Family tradtion is completed, what now?

So, I haven't posted here before, but this looks like the right spot. I'm having trouble with some modifications to SeventhSea. Specifically, the Von Drachen family (pretty obscure, so I'll try to make things more generic here.)

We're in a mostly European analog, with a bit of magic thrown in. The Von Drachen family is ruling a nice chunk of land and have a potent sorcery that unfortunately lends itself to abuse and corruption. Some in the family dislike this and branch off, becoming the Reinigers. They become a sort of internal affairs to the Von Drachens, a combination of The Consigliere and Mage Killer. They're not an Anti-magical faction, but they will prune out people who abuse their magic (rather than purge all mages). They have similar sorcery to the main family, but with some anti-magic variants.

They do this for a couple hundred years before a third party (The Seigers) with a bit of help from a rogue, overly zealous Reiniger, purges the entire Von Drachen house. The Reinigers take some losses too, but are still around. But... they're out of a job. The magic's In the Blood, so they need to stick around in case it pops up in some bastards, but generally there's nobody left to police. They try to help out in some other courts, but that turns out not working well either.

My problem is... it's now almost 700 years later. Somehow the Reinigers are still around, and one of them is acting as captain of guards to the current Seiger. Attitudes towards magic have shifted, so openly practicing the family magic is out of the question, but he's still a good voice of reason against the violent baron. The question is... how does the family stay on focus for 700 years? How has the family survived and what have they been doing? Sure, you can send out one or two people each generation as advisors, but that's a long time for an odd purpose.

The protagonist is actually the daughter of said guard captain. Eventually the baron gets him killed, and the daughter grows up with no idea of her family's long-term heritage or how to use the manifesting magic power. At time of story, she's about 30, so she's gotten good at suppressing it at least, but it's time for her to learn more about it.

I like the idea of her finding an unknown gruff uncle or something who'll explain things a bit (the scene from Braveheart comes to mind). A friend of mine suggested that the family created a hidden elf village and occasionally sends advisors out into the world, but for some reason this doesn't seem satisfying to me. I want to keep the family small and secretly living with the muggles, improving their lives.

So, does anybody have ideas on how to keep this family together for 700 years, and how to introduce their lost daughter to them?

edited 16th Jul '16 9:47:30 AM by thistledown

(Psst. Put your '{{ }}' marks inside punctuation if you want it to count.)