Syrenne's—formally Syrenity Isabelle Rose's-birth mother and father (Count and Countess) were slaughtered inside of the family manor, Rosehill Manor, when she was five. The maids felt bad for her, as no child should bear witness to such a grisly sight. She then was made to live with her aunt in the manor, Countess Marianne, and her Uncle, Count Randall, who lied about being her blood parents, saying that her Aunt and Uncle were the ones brutally murdered, not her parents. Count Randall had a bit of a drinking problem, and he would hit Marianne and Syrenity in turn when he was drunk. Always late to ballet classes or her piano lessons, and always an excuse for the new welt or bruise she wore.

Around the age of six, Syrenity began to see things whenever she felt stressed. She saw spiders and maggots and faces with bloody, sunked eyes, corpses and victims of slaughter, but no one else saw them. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and buried the secret under numerous medications.

Syrenity also had another uncle named Samuel (who turned out to just be a very close family friend) who owned a popular local hotel/casino, and she would stay at their place for one or two weeks a month. Samuel was married to a woman named Lucy, and they had six boys, who Syrenity grew up around. She discovered that she would rather lead a simpler life like the young men there, rather than under the pressure in Rosehill manor. She began to hate the way the high class citizens looked down at Samuel's family and promised them she would never become condescending. Although she was a Lady who was supposed to one day be married to a Lord, she developed boyish tendencies and adored playing rough, and grew into a beautiful young woman who knew too much. She fell for the second oldest boy's best friend, Erik.

Back in the manor, Countess Marianne had decided that at the time of her fifteenth birthday, Syrenity would have to meet her fiance, a young Lord—Lord Ashton—who wanted to get married about as much as she did. They had nothing in common. He wasn't interested in women. They made a deal to pretend to be married for the kingdom's sake, as the queen had made their pairing, but that they could see other people secretly. Syrenity's relationship with Erik blossomed, and they tried hard to keep the secret. This worked, but not for long. Randall found out about Erik and had him hung, leaving Syrenity depressed. Her paranoid schizophrenia returned, but this time it came with not just gruesome hallcinations, but voices that tormented her at night and in her sleep.

Randall became more violent, and when Syrenity was sixteen, she beat him back. He came at her and sent them both tumbling down the stairs, but he broke a his neck and was killed instantly. Marianne confessed in a fit of rage and tears to not being her real mother, and promptly kicked Syrenity out of the manor. She sought refuge at Samuel's house, but one month later the heart of the city and part of the castle was bombed, and the war began.

Syrenity joined the war under the name "Syrenne", training much harder than any other woman and hoping to help out in any way she could despite her high social standing, and was rewarded with a new title. She became General Rose; the tattoos scrolled in magic ink across her shoulders symbolized her hard-earned ranking.

Several months into the struggles of the war, a wave of plague shocked the remaining soldiers. The healing mages' magic proved useless to fight it, and their numbers fell. More than two hundred bodies were burned, and more were left to rot. At the loss of hope, more than half of the unaffected male soldiers and a small percentage of the female soldiers turned tail and disappeared, and before the night of the last battle too. Syrenne and the remaining four hundred soldiers fought their hardest, but were overcome by the thousands of enemy troops. Kidnapped, Syrenne found herself, along with around twenty of the other surviving women in a brothel house ready to be auctioned off. How she escaped, and alone, still feels unclear to her. But what the men did was unforgivable and unforgettable, and she would never forgive nor forget. Her hatred of the male kind burned like wildfire.

Life refused to return to normal, and Syrenne found she could not relax, even when she tried hard. She worked as a classical ballet teacher for a few months when she was eighteen to try and keep her mind off of what had happened, but it didn't help. She had seen no one familiar since the brothel house and began feeling more alone than ever. Syrenne turned to liquor to aid her with the depression and schizophrenia when she was nineteen, and met Dagran and his team of mercenaries late that year.