The de Courfeyrac Family
Luc de Courfeyrac (1774-1847): Born into a small-scale aristocratic family in Avignon, France. The family got through the Revolution by publicly supporting the Republic (or at least not speaking against it), while privately praying for the king's return to the throne. That, joined with the fact that Avignon was far enough away from Paris to be hit by many of the hardest blows, got the family through with few scars, though a good amount of land and money was lost. This made Luc's marriage to Beatrice Peron in 1806 quite compatible, as her family owned a large shipping business in Saintes Maries de la Mer. Luc was able to move the main offices to Avignon while still keeping a firm business running at the original docks. He clings to his almost-nonexistent title while still holding up his company to prove that he is a self-made man. Pompous, excessive, very royalist.
Beatrice de Courfeyrac nee Peron (1786-1860): As the only child of a bourgeois, if quite wealthy, family, she was able to "move up" socially (if ever so slightly) in her marriage into the de Courfeyracs. As her father had no sons, his shipping firm went to her, and subsequently her husband. She has a habit of overly worrying about when her eldest son is going to settle down and get married. Flighty, cheerful to a fault, inconsiderate not so much because she means to be, but because she does not know any better.
Rene (de) Courfeyrac (April 26, 1809-June 6, 1832): Eldest son of the de Courfeyracs, and heir apparent from the moment he breathed. He spent the first eighteen years of his life wasting his father's fortune without a thought to how lucky he was to have it, and the last five years of his life rejecting said fortune along with the article in his name (not that that stopped him from spending it) while embedding himself in Republicanism, but we know that part of the story. His death at the barricades shocked his family to the core, for they had possessed no knowledge of his political views, and his father promptly disowned him. They never spoke of him again.
Celine de Courfeyrac (1815-1885): The sole daughter of the family, as well as the sole possessor of her father's blond hair and pale blue eyes. Had a better eye for business than her elder brother, though she would never presume to suggest she deserved the firm more, even after his death. As pompous as her father, though in a cool, unfriendly sort of way, and the only family member who thought that all was not the same with Rene when he would visit from university...
Phillipe de Courfeyrac (1823-1902): Youngest of the family. Though he never knew his elder brother remarkably well, he adored what he saw of him and for quite some time after Rene's death he would ask for him, until his family forced him to put it out of his mind. A calm, quiet child who grew into a man that somehow was able to gather up both his sister's cool clear-headedness and his brother's outward friendliness. Obviously, he became the heir after Rene's death, inherited the business, ran it better than either his father did or his brother would have, eventually moved to Paris and lived there quite contentedly.