlas, and with it she sought to start a new life for herself.
