You see, I do have a family but all I really count for in the eyes of my father is being the heir that has magic. There's two types of nobility in Melluma of course and the sole difference between them is if you have magic or not. My father doesn't. In fact, the only reason he married my mother was for her magical ability. It wasn't because of noble blood because she had none and it wasn't because he loved her. She was common born and was taken from her family as a child to be raised by a noble family so she could marry a noble. All common borns with magical abilities are taken from their families in their childhood and either they are introduced into noble society or sent to fight on the battlefield.
But she's dead now. I think it wasn't long after I was born.
My father wasn't really there for me. He was too busy being an important man and so handed me over first to the nurse in the nursery, then to my tutors and finally off to boarding school. He didn't grieve my mother much either because she did what she needed: produce a healthy heir with magical abilities. Most I've gotten from him is money and other material things.
I have a step-mother. She's an older woman who my father soon married after my own mother's death. Another non-magical noble, she wasn't particularly fond of me because I represented the one thing she could never give my father. I had over heard once that before my mother - young compared to my father - was married to him, he was in love with my step-mother and only married my mother because he needed a magical heir to get higher in the world and it really just was all for the Merset family name. And so it is my step-mother that my father really loves and not me or my mother. And I think I'm fine with that.