Thilbault Desmaisières and his wife, Emmeline (née Denay). Thibault and Emmeline are both researchers at Université de Saint-Loegaire, though they are, unusually, in completely different disciplines: Thibault is an anthropologist and Emmeline is a physicist. It is generally expected that women who continue to pursue science after their marriage will do so as part of their husband's research teams. Instead, continued to be part of the only all-women research team alongside Ismérie Thimerais and Chwfé.
Emmeline Denay had just turned 20 and was under considerable pressure to marry when a member of her research team was approached by Thilbault. Her parents, unwilling or unable to support a spinster daughter through an academic career, were running out of patience. Emmeline knew that marriage would most likely spell the end of her burgeoning career, as she would be expected to abandon academia in favour of the home or, almost worse, to join her future husband's research team and become little more than a footnote in his research. She also knew that she could not stall forever.
Thibault, sole heir to the Desmaisières, had spent many years doggedly avoiding matrimony. By his mid-thirties, rumours of homosexuality, threats of an arranged marriage and financial abuse had made his status as a bachelor untenable. Not wanting to condemn a housewife to a loveless marriage, he'd set his sights on young women scientists, hoping to find someone who loved her work enough that she would trade her chances of a loving home for the chance to continue her research. He'd unsuccessfully approached a colleague of Emmeline when Emmeline came knocking at his office.
With great distaste and some resigned relief, they'd found they could come to an arrangement: a marriage of convenience to ease pressure from their families, an heir to come, and support for Emmeline to continue her research independently.
They were married with great joy from mostly everyone else, and to their mutual surprise, rapidly became fast friends, a measure of solace in the mundane horror of their situation. In time, the horror faded back into the background noise of all the great and small injustices of life, just as love for the daughters they conceived through gritted teeth eased the bitterness of the memories. Both would qualify their arrangement as a happy one without dishonesty, careful not to mention they would much rather have not needed an arrangement in the first place.
