Adalma left the Romulan Empire with no family.
He once had a family .. a family of some note before the loss of the homeworld, yet he’d been pushed out by that time.
He also loved science in a family that for generations had served the military.
At a young age, Adalma attended the Romulan Imperial Academy, becoming an officer in the imperial navy after graduating.
Science was a gift that always came naturally to him, but so was the art of combat tactics.
The latter is the one embraced by both family and the Empire and thus the mold he found himself unhappily crammed into.
At least until a console exploded in his face, damaging eyes and optical nerves to the point of being legally blind — his sight too blurry to perform his duties.
It spelled the end of his career in the Imperial Navy as the Romulans considered him les than a man because of it.
As did his family for that matter.
With a long naval tradition, they held his loss of sight against him, making life miserable.
When the evacuations began, his family refused to accept Federation aid or assistance.
Adalma saw it as his ticket out of an extremely bad situation.
Sneaking onto an evacuation ship, he fled ffrom family and the coming horror the supernova represented.
And it was in the Federation that strangers not only took him in … but restored his sight with special glasses.
He surprised himself when he found after this that he actually wanted to get back out into space, but this time studying its mysteries as a science officer.
So, he applied to Starfleet Academy and was fast tracked into the fleet upon his acceptance.
Within two years, he had his own command and now commands the experimental Glenn-class science spearhead cruiser named U.S.S. Raegal.