Amada's birth heralded the last in a long line of tragedies connected to the ill-fated branch of the Prejean family into which she was born. A scant few monthes later, her mother died from the Spanish flu, leaving only her, her brother Simos, and their father Charles. Together, the three of them worked to make a place for themselves in Galveston, tending to the hotel resort which was their family's livelihood. As she grew up, however, she learned that the hotel was not some mere tourist attraction, but a den of intrigue, vice, and twisted sexuality. Her introduction to this world was softened by the incestuous affections of her brother, who protected her as best he could as they both navigated the perverted adult world into which they were born. At twelve, she was secretly married to her brother in a ceremony presided over by her father, who wanted to quiet pressure from Lafayette for the two to marry into an allied revenant family, the Brasseaux.
Given intimate instruction in the arts of seduction and manipulation by her father and his associates, she was a very successful prostitute and instrumental in the blackmail of several local politicians and businessmen with young tastes. She also learned much about the functioning of the hotel and how to best serve the interests of the guests (at least explicitly) alongside her brother, who attended to the financial and managerial functions. Charles, in fact, began to withdraw when it began apparent, after several miscarriages, that she was unable to bear children by her brother. Dispondant over the death of his bloodline, Charles slipped into alcoholism and despair, leaving his two young children to run the hotel. By the Depression, the two were completely in charge and it was they who decided to focus on blackmail as tourist business fell off due to the economic crash.
During these hard years they were assisted by Berenger, who visited regularly to try and mend the rift between them and the Lafayette branch of the family of which he was a part. They all became fast friends, and both Amada and her brother consider Berenger an adopted sibling. They also have close business ties to him, for it was he who brought them into the business of selling secrets and intelligence on the Camarilla to the New Orleans Lasombra, whose appreciation both paid well and took pressure off of the Lafayette Prejeans, helping to heal the damage done by their father. By the end of the War, the hotel was in a perfect position to enter its golden era, drawing in new clients and backing off on their extortion schemes as they were able to return to their old business of sin and taboo.
By the 1960s, Amanda (as she was now calling herself) no longer took such an active role in the activities of the hotel, preferring to act as coordinator, hostess, and madame. This worked to her advantage when a scandal broke in the mid-60s involving the body of a dead twelve year old who was traced back to the hotel and was subsequently linked to a prominent local politician and a complicent staff who helped to cover up the 'mistake'. Desperate but calm, Amanda consulted her brother and the two of them decided to finally make use of their drunk and useless father, setting him up to take the fall. Resorting again to blackmail, they made sure that the local police and media accepted their scapegoat and that the issue went no further, but the taint of the scandal still lingered even after their father died in prison five years later.
The stigma attached to the hotel kept away most of the higher profile clients they used to entertain and so Amanda and her brother turned to Berenger to put them in touch with a different class of client: discrete, well-off, and appreciative of the sort of anonymity they now offered. Amanda spent much of the 1970s arranging meetings between middle and lower upper class Americans and drug dealers, white slavers, and makers of truly disturbing pornography and snuff movies. Records were kept, but held no truth to them, and the hotel managed to flourish despite its reputation. Permissibility and hedonism drove many people into the arms of the Castilles, who were only too eager to indulge their every sick fantasy and appetite.
Amanda began to despair, though, at the growing distance of her once attentive husband. He spend more and more time with his cameras and his surveillance equipment and less with her. However, not the kind of person to just let him go, she sought to find the key to bringing him around and that key, jealousy, was very easy for her to ferret out. She began to take it upon herself, as the 80s came and went, to take a more active role in the functioning of the club, personally attending to the guests and their perversions. Allowing herself to be used, humiliated, and abused was no great pain, she had a streak for masochism well established by her childhood trials, but the effect on Simon, watching from behind his hidden cameras, was all she could have hoped. It started with passionate sex (even rape on several instances) and has been progressing further with each passing years. Her clients and lovers have been financially, socially, and emotionally ruined by the sadistic Simon and some have even turned up badly mutilated, even dead. This has titillated her beyond what she ever could have imagined and so it continues to escalate, becoming more and more dangerous. The risks they are currently taking will inevitably end with the collapse of their entire world, it is only a matter of when.
Amanda is a very seductive woman with a strong knack for sensing the desires of those around her and acting accordingly. She is rarely the same person to any two individuals, an adept social and sexual chameleon with over seventy years experience at giving people what they want. Deep down, however, she is a masochist who gets off on being possessed and controlled and this is what drives her games with Simon. However, this isn't to say that she doesn't enjoy what she does either. She is growing particularly fond of the harder, more intense BDSM she's been subjecting herself to in the last decade or so and is trying to urge Simon to participate.
Amanda's relationship with her husband is hard to define. It is built on an incredible amount of intimacy, complimentary sexual fetishes, and a lot of power dynamics. She does love him, in a twisted Zantosa way, and all of the cruelty she shows him is an expression of it. It also serves to convince the people around them, though, that they despise each other with rare passion.
Berenger is probably the closest friend to the family and certainly the only one who knows all of its secrets. Amanda thinks of him as the brother she's never had (given that she and Simon have been lovers since they were children) and she finds it comforting to have someone to confide to about her plans for her husband and her concerns about their advancing age. Also, Berenger is just as much a connisseur of sexual perversion as she is and they have long discussions when he visits about what she should do next to raise Simon's hackles.
Amanda has never had a lot of interest in the Lasombra of New Orleans, not caring enough about such things to bother with the respect Simon showed. As such, she has let him take care of the filtering of intelligence to the Archbishop and, now, to his successor. Like Simon, she is aware of Lafitte and would make pains to avoid him if their circles ever intersected, which they don't.
Amanda is intrigued by the Lafayette family and Berenger has been more successful in convincing her that they should cultivate closer contacts with them. She's met a few members on trips to New Orleans and genuinely liked them, but has yet to convince Simon that it is worthwhile enough to get him past the wariness he's inherited from their father.
While it isn't what it used to be, the influence weilded by Amanda and her brother is still substantial, but is mostly used to keep the activities of the hotel quiet and squash any investigation. Her Fame is the residue of past scandels coupled with her increased visibility of late (though the circle it is applicable to is very select).