Lyra Belacqua, aged around eleven at the beginning of the trilogy, is the daughter of Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter in a fictional Oxford, similar to our own. She was brought up at Jordan College, where the scholars, professors and servants treat her as an adopted daughter. She was raised believing that her parents had died in an airship crash, and that Lord Asriel was her uncle, and later learned the truth from John Faa, leader of the Gyptians. Lyra spends much of her time socialising with other children of the city, sometimes harmoniously, frequently mock-violently, and often in order to avoid schoolwork. Her closest friend among the other children is a Jordan kitchen boy named Roger Parslow, who disappears early in "Northern Lights". The search to find Roger, and other children, is Lyra's motivation throughout much of "Northern Lights".