Just some para graph breaks:

Ilse was Gwen's best friend since not long after she had started at university. Just like Ilse, Gwen never really quite fitted in with the rest of the herd. They were outsiders, but both for very different , no even completely opposite reasons.

Most of the students here fell into one of a small handful of social sub cultures aligned along political affiliations and social classes. Neither Gwen nor Ilse really fitted in well with any of these groups.

Ilse's mum had been the the last president of the former United States of America and after the forced disbandment of federal state, the the transitional prefect of over forty major east coast conurbations.

President Akira had been quite a controversial figure to begin with. Being the first female president to come with a first lady was just the tip of the iceberg. Her running for president had started out as a huge joke, a way to get media attention for the fact that the 2025 health insurance act allowed insurance companies to deny people, working in whole branches of industry, health insurance based purely on a moral framework.

After the revelations by the GNU defense alliance however, there was substantially more dirt on any of the viable presidential candidates from the two large parties than on any of the single issue independant candidates. The more politically charged subject regarding her administration though had been the peace treaty with Pacific Union for Patents and Royalties.

Nine of the former 50 states were now PUPR territory. Quant territory. The former federal and government had been disbanded and the remaining 41 states had been divided up into autonomous conurbations existing under the protection of PUPR. Needless to say Ilse's mum wasn't winning popularity contests for her role in all of this, and by proxy neither was Ilse.

Gwen on the other hand didn't fit in for completely different reasons. Both her father and mother were old world nobility. While most of the old world nobility were thought high of by the group that considered itself to be new world nobility, her father's side of the family had known quite some scandals and controversy.

Gwen's grand dad had been quite a scoundrel before he had met her grandmother. Her grandma had been not only a commoner, no that would have been acceptable, she had been a widow with a young child: Gwen's dad. Gwen might have the proper titles, she didn't have the proper blood.