Alanna/Introduction

Alanna Grey-Woodville is the product of a union between one of Britain's oldest and most distinguished families, and one of Hong Kong's wealthiest and most successful. Charles Grey-Woodville was still in his 20s -- and notorious for his drug addiction, drinking, and petty crime -- when he married married Li Wai-kuen, the granddaughter of a real-estate tycoon. Wai-kuen would die less than a year later giving birth to their only child, but her family's money would keep Charles in Cristal and ecstasy for most of the next decade.

For a long while -- particularly after her father remarried, this time to an Englishwoman of almost equally distinguished lineage -- it seemed as though Alanna would follow in his footsteps: being thrown out of private schools, getting photogenically drunk in public, being involved in car wrecks, narrowly avoiding arrest for drug abuse along with her cabal of rich wastrel friends. Even her long-time friend and companion Jamie Ruthven seemed unable to do more than moderate her self-destructive behavior. Only after her family's country house burned to the ground on Christmas Eve in 2022, killing Jamie and two other guests, did she finally show some signs of growing up.

After spending a year out of the public eye, her re-emergence into British society was downright moderate by comparison. True, she still makes frequent appearances at dance clubs, bars, and other places of entertainment, but her drinking (and drug use, if any) are now kept to a more discreet and modest level, and she's even shown some philanthropic spirit by appearing at charitable fundraisers given by her family and others, like the yearly Westheath Grand Prix road-race for classic cars. Still, her relations with her father, her grandfather, her stepmother, and her half-brothers remain visibly frosty, and there seems little prospect of them improving in the near future.