"It is not good to let women rule, for they become too vain for their own good when given power, but it is better to leave even great power to a woman rather than to a twin." - Thomas Carey

More social and less emotional than her identical twin Alexandra, Lila St. Martin was the answer to the hopes and dreams her parents originally had for her slightly older sister. Better at using her intelligence for her own benefit than Allie, Lila managed to firmly entrench herself as the favorite child by the time her brother, Alban St. Martin II, was born when she was four. Though Roland, remembering the way the younger of his two sisters had been favored over the elder and had gone on to be disowned and meet a bad end, was more reserved towards her at first, Sarah enthusiastically spoiled her younger daughter, who seemed to enjoy being shown off as a doll as much as her shyer sister hated it. By the time she was six, Roland, too, had come around, leaving Lila the unquestioned dictator of her relationship with her twin. Her brother and the two cousins who lived with them did not view her in the same light, but, since pushing the issue would do her no good, Lila contented herself with having swapped roles with Allie.

Though she felt less and less attachment to them each year, Lila never lacked for friends, inside or outside of the family thanks to her early socialization. She developed a habit of forming small, sycophantic groups of girls, most closely related to her through her father's sister Natalie or her mother's comparatively minor family, to tell her how wonderful she was on a regular basis and to act as supports for the insecure ego of one painfully aware of just how quickly she could be demoted to the "second daughter" role she had technically been born to. Unsurprisingly, she is and always has been a perfectionist and control freak, taking the second-fiddle position only when there's no prudent way to do otherwise and trying for the top job as soon as she feels sure it is safe to do so. Once there, she rarely likes it - the one in power is the one to take the fall if things go amiss - but the idea of letting anyone, especially her sister, take the senior position in an advantageous group is anathema to her.

Lila's life is largely driven by what other people think. Because her more relaxed, good-food-loving sister was derided by their mother for being too fat, Lila trained herself to have a small appetite and took up ballet instead of one of the more sedate arts. Her father is interested in politics, so Lila follows, or tries to follow, the news. The prettiest girls are said to marry the best, so Lila follows all the fashions to the letter. An old St. Martin belief is that the smartest girls make the worst trophy wives, so Lila tries to walk the line between appearing dumb enough to qualify and appearing smart enough to not utterly humiliate herself or seem too stupid to be a good hostess. The effort involved in all this often leaves her exhausted and short-tempered with those she knows she can get away with being short-tempered with, usually her cousins Julian and Lydia, both fond of pranking her, and her sister, who has never indicated, by word or gesture, that she considers anything Lila does less than divinely inspired until quite recently.

Separated from Allie for the first time at Sonora, Lila is currently a fourth year in Crotalus and the only girl associated with it since her roommate, one Lila Gringe, appears to have left school. She confidently expects to become the most "popular" (perhaps better translated as "hated and envied") girl in the school once Jordanna Howard finishes, which has resulted in years of confusion over why she doesn't have a devoted group of followers at her beck and call anymore. The lack of sycophants is chalked up to the low number of even half-respectable girls in her year, as Allie's an embarrassment and she'd sooner eat caterpillars than be friends with Morgaine.

See 'Alexandra St. Martin' for more details.