Marishka Taltos, née Merss was born in the Fenarian town of Burz. The Merss family was originally named Saabo, but a distant patriarch, Matyawsh, had changed the family name in order to indicate his willingness to acclimate to being a worker in the paper mill of Burz ("merss" meaning "pulper"), which had been constructed at that time by the man who was then Count Saekeresh‎. Her father brought her to the Dragaeran Empire when she was very young. There, she met and married Pishta Taltos. She apparently died when Vlad was about three or four.