Characters
Anaïs Selvari (Book 1)
Daughter of the House of Selvari, twenty years old, golden-brown hair and hazelnut eyes and her Swedish father's lighter coloring in a family older than most of Sorvaine. Academically accelerated to the point that the word genius tends to follow her — years ahead of her peers and close to becoming a doctor before most of them have begun. She carries none of it heavily. There is a great deal more to say about her, and almost none of it can be said yet.
Full Name: Anaïs Selvari (pronounced Ah-nah-EES — the stress on the last syllable)
Date of Birth: 23 August 2005
Age: 20
Height: 5'5"
Appearance: Golden-brown hair, lighter than the other Ancien daughters — the coloring of a family tree that ran through somewhere northern before it arrived here. It catches the light warmly and is usually worn in a long, loose braid over one shoulder. Hazelnut eyes, a scatter of freckles, and a face that is still deciding, at twenty, exactly what kind of striking it intends to be. She is easy to overlook in a crowded room and rewards a second look, which few people in her orbit have yet thought to give her.
Family: Daughter of the House of Selvari, one of the twenty Ancien families. Her mother, Cosima, is the head of the House. Her father, Henrik, is Swedish, which is where the lighter coloring comes from — the northern line surfacing a generation on, in a girl raised entirely in the Mediterranean warmth of Vallecourt.
Academically: Accelerated from early on — the kind of student who moved through every stage faster than the calendar expected and made it look unhurried. At twenty she is close to completing a medical degree that most people her age have not yet started, on track to become a doctor years ahead of her peers. The word people reach for is genius, usually after underestimating her first. She wears none of it heavily. It is simply the pace at which her mind has always worked, and she has never known another.