Sebastian Flyte is the second son of Lord and Lady Marchmain. His siblings include his elder brother Lord Bridey Brideshead, his younger sister, Julia, and the youngest of the four, his sister Cordelia. The Flytes are landed gentry, with the slight oddity of being devout Catholics, while most families of their class are Protestant. Sebastian is eccentric, extraordinarily good-looking and charming. However, as the story progresses, he remains somewhat apart from the Catholic faith. Alcoholism is in the family - his father, Lord Marchmain, lives in Italy with his mistress, and is estranged from the rest of his immediate family who reside at Brideshead and Marchmain House, and eventually Sebastian becomes a drunk as well, causing divisiveness in his family. Sebastian simply deserts them all, avoiding the shame brought to his family by his alcoholism. Charles Ryder is a friend who became inseparable from Sebastian soon after entering Oxford, but Sebastian claims that Charles is just as bad as his actual relatives, condemning him for his alcoholism, or as it is put ironically as an excess of high spirits . Some years later, as Lady Marchmain is dying, Julia Mottram (nee Flyte) asks Charles to track down Sebastian. Sebastian has adopted a fairly odd lifestyle, in fragile health due to excessive drink, while taking care of a young German AWOL who is even more pathetic than Sebastian himself. Sebastian remains monetarily supported by his family, receiving financial support while he goes about his drinking. His ultimate fate remains unclear, but he obtained a job as a groundskeeper at a monastery far from his home. The monastery is welcoming to this odd personage, an avowed Catholic considered to be damaged, and the last news is that Sebastian is tolerated within a Catholic community, as a troubled young man who continues to uphold his Catholic upbringing - while he continues to disappear in an alcoholic binge on a fairly regular basis, he always returns to the monastery and is quite contrite. The implication is that he will continue in this sort of odd lifestyle, thus combining his Catholicism, from which he is unable to distance himself, and his alcoholic tendencies. Show less «