Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror, identified in the novel with the French upheaval of 1793, enters the story through the LaMotte family’s migration from France to England. That flight begins a family history extending across national borders, with later generations connected to English life and to Brittany. The period is not developed as a military or political narrative; its significance lies in the displacement and inherited connections that form part of Christabel LaMotte’s background.

Family Exile and Settlement

Christabel’s grandparents, Jean-Baptiste and Emilie LaMotte, fled to England during the Reign of Terror. They chose not to return after the fall of Bonaparte and settled in England, making exile a lasting family circumstance rather than a temporary refuge. Their migration is the earliest specific historical event in the account of Christabel’s ancestry.

Inherited Links to Brittany

The family’s French origins remain connected to Brittany through Emilie, whose brother Raoul de Kercoz maintained the family manor of Kernemet. This connection links the LaMottes’ English settlement to a Breton family place that remains relevant to later generations. The narrative thus gives Christabel a family history shaped by movement between England and Brittany, rather than by a single settled national identity.

Later Echoes of Displacement and Kinship

The consequences of concealment in a later generation are not presented as direct results of the grandparents’ flight. Rather, the family history provides a background for the novel’s recurring attention to migration, kinship, and the circumstances in which a child’s origins may be hidden. Christabel’s daughter is born in Brittany, then taken to England and raised by Christabel’s sister Sophie as her own; the account later connects concealment of parentage to the historical restriction on inheritance by illegitimate children. These later events give the family’s cross-Channel history renewed significance without establishing a simple causal line from the Reign of Terror to the choices made generations afterward.