Biography[]
The Age of Peace[]
While most wealthy Stormwind ladies birthed children from the comfort of their homes, the pious Highfield family demonstrated their faith by delivering their children in the Cathedral. Blessed by the High Priestess and wrapped in silk sheets, Phaedra was born into a life of strict worship and lavish privilege. As Count Wymarc Highfield's eldest daughter, Phaedra's childhood was occupied with things meant to attract an eligible suitor, like needlework and scripture. Phaedra was attentive to her lessons; the adults praised her obedience, and the other children mocked her earnestness.
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The Orc Wars[]
When the orcs began pillaging the countryside, Phaedra's extended family in the Grand Hamlet were among the earliest victims. In response, Count Highfield moved his wife and three children as far away as he could, resettling in Lordaeron. Whether owing to cowardliness or shrewdness, the Highfields were some of the first southerners to flee north, where they remained until the orcs were defeated.
Young Phaedra mourned for her dead family, and for her life in Stormwind. The suddenness of it all instilled a new sense of fear in Phaedra that never left her again. In her new home of Hearthglen, Phaedra was apprenticed to the highborn seamstress Alys Lockelight, and she found solace in friendship with Alys's two daughters. Over the next five years in Hearthglen, Phaedra matured from a girl into a woman, and the Lockelight family helped her regain a sense of normalcy. When the war was finally won, Phaedra demanded to remain in Hearthglen, but her father dragged her and her siblings back across the Thandol Span without care for her protests.
New Stormwind[]
Upon returning south, Count Highfield wasted no time in trying to rebuild his family's legacy. Within a year Phaedra was married to Bishop Calder Dukes, reaffirming her family's historical affiliation with the Church. Phaedra was more sullen for the loss of her life in Hearthglen, but she took her duty to her family seriously, doing her best to attend to her husband's wants. How ashamed she was then, when fertility failed her and she did not conceive a child. Phaedra felt particularly humiliated when her younger sister Cassiopeia was married the year after her, and quickly began bearing children. Phaedra became affected by a certain bitterness and vindictiveness, resenting her husband for not giving her children and her sister for having children.
Phaedra was overjoyed when she finally became pregnant after three long years of marriage. Her father and husband hosted an extravagant party, to celebrate and to honor the Light for its gift. They were deeply upset when Phaedra suffered a miscarriage, but nobody could have been more devastated than she was. For the first time, Phaedra's faith in the Light secretly began to waver. Phaedra never conceived again, nor was she ever the same afterward, earning a new reputation for using pointed words and meddling in the affairs of others.
While Phaedra battled with childbirth, her father toiled to restore his family's holdings. Count Highfield succeeded in reclaiming some of their countryside farmland, but much of it was ruined from the war. Without a bountiful harvest, Count Highfield faced financial struggle, and to save money he counted himself among the noblemen who helped terminate the Stonemason contract without pay. In the ensuing riots, Count Highfield was murdered for his greed, creating a void in leadership that neither his wife nor son were prepared to fill. Phaedra was burdened with many new responsibilities, and she blamed the underclass for her father's death, a deep grudge that she maintains to this day.
A House in Ruin[]
In her father's absence, Phaedra tried her best to pick up where he left off rebuilding their legacy. Her older brother Thanasus did not have strong senses of urgency or duty, and Phaedra resented his inadequacy as the heir to the Highfield estate. Phaedra became particularly irate when Thanasus declined to fill their father's now-empty seat in the House of Nobles, forfeiting their claim to one entirely. Just as the Highfields lost their seat in the House, they soon began losing their land holdings to the brigands in Westfall and the monsters in Duskwood. With her family's wealth crumbling around her, Phaedra rose to the occasion, assuming unofficial leadership over their estate in her brother's stead.
Phaedra's marriage became a formality, as she began to see her husband infrequently and speak to him even less. Instead, she dedicated herself to building a better future for her nieces and nephews, who she loved fiercely in place of her own children. Few things distracted Phaedra from her purpose anymore, but she became distraught when the dead took the north, and the Lockelights were never found. Phaedra quietly decided that her faith in the Light died with the Lockelights.
The Everlook Trading Company[]
Bishop Calder Dukes eventually succumbed to a sudden sickness, widowing Phaedra and relieving her of the trouble of keeping up the appearance of a happy marriage. In the following years, Thanasus lost hope in Stormwind's future and moved his family to Theramore, much to Phaedra's chagrin. Officially given control over the Highfield estate in Thanasus's absence, Phaedra invested a substantial portion of their remaining wealth into the Darnassian-owned Everlook Trading Company, becoming the majority shareholder. Phaedra now attempts to leverage the Company's resources to help retake Westfall and Duskwood, despite the protests of the elves who own it.