Who is Nell from The Diamond Age, or, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer and what is their importance?

Nell is one of the three main characters in The Diamond Age. She is the daughter of Tequila and Bud, and she has an older brother named Harv. She has almost no relationship with her mother and barely ever sees her father. She lives in a poor suburb in the neighborhood of Atlantis/Shanghai, one of the wealthiest cities in the world. When the novel starts, Nell is around four years old; through the course of the book, she gets most of her early education though the Illustrated Primer and eventually grows up to be the leader of an important group of revolutionaries. As the novel ends, the reader is led to believe that she is promised to an even greater destiny.