Noble and Most Ancient: The Black Family Tapestry

[terri_testing]

Let’s think about the Black Family Tree for a moment-not the data in the possibly non-canonical display of Phineas’s branch that was created by JKR for a charity auction, but the hanging itself, that Sirius showed off to Harry, with commentary.  What does canon say, and what can we deduce, about the Black Family Tapestry?

It’s not a prepossessing

Comments

[vermouth1991]

("auncyen"? Pardon my bluntness but is that even a word

Auncyen

[terri_testing]

Yes, that is the problem with an alphabetic written language rather than an--isn't the term ideographic?--one. Pronunciation changes over 700 years (and dialects come and go), and so spelling changes with it. The dropping of final e's when we dropped the final syllable on many words, as when Chaucer's "soote" turned into our "sweet". Not to mention the vowel changes. Conversely, at some point, spelling became standardized ("knight") enshining a particular dialect's spelling variant as the standard against which any other looks ignorant.... As to "auncyen", you probably would also have found "ancyen," "auncien," "ancien," etc. But apparently the final "t" appeared on the word ca. the 15th century to regularize it to noun/adjective word pairs like patience/patient, tolerance/tolerant. It's an adjective, so it should have a t, so one was added

Re: Auncyen

[seductivedark]

(Noble and Most Ancient-gah! Who starts a family tree that way?)That may be why it was added later, by Walburga or someone else. Of course the original wouldn't have such a thing at the beginning, unless the Blacks were pretentious even then

Re: Auncyen

[jana_ch]

Twelve Grimmauld Place is clearly the home of the city branch of the Blacks. The elder branch would have kept the estate in the country (you’re not a noble house without land!) and a secondary house for use in the London “season,” while the younger branch moved to the city permanently. That means until the Cygnus Blacks daughtered out, the Orion Blacks were a cadet branch. If Sirius and Regulus hadn’t died childless, one of them would have inherited the country estate and become the main branch of the family. There may be an actual medieval hanging showing the Black family tree back at the manor house on the country estate, and the younger son who moved to London in the nineteenth century created his own replica, with suitably modernized spelling.

Re: Auncyen Hus

[terri_testing]

That explains Twelve Grimmauld nicely. Sort of. If we accept the Black-Family-Tree-Auction-Version (BFTA) at all, however, Orion son of Arcturus son of Sirius son of Phineas WAS the senior line going back to Phineas's dad, who would then have to be the cadet in question. Which would work, yeah--he bought a spanking new mansion in the city mid-nineteenth century to accommodate his growing family

Re: Auncyen Hus

[oryx_leucoryx]

Also, when Phineas hears that Sirius died he is upset that the last of the Blacks is dead. I think that confirms there are no surviving, non-disinherited branches.

"Oh, BE early English, ere it is too late!"

[jana_ch]

I don’t think we have to take what Kreacher says as gospel. He believes what his noble masters (or certain of his noble masters) tell him. If they say it’s seven hundred years old, it’s seven hundred years old. I like the idea of the hanging being newly commissioned from the Morris factory, based on Black family records. The muggle craftsmen would never have seen the original-if there was an original, which is doubtful. The modern text would have been at the Blacks’ insistence. The artistic designer would have wanted to go with either Latin or early English (I’m imagining it in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry), but the Blacks wanted their guests to be able to read it

Re: "Oh, BE early English, ere it is too late!"

[oryx_leucoryx]

Kreacher is old. He may have been around when Walburga was a wee lass. I think we can trust that the 'tapestry' predates him, though impossible to say by how much really.

Re: "Oh, BE early English, ere it is too late!"

[sunnyskywalker]

If house-elves live around 200 years, and Kreacher is "old," then we can probably say it at least dates to his mother's time. Say before before 1800, most likely. If his mother was ordered to tell everyone that it was 700 years old (not that they would have occasion to ask, since a good house-elf is not seen, but why take chances?), Kreacher might honestly believe it.

Though that glowing green goo and living alone with no one to serve might have prematurely aged Kreachur for all we know, so that might throw off the dating.