Miss Clarissa Tremaine

Female

Birth date: 6.6.1853 y.

Cabin: Nurses-16

Biography:

Clarissa was the unexpected matriarch who redefined the notion of family and commerce in the American West. Born in humble or difficult circumstance in England, she was the sister of Lord Tremaine. This familial tie became the unlikely foundation of her early power.

Clarissa was an ambitious woman who, seeking to live a new life out of her brother's shadow, left behind the trappings of her English aristocracy and moved to the American frontier. She possessed a keen intelligence and a sharp understanding of human nature, particularly its vulnerabilities and desires, and used this talent to establish her own enterprise, The Palace, a brothel in San Francisco. Unlike the transient, squalid dens of ill repute that dotted the frontier, Clarissa's Palace was a lavish, thriving, and highly influential business, and she ran it with an iron fist that commanded immense respect and allowed her to accumulate a vast fortune. Her "Palace" was not merely a house of vice, it was a center of social power that was frequented by railroad barons, mining magnates, and the city's most powerful men.

In those days, she was the lover of Jedediah Colt, a cattle baron, and a devoted mother to two boys she adopted off the street named Josiah Vance and Alistair Thorne. To protect her sons from the social stigma of her profession and ensure their legitimate place in high society, she orchestrated their education and careers, making them millionaires in their own right. Her ultimate goal was to secure a respectable name for her family, leading to her audacious scheme involving Lady Tremaine.

Clarissa's brother in his later years would frequent her den of vice when he took "business trips" to escape Lady Tremaine, his second wife, and he used the debts he accumulated to force Lady Tremaine and her daughters Drizella and Anastasia to travel to San Francisco, viewing them as valuables which would secure her family's social and financial future. She orchestrated the marriages of her sons to Lady Tremaine’s daughters which secured the noble Tremaine name through marriage, wedding her sons to Lady Tremaine's children for her criminal empire.

After a steamboat wreck that claimed her beloved Jedediah, Clarissa, though shattered by grief, solidified her alliance with her sister in law. She recognized Lady Tremaine's ruthless intellect and ambition, eventually partnering with her to expand their influence into architecture and legitimate commerce, securing their place as two of the most formidable, unconventional matriarchs of the West.

By 1905 the Wild West she'd immigrated to decades ago was dying. She moved with Lady Tremaine back to her familial estate in England, the two living their days together. When her sister in law died in 1911, Clarissa was crushed, but knew her life would not end there just as it didn't when Jedediah died all those years ago. When WWI broke in August of 1914, she found her new purpose calling her, a chance to contribute and become something again. Her sons and daughters in law were happy in California, running the empire she'd helped them build, but now she could start a new chapter. She donated the Tremaine estate to the field hospital services to use for the duration of the war and packed up, shipping out to become a nurse in the field.

After her training, she took her first position in the war hospitals of Southampton, then shipped across the channel to France to help there. She returned in the late summer of 1915 to her estate to assist and oversee regular maintenance of the house, and now, in November of 1916, is returning to service onboard the Britannic on her 6th voyage.

Edit