She's twenty-eight, sexy. has a pretty face, her father's olive skin and she's mad as hell at Roger, her first love, for his philandering; at the madmen in the White House for plunging the world into another pointless war, and at the clerics and bishops and popes for preparing the ground for another endless round of killing. But most of all she's mad at her father for deserting her and at her mother for her apparent lack of concern over his absence.
At best she knows she was born in in Beirut, in the Leban; certainly she went to school there and studied under both Moslem and Jewish teachers. Later the family moved to Australia, to the Northern Territories, and then to Brisbane where she studied the arts at the local university. She worked hard to please her daddy and won prizes to show him what a brilliant daughter he had.
Pain and anger are deep within her; they are meant to be for she is to be the new Matriarch and is about to embark on journey that will search her very soul.
In his sixties and of the Peter O'Toole mould Bill is ever watchful over the New Matriarch while he continues ad hoc service to his country and others. He was educated at Marlborough College and Cambridge University where he was awarded a double MA at age twenty. Family tradition carried him on to the army, though not to the Guards as such commissions remained outside of his father's income. After an initial spell in Kenya at the end of the Mau Mau uprising he went to Cheltenham, to the Signal Corps and was quickly taken up on special projects leading up to the Vietnam war, Despite his efforts the United States did enter in to a full-blown conflict that was to be the ultimate disgrace of the western world. In the hope that he could achieve more as a civilian, Bill relinquished his commission at age forty to open a new career in the Diplomatic Corps. His background and military bearing placed him at great advantage over his somewhat insipid contemporaries encouraging his superiors to use him for special events rather than having him thrash around in the sensitive confines of a remote consulate Despite feeling just as ineffective as he did in the Army his new job proved much more to his liking as he was given a great deal of 'free-reign' when dealing with representatives of foreign governments and agencies active in politics.
It was in Ireland, when he allowed himself to be taken hostage by a republican splinter group, that he came to the attention of The Matriarch, then known as Fiona McMahon. Outside of her family he remains the only living person who could identify her. His gallantry in Ireland and his outstanding service for his country earned him a knighthood: Sir William Saint James Houghton, KBE.
Educated at a comprehensive college in Southern England he won a scholarship to Edinburgh University where he earned an MA in the sciences. He stayed on to do his doctoral thesis centring on ancient technologies but moved on to a position as Assistant Professor of Science in University College Los Angeles before completing the work. Here he continued his studies and ran foul of the system with his unstoppable preaching against the modern orders. After a particularly bad outbreak when he swept armfuls of books from the shelves through the library windows he agreed to submit to medical treatment to avoid prosecution and possible prison. As a medical prisoner he was considered unemployable and therefore eligible for social security income, which, combined with writing commissions he regularly receives from advertising and public relations enterprises allows him to live comfortably while continuing his research.
A social recluse, he is short on patience and lacking in interpersonal skills.
