History Literature / CavendonHall

* BlackSheep: [[spoiler: Both Felicity and Lavinia eventually become this in regard to the Ingham family, although Lavinia is forgiven when it's discovered she has cancer.]]

* AnythingThatMoves: [[spoiler:One interpretation for Richard Torbett, if he was willing to go after a six-year-old]].

* HundredPercentAdorationRating: the Inghams, especially the father. The father, Charles, is clearly beloved by everyone in all of his villages, to the point where the staff have no idea who [[spoiler:could have raped Daphne and set the stable on fire]]. Dulcie and Daphne also seem to be particularly loved by at least the rest of the family and the staff, though it's hard to tell how far that extends beyond the family.

* ABoyAGirlAndABabyFamily: The Ingham family has 2 boys (Guy and Michael), 2 girls (Diedre and Daphne), and 2 babies ([=DeLacy=] and Dulcie). Though [=DeLacy=], who is 12, could be considered one of the "girls", as she is only two years younger than the youngest boy. Dulcie, meanwhile, is five years old.

* TheBusCameBack: [[spoiler:Happens to both Richard Torbett (in the World War I chapters) and to Felicity Ingham (at Michael's engagement party).]] Also happens to several other characters throughout the book, as the book covers a five-year period where not everybody is present. For example, both Michael and Guy are students at Eton and Oxford, respectively, and so keep going to and from school throughout the book.

** [[spoiler:Between Michael and Cecily. By the end of the sequel, it can be classified as Victorious]].

* CoolBigSis: Daphne is this with regards to [=DeLacy=] and Dulcie, and possibly to Michael as well, especially in comparison to Diedre and Guy, who are rarely available. However, Diedre has evolved into this, at least for Daphne and, later, Dulcie, by the end of ''The Cavendon Women''.

* DisposableFiance: [[spoiler:Michael's fiancee/wife in the sequel, who is killed off-screen in the last few pages to make room for Michael to marry Cecily, who is pregnant with his child.]]
* TheDitz: [=DeLacy=]. She literally has no clue why Cecily would be upset to know that [[spoiler:Michael was going to marry someone else]].

* DumbBlond: [=DeLacy=]. Again, the girl has literally no clue. She even [[spoiler:says that Cecily could never marry Michael because of the class difference. True, but she could have found a nicer way to say it. Oh, and this is when she's nineteen, so she really should have more of a clue.]]

* HappilyMarried: Daphne and [[spoiler:Hugo. Also, Charlotte Swann and Charles Ingham become this in book 2, with Cecily and Michael following in between books 2 and 3.]]
* HeIsAllGrownUp: Happens to Michael, [=DeLacy=], and Cecily at the end of the book, and also happens to Dulcie in the sequel. All the others age up, too, but it's not as noticeable for them. Happens to the entire next generation by the time of book 4, by which point all of them are grown adults and starting to create families of their own.

* KissingCousins: Daphne Ingham and Hugo Stanton are second-cousins (Hugo and Daphne's father Charles are first-cousins), and as of the end of the sequel, Michael and [[spoiler:Cecily are step-cousins through Charlotte and Charles' marriage]].

** Not so much for Daphne or Michael, the true middle children of the family.

* MissingMom: [[spoiler:Felicity leaves the family after the youngest, Dulcie, is almost kidnapped, and only returns briefly, years later, for Michael's engagement party.]]

* VagueAge: Genevra, the gypsy girl, though she appears to be older than [=DeLacy=] and Cecily, but younger than Daphne. (She has to bend down to be on the same level as Cecily, but everyone still calls her a girl.) However, this is subverted in the sequel, where she explicitly reveals herself to be twenty-seven (the same age as Michael at the time), meaning that she was fourteen during most of the first book.
* VictoriousChildhoodFriend: [[spoiler:Michael winds up getting together with Cecily in the sequel, as do Charles and Charlotte, who were also childhood friends.]]

** Elise Steinbrenner calls her best friend, Victoria Brown, “Vicki.”

** In the second book, Daphne and Hugo's third and fourth children, Thomas and Andrew, are only seen, very briefly, at Dulcie's wedding, compared to the two scenes that every one of their siblings gets; in the sequel, they only get a single scene, while their older brother Charlie narrates multiple chapters and even Alicia and Annabel appear at least twice. In the fourth book, they aren’t even mentioned for the first 2/3 of the book and receive much less attention in the narrative than any of their siblings, including their little sister Annabel, who had similarly been unmentioned until that point.

* ObliviousAdoption: Alicia has no idea she's [[spoiler:not Hugo's biological daughter]].

* PrecisionFStrike: The only uses of the word "fuck" in the entire series is during the World War I trench section of the first book.

* ParentalFavoritism: Both Daphne and Dulcie are clearly well-loved by both the family and the staff. It is possibly this reason why Diedre seems to dislike them both so much.

* DeathInTheLimelight: In a rare example for this series, [[spoiler:Lady Gwendolyn]].

* MurderTheHypotenuse: Lawrence Pierce's "solution" to [[spoiler:=DeLacy's=] relationship with Travers Merton]].

** Victoria Brown is adopted by Alice and Walter Swann after the war ends.

* HeIsAllGrownUp: Happens to Michael, [=DeLacy=], and Cecily at the end of the book, and also happens to Dulcie in the sequel. All the others age up, too, but it's not as noticeable for them.

** In the second book, Daphne and Hugo's third and fourth children, Thomas and Andrew, are only seen, very briefly, at Dulcie's wedding, compared to the two scenes that every one of their siblings gets; in the sequel, they only get a single scene, while their older brother Charlie narrates multiple chapters and even Alicia and Annabel appear at least twice.

** Everyone close to her calls Daphne Daphers.

* AnArmAndALeg: Charlie Stanton [[spoiler:loses most of one leg after being rescued at Dunkirk]].

* DaddysGirl: All of the girls, except Diedre. [[spoiler:The youngest two barely seem to care when their mother leaves the family.]] However, all of the children, except Diedre, seem to be much closer to their father than to their mother, to the point that by the time of the sequel, most of them don't even call her "Mama," as they did in the first book, but by her first name, while they all still call their father "Papa."

* DemotedToExtra: Both of the younger Ingham daughters, [=DeLacy=] and Dulcie, go from prominent characters in the second book to not even present for the first half of the third book and [[spoiler:dying at the end for [=DeLacy=]]].

* HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler:Lady Gwendolyn's daughter, Margaret.]]

* WhiteSheep: Apparently, Julian is this in the Torbett family. [[spoiler:He is the only one who grows up to be neither an alcoholic nor a perverted rapist. Unfortunately, he is also the first Torbett to die.]]
* YourCheatingHeart: [[spoiler:Felicity has been cheating on her husband, Charles, for the past 4 years and is willing to leave her entire family, including her 6 children, two of whom are not even in their teens, behind.]] Also, happens with Charles' sister, Lavinia.

* SecondLove: Both Charles and Charlotte are this to each other; Charles' first love was the mother of his six children, Felicity, while Charlotte's was actually [[spoiler:Charles' father, David]].

* BiTheWay: [[spoiler:Diedre is revealed, in book 2, to have had at least one lesbian liaison, with whom she describes as the love of her life, although all of her later romances have been with men.]]

** Dulcie also rushes her engagement with James, for no other reason than she can't imagine waiting any longer to be Lady Brentwood.