Nightwood opens in 1880, in the birthing room of Lady Hedvig Volkbein of Vienna. The bedroom where Lady Volkbein is to give birth, at the age of 45, to her only child, is decorated in the style of old wealth, with satin and a canopied bed. Born onto a coverlet embroidered with the Volkbein coat of arms is her son, Felix, one of the main characters of the novel.

Moments after giving birth, with time only to name her son, Lady Volkbein dies, leaving Felix an orphan; his father, Guido Volkbein, "a Jew of Italian descent" and both a "gourmet and a dandy" died of fever six months earlier (4).

Felix is raised by a nameless aunt, who knows little of the family's history, and he is left to fashion a persona for himself based on what little he does know. His sense of self, and his obsession and allegiance to what he terms "'Old Europe': aristocracy, nobility, royalty" comes from two family portraits left behind by his father (11). The paintings are supposedly of Felix's paternal grandparents, but we learn that they are fake, as is much of the identity he has inherited from his father: