An upbringing in the grand, sweeping corridors of Crichel House in Dorset. A sudden disappearing act in a bid for a new, less privileged life. A public Instagram grid of posts of trees, animals and vague, cryptic captions, many featuring concerned comments from friends enquiring about their whereabouts.
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. On Monday night, the couple were arrested in Brighton after 54 days on the run – but without their baby. Officers concerned for the infant’s welfare are now into their second day of an increasingly “urgent search” for the child, who has not had formal medical attention since birth. They are currently scouring gardens, bushes and alleyways in the Brighton area, fearing the baby may have “come to harm”. Constance and her partner have been further arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
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 — has been the first of Toots’ relatives to speak out since the arrest, speaking 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 last month. “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?
An upbringing of great privilege
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.
Crichel House Chapel https://t.co/Hc2d8GT4J4 pic.twitter.com/oheXTbs1RS
— Guy Corbet (@GuyCorbet) July 24, 2022
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.
Voices, whales and an act of courage
Aside from his royal link, it is Napier’s extraordinary midlife ‘awakening’ for which he is most well-known. According to the former Page, it was in 1996 — when his eldest child Constance was just nine years old — that he had his supposed awakening and suddenly felt “everything in my life materially was a completely empty shell”.
A voice in his head reportedly told him to leave his inheritance, shave his head and fly to Australia — which is exactly what he did, leaving his small children at home and adopting a life of whale-watching, spiritual discovery as a tree surgery Down Under. “I do recall having a recognition of myself that I was exhibiting some sort of courage, but of course, in many other people’s minds I was exhibiting some sort of cowardice,” Napier later told Josephine Sellers, a psychotherapist who lives on the Crichel estate and whom he believes he first met four centuries ago in Dorset in a previous incarnation.
The interview, posted on a new-age YouTube channel called Awakening TV but since deleted, involved Napier recounting several life-changing moments from the trip. These included the time he had an out-of-body experience while joining a group of Aborigines on a cliff top, and an encounter with whales that reportedly made him cry “almost nonstop” for seven days. “I found myself looking down at my sleeping body,” he said of his out-of-body experience.
“The next thing I know, I’m flying out into the ocean into the dark waters and swimming with the whales. I’m being pulled along by them and there is this conversation going on... It was a complete clearing out, a transmission of energy. These days of expansion unfortunately can’t be repeated, but when one’s in it, it is the most exciting part of your life.”
Napier claims he does not know how long his trip lasted. He eventually returned to the UK — but not to his old life at Crichel House. He reportedly lived in a lorry, worked as a chef and then trained in a form of head massage called craniosacral therapy. He passed his estate on to his eldest son Max, who was studying environmental science and geography at Oxford Brookes University at the time.
In 2013, Max sold the house and 400 acres of its land to American hedge fund billionaire Richard Chilton for a reported £34 million. The rest of the property was divided among other heirs to the family fortune, including Napier’s five sisters. Napier and his wife Virginie are believed to have divorced, him moving to a home a few miles from the Crichel estate and her reportedly re-marrying a man named Guy de Selliers. Adrian de Selliers, believed to be her son or stepson, attended Max’s wedding two years ago and was named in Vogue as a “brother” of the groom.
Virginie currently works as a psychotherapist specialising in trauma, family therapy and grief, with private practices in Shaftesbury and Notting Hill. Napier’s last-known occupation was running a tree-care firm, Dryad, with his younger son Tobias, and practising craniosacral therapy. On social media, he describes himself as a musician and Chairman of the board of the Mirthquake Foundation, which makes grants to charities, organisations and individuals involved with the culture and welfare of cetaceans.
Confusing whereabouts and cryptic clues
“Tod you look great, but where are you?”. “Where is this ? Your posts are always mysterious and left without captions”. “Where the devil are you. Will you ever come home?”
These might be just some of the comments under Napier Marten’s social media posts, but they could easily be mistaken for those under his daughter, Constance’s.
Like Constance, Napier still has Instagram and Facebook profiles – both public. His Instagram grid gives a window into his life until April 2022, when he last posted: photos of mountains on his travels, arty shots of objects in black and white, potraits of dogs. Many appear to be photos taken abroad, but without locations tagged or explanations in the captions. “Where are you Napier?” is a common comment from followers underneath. Like Constance, he does not publicly reply to any of them.
Napier’s Instagram paints a picture of an elusive, mysterious type obsessed with travel and photography, but his Facebook gives an impression of an entirely different man altogether – and certainly a contrast to the calm, measured, well-spoken aristocrat he sounded like in his audio appeal this week. His cover photo is a carving of a cetacean, possibly a dolphin, and his profile picture – in black and white – is a selfie taken in aviator sunglasses and a jazzy shirt. “Rockstar,” is among several comments from friends underneath.
But it is Napier’s feed of posts – many shared since Constance’s disappearance – that paints a picture of his politics: criticims of the mainstream press; memes mocking Meghan Markle and Prince Harry; news articles about global warming being “a complete hoax” and conspiracy theories about aeroplane trails, the Covid vaccine and the “creature” that is Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
“This man is a true dyed-in-wool psycho and should be hanged for his crimes against humanity,” Napier said of Gates on January 3, just two days before his daughter’s burning car was discovered on a motorway near Manchester.
Napier has shared at least 10 pictures, videos or memes since his daughter’s disapperance – mostly videos of aeroplane trails, one with the caption “questions need asking” – and even on the same day he gave his emotional plea for Constance to come home, he shared a meme: “Let’s make one thing clear, ‘the experts’ were never wrong. They were always lying. Big difference,” it reads. Could this be a cryptic clue as to what he believes has happened to his daughter Constance, or simply a sign he’s carrying on with his social media activity as normal?
As with the rest of Constance’s story, her father’s past, personality and posts certainly seem to leave more questions than answers. Will some of those answers come to light now that Constance has been found?
