As prolific as the Qs seem to be, going so far as to adopt orphans and import unknown daughters from neighboring towns to keep their name alive, the Hardy heritage appears to be dying a slow, deliberate death.

Patriarch Steve Hardy was one of the founding fathers of the mythical Port Charles, a respected doctor at GH who began with just a smidgen of scandal on his name.  The son of two doctors, Steve's dedication to his profession provoked his fiancee Peggy Mercer to leave him in 1963.  He had a brief entanglement with Priscilla Longworth.

Shortly thereafter, Audrey March, the sister of a GH nurse, moved to town and she and Steve were smitten with each other.  Theirs was a rocky union, fraught with temptation, loneliness and illness, and Steve ended up having to propose to Audrey twice.  For an inordinate time after their marriage, despite dedication in trying, Audrey was unable to become pregnant and suspected Steve was sterile.  On the sly, Audrey went to San Francisco and became artificially inseminated.  The lie was too much for her to bear and when she told Steve of her caper, he left her.  They eventually reconciled but after Audrey miscarried, she took off to care for Vietnamese refugees and divorced him upon her return, while she was in Mexico. 

Judging from Audrey's pristine reputation and attitude today, it's hard to believe that her next move was to marry Dr. Tom Baldwin, a disastrous rebound move that soon ended in divorce, but not before Audrey became pregnant with his child through forced sexual relations.  Audrey opted to skip town again after she divorced Tom.  When she returned, she decided to marry Steve again but had to pretend her son was dead so her divorce to Tom would remain valid (must be some weird Port Charles law), a burden that was hard to bear.  As luck would have it, Tom found out about the child and Audrey had to return to her loveless marriage.  Tom eventually took off with the nanny and his son and Audrey was once again devastated.

Tom then supposedly died in Mexico and Audrey married another doctor, this time out of pity so she remained miserable.  This marriage ended and Steve and Audrey started to drift back together and eventually remarried.  They remained blissfully happy until Steve's death a few years ago.

And now for the offspring of this tortured  twosome.  Jeff Webber is Steve's son by Helene Webber, who is listed in the archives as both a wife and a mere paramour of Steve's.  Jeff was adopted by Lars Webber and when he grew up, he married Monica Bard and then hooked up with Heather Grant, with whom he had a child, Steven Lars Webber.  Of course, Heather wasn't all that fond of her son so she sold him to the Taylors and he became Peter Taylor, Jr..  Jeff continued to sweep through PC and had torrid affairs with both Annie Logan and Diana Taylor.  When he ran out of women, Jeff decided to dedicate his life to helping out residents of Third World countries and left town.  While there, he married a woman who has never been mentioned by name (or even Mom) by his stepmother, deceased father, or either of his two daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth.  In fact, Liz's lack of family references makes her seem like she just materialized one day on Audrey's front porch.

Audrey's son Tom, the product of her marriage to Tom Baldwin, who was later adopted by Steve, cut quite a romantic swath through town as well.  He married the glamorous Simone Ravelle, a fellow physician, but the stress of their careers, coupled with Simone's relationship with Justus Ward, soon forced them into divorce court.  They had a son named (big surprise) Tom, Jr. and after they split up, Tom Senior moved into the Brownstone, where all displaced persons in Port Charles must live for a least a short period of time.  Tom celebrated his new freedom by having an affair with Felicia Jones.  But Tom soon heard the call of Third World countries as well and left Port Charles to save the huddled masses.

Audrey's probably not going to have another affair (she must have reached her quota by now) so the burden of sorrow, scandal and bad decisions rests on the shoulders of the seemingly family-abandoned Elizabeth.  Of course, a family reunion or rare disease requiring the summoning of all siblings and relatives could bring Hardy clan members scurrying to town at any time.  In the meantime, Liz should have no trouble capitulating chaos with the company she keeps and the family she's about to marry into.

Article and research provided by Cassie L. Damewood