The Capwell family
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Powerful family of the city, the Capwells became very fast, in the course of three generations, the center of interest of all Santa Barbara. It is Nathaniel, the first one, who is at the origin of the ascent of the family. It is with him too that are built the bases of a merciless war with the Lockridges, well before the wreck of the Amanda Lockridge.

At the instigation of Emmett, with in particular the creation of the Capwell Enterprises, the family begins to gain an international fame. Emmett, avid to establish and to show his success, chooses to build an impressive villa in the district of Montecito, near the one of the Lockridges, symbol of a permanent confrontation. To his house, Emmett makes come from the whole world various objects of decoration, of which the impressive octagonal fountain which decorates the atrium. Well beyond the financial holdings, Emmett transmits to his sons the idea of a dynasty hatching. He teaches them to consider family in general as the cornerstone of the Capwell empire, and to respect the villa as the family sanctuary. Moreover, it is in this way that he leaves a curious will : the biggest part of the Capwell inheritance will go to his first great-grandson, as if, beyond everything, he wanted to make sure of a descent and to anchor his family for several generations.

Emmett's words find a particular echo with C.C.. He eliminates easily his brother Grant to assure Emmett's family vision; a vision that C.C. will preserve. He uses all the stratagems to keep his elder son, Mason, with him. He creates for himself an ideal son, an ideal heir, in the person of Channing Junior. And no matter if his vision of the Capwell family is false and that it locks his children into a mold which does not correspond to them. For him, it has no importance. Because, quite as him, his children have to learn to preserve the inheritance and to fight to keep the family unit.

C.C. lives then in a deformed reality and far from the reality of the everyday life : although Channing Junior is not as perfect as he imagines it, with his death, C.C. deforms his memories so that they stick on his ideal. It will be the same with each of his children : Mason will have to pay the fact of being Pamela's son, Ted will have to learn to become a second heir and to be transformed not into Channing Junior but into the image his father has of this so-loved son. And as for his daughters, they will have to realize a marriage as high as their rank. And confronted with the pretenders, C.C. will go of disappointment to disappointment. It is in this way that he will transfer all his hopes on Brandon.

The new Capwell generation shows itself little inclined to follow the Capwell education. At first a split separates Mason from the other children, what damages the family unit on several occasions. Ted does not want to follow a fate which is not his, and to become the copy (not completed) of his late brother is not to satisfy him : he prefers to find his own way. Kelly concentrates in herself all the fragilities of a family from which is required not perfection, but to look like an outmoded and erroneous vision. Only Eden, on one side, finds the favours of her father. She is the only one to take in hand at the same time the reins of the Capwell Enterprises and of the family.

What hope of future for this family, where all its members seem to be in search of affection : of a father who swears only by the one of his children, of a mother very too much absent and whose presence was idealized...

Text written for this site by Lilian