Filix was born a human girl to a respected and well off merchant family that would often travel in order to find riches, goods and things that they could bring home and trade. Born mid-journey back from the far exotic lands where they sourced valuable dyes, spices and other goods, Filix was not a welcome birth. Her young mother, recently married into the family and with the pressure of having to give them a son, insisted on hiding herself and the noises she made from the travelling party in the natural privacy of the forest.
It took some time, she was not an easy baby to birth and there were many interruptions from impatient family demanding to know when she was done, and it was a sad discovery to find out that Filix was in fact a daughter. Her father (and his father and all the other men of the family) refused to even come into the forest to see the child. Her mother, exhausted, grieved and driven down by the anger towards her and the child, could barely look at Fili. There were discussions, angry debates, trying to force the mother to leave Filix in the forest for the wolves.
The fay saw all of this, of course, and pity was taken on the newborn baby. Her father and mother, Count and Countess of the fay court, took pity on the young mother and the newborn girl and decided to exchange their baby son for the daughter.
They took Filix, naming her for the ferns she was born under, and slipped their son into the arms of the mother coddled in the same blanket Filix had been in. They blessed him and the mother, that the boy would always be the defender of his mother and love her, but would never forget his father's cruelty towards his 'sister'... he would remember everything from her birth onwards.
Her 'brother' was nearly left and only saved when the father refused to 'waste good cloth', finding when he'd taken the cloth off the baby that it was a boy and not a girl, much to the relief of the father and the surprise of the mother. He was delighted that the baby 'looked much larger and stronger' than he expected- the fay boy was already four months old at the time- and the mother was 'redeemed'. He would never forgive his father or loose some of his fay-like qualities.
Filix was taken into the Court, welcomed as the first born of her family, and from there she started to physically alter herself into a fay-like creature. Her eyes grew into a vivid green, hair as green as the ferns she was born under and named for, wings gifted to her. She frustrated her mother often by showing less charm and interest in the ways of a fay girl but delighted her father when she showed natural speed, reflexes and strength. She could dance beautifully, trained in the way of the sword with her father's own weapon, and was trained alongside a son of her father's friend.
Her father and mother had two more children, two more sons, for which they once again exchanged for unwanted daughters- the child of a farmer's daughter who was unwed, and the first child of a crown princess wedded into a foreign country. Those daughters were thankfully happy to follow their mother's lessons and guidance, the sons once again remembering the cruelty of their fathers and excelling.
Still- they tried their very hardest to teach Filix, the heiress and the future Countess, to respect the roles of the female fay. She failed in many of those skills, weaving fay cloth, sewing, tapestry, singing, all the things her sisters were proven to be very talented in. Filix was eventually allowed to remain in the path she had chosen, her father happily defending his eldest skills, and even the Queen of the Court had to admit Filix was gifted in those areas and would one day be an asset.
Several different courts would fight in those times, sometimes seriously, sometimes to pass the time, but there was one battle that changed her Fay Court. A curse was placed on the fae adults, fatally weaking all adults and leaving all 'youth' (which for a fay could be under a hundred years old) alone, and the Queen of the Court placed all those who were unaffected under a sleeping spell to protect them in the hope that the one who had cursed them would not live long enough to wait out the youth to wake. Filix, one of the oldest youth, survived the curse.
When Filix woke the castle was crumbling and the youth were alone. They rebuilt as best as they could, the new Queen sickened in the mind from the long sleep, trying to copy the structure of a nearby human Court. Filix was pushed to be a 'female Countess' as a human woman would be, marry one lover, have children, and allow her husband to react for her... all of which was very strange to her and went against her nature. (A complaint which was echoed amongst many of the fay in the court but a word was never dared spoken against the new Queen of Fay.)
She continued to train in secret, aided by her childhood friend and Knight, glad for the years of training that had already passed. Upon becoming a young woman she was informed that they had found records of her parents agreeing to a marriage to another suitor when she'd been a child. He was a good match- the cousin to the King- and it was more or less decided without her that it'd continue to go ahead.
Filix didn't argue. Filix had long had feelings for this young man anyway, although her instincts screamed for her to resist the capture of marriage, she couldn't fight it. He was sweet, gentle, his dark hair and eyes capturing her heart and her innocence. She trusted him with everything... even the forbidden skills she refused to give up as a woman and the Countess.
She didn't know for sure who it was that informed the new Queen, the oldest of the youth fay, but Filix was woken by the young knights. She was accused of dark magic, of working for the 'evil court', even for being responsible for the curse that'd killed everyone's parents. Accused of seducing her fiance, faking the arranged marriage.
They were still fearful of the curse, still sick with grief for the fay both adult and ancient that had been destroyed by the curse and Filix became the target for that grief sickness. She was for a time imprisoned, her fay wings removed so that she was cut off from all that was Fay, and left to die.
At first Filix, still young, native and in love, waited for her fiance to save her. She waited days, weeks, months, staring out, waiting, and every hour she did, she changed. Her hair darkened to a dark brown, her eyes dulled to a soft moss green, the fay magic weeping out of her wounded back as if it were blood until she appeared to be closer to an Elf or a human than what she'd grown up as.
It wasn't her fay fiance that came to her rescue- it was the childhood friend, the Knight, who brought her father's sword and clothing to her and helped her escape into the mortal worlds. Once there, Filix was alone, cut from her home, her race, and left to face the cruelty of the world.
(Her Fay Court eventually scattered, sickened from the heart, some seeking new Fay Courts, some dying, some returning to their human origins or deciding to live amongst the mortal realms.)