While the family’s overly fair appearance is a literary device to make them instantly recognizable as related, in Maiden in Light, it also gives them an aura of being truly strange and exotic people.
Lord Ambris’s encounter with Laurel in the first chapter of this story not only foreshadows his introduction to the rest of her family, but also suggests that the staid and dutiful nobleman has touched upon a magical experience, with just a hint of romance. While he lives in a world where magicians exist, they aren’t the sort of people one encounters in ordinary circumstances. But here is this extraordinary girl. When Ambris meets Laurel’s aunt Kaiese and young cousins later that same day, their fair coloring tells him that the four are related. While the lady and her daughters are not overtly magical themselves, their relationship to the wizard Redmantyl, whom Ambris knows slightly, makes them all the more intriguing to him.
When he leaves New York, the experience stays with Ambris. Although many years pass before he sees Laurel again after this first, brief encounter, he does not forget her.