Fanon:Beauty 4

Beauty 4 is a defunct household that was first introduced in the First timeline of Time Paradox, right after the Attalid chapter of the story. It started out as a collection of the heiresses who were also pen pals of one another, with Demetria initially taking the status of de facto leader, despite the fact that Beauty 4 (and the elite households following it until the rise of the Papal State, even that lacking a clear head out of the leading class: Kallisto may be the official leader of the said State, but Kallisto technically cannot overrule the likes of Stratonike at whim) lacked a clear command system and was also the predecessor to the relatively decentralized yet centralizing role that later factions based off this faction would create. The Beauty 4 was later on was essentially absorbed into the Scholars' Alliance founded by Hypatia, and both Beauty 4 and Scholars' Alliance pretty much split up after the Christopher Steel debacle that led to the clash between Hypatia and Demetria.

Before the advent
It all started back some time after the Attalids were introduced in the story, presumably at the point where Stratonike had the first simbot. The one who came up with an idea of a bachelorette group, Demetria, was also the sole heiress to the leading family somewhere close to Mycenae (From which they've assumed the surname, although some speculations say that Demetria was born on Mycenae when her parents were on a tourist trip there). Demetria had a pen pal Achaia, who was also a daughter of a upper-middle class family in Oropos which was about to enter the lower ranks of the upper class due to the shrewd business deals of the family. Achaia also happened conveniently enough was a buddy of Thessalonike, who was also of a well-to-do family next door who was quite the stoic at the time, although friendly enough to take on Achaia's personality fairly well. The last member Kallisto was an odd one: As Syracuse was in Italian territory, it was surprising that any one of the 3 would have even noticed Kallisto. Demetria was also hoping to add a wild unusual member to top off the bachelorette group, and searched hard enough and sooner or later landed upon on Kallisto's profile. Kallisto's hair color immediately led Demetria to believe that Kallisto was a hard partying character, and Kallisto was eventually taken in as a member. Kallisto's socioeconomic class before her adoption is unknown, although it is presumed that Kallisto was of a much lower class than say Demetria or Achaia.

Supplanting the Attalids in a friendly way
Demetria as the richest of them all to start always had an interest in getting to the heart of a party-loving city: Bridgeport was an attractive choice to say the least, and Demetria herself always had an interest in going there. However, despite the fact that the group was rather wealthy to say the least, none of them had any fame at all, not surprising since they were one of many foreigners. Of course, it was only a matter of time before words of Attalid hard partying reached Demetria's ears, and thus Beauty 4 set course to Sunset Valley. Once there, Demetria immediately set themselves up to make friendly contacts with the Attalids, and due to the general Attalid amiability and the trait compatibility, Demetria swiftly made friends with the Attalids, who were quite happy to find a likeminded one of similar ethnic grounds (albeit separated by about 22 centuries). Fortunately enough, Demetria et al were all fluent in the Ancient dialect, which didn't really matter since Simlish was (unfortunately) the lingua franca for better or (probably) worse. By the time the Beauty 4 went in, Attalid partying was already showing a slowdown, which disappointed Demetria. Of course, to make up for that, Demetria usurped the Attalid role and with their vast starting funds, partied hard on a lavish house. Demetria however was well aware of the finite quality of their starting funds, and was already starting to build up skills and other parameters to fulfill a successful career to feed their money-hungry lifestyle. Strangely enough, the amount of money raised by each member of the Beauty 4 probably was directly proportional to their starting economic status: Demetria earned quite a sum in her extremely successful music career, Thessalonike herself no less impressive with her professional sports career. Achaia was also doing extremely well, raising around 50k simoleons in writing, before taking up writing as an official career under Hypatia. Kallisto on the other hand provided very little in direct income. However, Kallisto provided other utility values, such as obtaining rare materials, experimenting with nectar, and other activities with varied level of success.

Absorption by Hypatia
It seemed like that the Beauty 4's role as first citizens in terms of skill was pretty much uncontested: All this changed when Hypatia, who was back then a nobody came into Sunset Valley. Hypatia was a standing scholar, although lacking in skills for a time being. This made Hypatia an effective invisible entity in Sunset Valley, in which Hypatia built up her skill base to confront the Beauty 4's role as the zenith. Hypatia did not take down Beauty 4 once Hypatia got the skill level that Hypatia was eventually known for, but rather integrated Beauty 4 into her retinue: essentially becoming a suzerain with mixed reactions. As for Beauty 4, this meant end of the group as a simple bachelorette family but as a part of the suzerainity under Hypatia as Hypatia creates the conglomeration Scholars' Alliance to succeed now the suzerainity as the leading faction in First Timeline Sunset Valley. Despite Hypatia's absorption, the idea of a Beauty 4 as a faction was still in minds of the locals: despite the fact that they were to habitate alongside Hypatia, Beauty 4 was in a sense still an independent group, made plausible by Hypatia's tendency to care less about their autonomous actions as long as the house was not turned into a house of party as it had been under Demetria's leadership.

Eventual Dissolution
All went well under Hypatia's leadership until the forced entrance to the second timeline: This time, autonomy would provide quite ineffective (or rather, a potential cause) in treating the problem caused by a new variable, Christopher Steel. Christopher's role as the Cassanova cause a stir in the neighborhood: Not only was he handling Jamie and Ayesha, but also Achaia and Hypatia. All while Christopher was becoming an epicenter of the first schism, the Alkmaionids returned fresh, but this time the Alkmaionidai decided to reform by bringing a modern fellow Lysistrata, who lived as a houseguest (and as a doctor, bringing in huge income for the Alkmaionids) All while the Alkmaionids were rebuilding, Christopher eventually caused a ruckus by bringing up an impetus for Hypatia and Demetria to start feuding, effectively demolishing the highly decentralized command chain and leading to the weakening of Beauty 4 (and by extension, Scholars' Alliance) as a united entity. This would be the impetus that starts Kallisto into the path of anti-romance, and Kallisto fed up with the feuding left with Stratonike to form the Union of the Insane, inviting the formerly deceased Eurydike and fellow Lysistrata over.

The group (minus Kallisto) was pretty much on a straight path to decline after Hypatia left to join Kallisto, and despite their wealth, their influence dwindled significantly. By the time of Kallisto's formation of the official religion the Church of Alexandros, the remnant of the Beauty 4/Scholars' Alliance was so lacking in influence that they ended up joining Kallisto in the early stages of Hekatonschoinos for some time being: even as the bond between Thessalonike and Achaia was effective broken. The full circle came to pass when Achaia and Antigone was detained by Kallisto, leading Thessalonike to help out her old rival. After Thessalonike's effective severance of ties with Kallisto, Thessalonike disappeared, and Demetria herself left to head to Bridgeport, hoping to thrive in the party-rich environment, but only to lead the celebrity opposition to Kallisto's expansionism.

And so ended the long friendship of heiresses and pen pals, now separated into bunch of heads of factions more often than not aggressive to one another...