Blood does not always tell ...
She wakes each morning to the glorious certainty that man is at the mercy of the gods, his end inevitable from his beginning. Her friends are pawns of fate, blind as Oedipus to what awaits them, and she their only comforter. Brewing tempests in teacups, she pours forth angst and sympathy in less than equal measure, the bitter whelming the sweet. All the world's a stage to her, the play a Gothic melodrama endlessly repeating its second act.
She is Drosselmayer's true heir, did
she but know it. Well for her friends (and for the world) that she
does not.
Author's Note: I would be remiss if I did not credit the American playwright Lillian Hellman for the phrases with which Lilié's "glorious certainty" is at first described. Quotation is the sincerest form of flattery.