Lady Maeve Davine Sterling (El’s Mother): a woman wracked with grief at the loss of her husband and son 2 years prior. She is married into the Sterling Family, to her benefit, coming from House Morgan. The Morgans are also a Merchant family, though were never as successful as the Sterling Family came to be, even before their gentrification. The younger of just two living children born to Bryn and Marian Morgan, Maeve’s parents, the best prospects she could hope for were to marry into a respectable merchant family. When she met Jareth- impossibly handsome, kind, and intelligent- and he returned affection for her, she could barely believe life was real! With no magical affinities of her own besides the unique and strange ability to communicate with animals- the second child to a successful merchant family was respectable and celebrated.
 
When Maeve gave birth to Davinor- who resembled his father in looks and temperment- they were overjoyed. Elinor was also received with love. However, as she favored her father's intelectual curiosity and had little cares for finery, simpering, or trivial pasttimes (all things Maeve Sterling excelled at), it was more difficult for Mother and Daughter to connect as the years went by. Davinor, while not simple, was much better at humoring his mother's requests and activites, and thus became Maeve's unspoken favorite, drawing comfort from Davinor's presence while Elinor and Jareth studied and worked away.
 
As her children grew, Maeve showed increasing focus on have them marry up, just like she did. With the family's steep climb financially, she became hyperfocussed on doing everything possible to set her children up for social success!
 
After Jareth and Davinor's deaths, however, Maeve showed signs of increasing fragility in emotional constitution, becoming easily vexed and needing to rest/retire for stretches at a time. She kept more pets than were "normal", claiming they all help her "withstand the cruelties of the world", and she and Elinor became more and more estranged.
 
Maeve tried to hide from this reality, however, and acted as normal as possible whenever interacting or going about the house/business, even with Elinor. When her energy was spent (which could happen at the drop of a hat and was hard to predict), a cold sweat would break out, her eyes would go wide and fearfully fill with tears, and she would quickly excuse herself- rushing to her lonely quarters. She would then stay there, and not come out for some time, being seen only by her Lady's Maid and her animals.
 
Maeve favors the color yellow, and wears it much of the time again now that the required period of time for grief (dictated by the rules of social etiquette) were passed... however, she still wears black underclothes, and has all of her dresses lined with black, a subtle defiance of custom, and a symbol of untreated traumas.


...