Constance Marten: who is her father, Napier, and when was his own extraordinary disappearance?

He gave up a life of royalty to live a simple life of spiritual discovery. And, years later, his daughter also went off the grid – only under much different circumstances. The parallels between the lives of aristocrat Constance Marten, 35, and her father Napier, 63 – a former page to the late Queen – are not difficult to come by.

Constance – or “Toots”, as she was known to friends – disappeared with her partner Mark Gordon, a convicted sex offender, and their newborn baby on the morning of January 7 – two days after abandoning a burning car on a motorway near Manchester, and eight years after becoming estranged from her family, one of England’s most prominent aristocratic households, which has links to the royals.

The couple were eventually arrested in Brighton after 54 days on the run – but without their baby. Constance’s father Napier – who made headlines for his own disappearing act nearly two decades ago and had long been something of a mystery in the family – back then spoke of his “immense relief” that she has been found. “Whatever the weather, I love her dearly and will support her best I can,” he told The Independent, adding: “For whatever reasons she and her partner went on the run, the consequences of their actions have increased many fold. It would have been far better if they had handed themselves in earlier.”.

His words follow an earlier audio appeal he made via the media for his daughter to come forward. “Darling Constance, even though we remain estranged at the moment, I stand by, as I have always done and as the family has always done, to do whatever is necessary for your safe return to us,” he said in an emotional statement. “I beseech you to find a way to turn yourself and your wee one in to the police as soon as possible so you and he or she can be protected.”.

Like his daughter, Napier – who describes himself as a “musician” on Instagram – did not appear in photographs of his son Max’s wedding to London-based jewellery designer Ruth Aymer in August 2021. His ex-wife Virginie de Selliers, Constance’s mother, and their sons Tobias and Freddie were all seen smiling alongside the bride and groom. So what’s his relationship with the family today?.

On LinkedIn, Napier lists his job title as founder and trustee of the Mirthquake Foundation, an organisation that makes grants to charities, organisations and individuals involved with the culture and welfare of cetaceans — a nod to his extraordinary midlife ‘awakening’, which involved an encounter with whales that reportedly made him cry “almost nonstop” for seven days. He is also understood to practise craniosacral therapy, a form of head massage.

So what else do we know about Napier’s life so far and could it carry any clues into his daughter’s story?. Like his daughters, the early years of Napier’s life had been one of great privilege. The 18th-century Georgian masterpiece that was Crichel House had been in the family for more than 400 years. It was once described by a historian as “so immensely enlarged that it has the appearance of a mansion of a prince, more than that of a country gentleman”, with 50 cottages, four villages, a cricket club and an ornamental lake among its 5,000 acres of parkland. Hollywood icon Gwyneth Paltrow visited in the early 1990s, while filming an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.

The Marten family was a landed one with many a royal link. Napier’s mother, Mary Anna Marten, was a British Museum trustee whose godmother was the late Queen Mother and who played with Princess Margaret as a child. She was awarded an OBE in 1980 as a leading archeologist and was appointed High Sheriff of Dorset nine years later. Her husband, Napier’s father, Toby Marten, was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy and also had close links to the royals. Napier’s grandfather was Captain Napier Sturt, the third and final Baron Alington, and her aunt Charlotte Mosley – sister of her father, Napier – was married to Oswald Alexander Mosley, son of the leader of the British Union of Fascists and Diana Mitford.

Napier’s parents Mary and Toby lived together at Crichel House, which became the subject of a famous political scandal known as the Crichel Down Affair during WWII. It began in 1938, when the goverment requisitioned part of the estate for bombing practice by the Royal Air Force. Winston Churchill had promised that the land would be returned to its owners after the war, but instead the land was handed over to the Ministry of Agriculture, who hiked up its price beyond the amount the original owners could afford. The Martens took the case to a public inquiry and won, defeating the government and effectively forcing the resignation of then-agriculture minister Sir Thomas Dugdale.

Mary and Toby went on to have six children; five daughters and one son, Napier Anthony Sturt Marten, who became heir to the family’s £115 million fortune and was famously a Page to Queen Elizabeth II. According to LinkedIn, he was educated at Eton and completed a course at Oxford Air Training School between 1979 and 1980.