The Honourable Miss Sophonisba Hawkwood—Sophie to her friends—is the daughter and only surviving child of Viscount Baldersby, whose holdings are about 20 miles outside of York.
She is the sister of the late Hon. Thomas Hawkwood, an aristocratic scientist who was working at the York spacecraft facility. He intended to enter the Lunar Ellipse and to traverse part of the course in a spaceship of his own design. It was an unfortunate accident in the testing of this vehicle that cost Hawkwood his life.
Miss Hawkwood is something of an eccentric in her own right: she is unmarried despite being some years past her own Season, and she is an inventor.
Sophie is Gillian Anderson