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Phoebe Frewin of Begma stands on the verge of her debut in Amber. Twenty years old, an innocent in the ways of the world - and even more so in the ways of Amber - she has been brought to Amber by her ambitious Mama.
Lylias Frewin is commonly held to have married below herself. She is the last daughter of a proud and noble house - the Hamptons. Compared with the fame and lineage of the Hamptons, the Frewin family are parvenus. But the Frewins had one thing that the Hamptons lacked - serious money. The marriage was therefore seen as conferring benefits on both sides - and Marcus and Lylias were married when he was eighteen and she was sixteen - a marriage without love, arranged by their families.
And no two families could be more different. The Frewins were loving, warm and affectionate, whereas the Hamptons were cold, rigidly formal and proud. Marcus Frewin was, a few years after his marriage, heard to say that one could catch frostbite in the marital bed. Nevertheless, they did their duty and produced two children - a daughter and a son. Both looked as though they took more after their mother, with her lovely fair beauty - but, in fact, both had more of the Frewin nature - something that pleased their father immensely.
By the time the children were ten and six, however, the marriage had all but broken down. Lord Frewin was notorious for his gambling and the string of beautiful (and expensive) mistresses he kept. Lady Fewin was determined to let no-one see the blow to her pride, and fought to maintain her position in society with extravagent and ruinously expensive social gatherings.
By the time Lord Frewin died two years ago, (when Phoebe was eighteen), the vast Frewin fortune was all but gone. Vigorous re-trenchment saved most of the lands, but Lady Frewin has decided that her daughter must make a financially advantageous marriage - as she did - to restore the family fortunes.
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