He'd been tricked into marriage after a briefencounter with the beautiful and soulless socialite Sylvia (Rebecca Hall), the ceaselessly disparaging virago of a wife who will haunt his life.
The goal of the advert was to restore the passion and romance to the railway, to scrub out memories of Hatfield, delays and commuting and replace them with a taste of BriefEncounter.
You discover the world and its past through the opening cinematic, through brief snatches of dialogue with NPCs (some of whom you may never encounter on your first playthrough) and in item and spell descriptions.