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?)

Awesome, awesome essay.

Re: taking the train
I've always found it a rather shite idea for all British magical students to gather over to that one station in London and then ride the train all the way north into Scotland, without stopping anywhere in between so that some northern English or Scottish persons can hop onto the Express on stations more closer to their homes. And the train stops at Hogsmede anyway, not within the magical protection sphere of Hogwarts itself. Why can't more half-blood or pureblooded families just travel directly to Hogsmede and wait until the rest of the students arrive and then take the Thestral carriages?

Re: the basic premise that the tapestry is really an embroidery and a latter-day forgery to boot
.
I did believe prior to reading this that it was a forgery (and that the Ministry of Truth would've done a much better job), but it was just a feeling to me (The Black elders trying too hard) and I didn't spot the clues you did including the language's spelling and grammer not being old enough. I guess it's my learnings of Chinese culture hindering me in this case, because the Chinese characters as you see today (pre-simplification) was pretty much formed back in the 6th century, and the "classical style" of grammer and writing (as opposed to the spoken word which is always evolving) was formed centuries earlier than that. A student or scholar with knowledge of the classical style would have no problem reading a text that's 2000+ years old, and the words written by calligraphists 1600+ years ago would be understood perfectly because the characters are the same as today's.

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.

But that is indeed why Chinese students can pick up a text written 2000 years ago by a speaker they would have needed a translater to speak with, and read it off. Whereas even the King James Bible asnd Shakespeare (Shaxspear, etc--spellings not yet formalized, y'see) can be difficult and/or strikingly odd to read for most moderns, and Chaucer practically needs a translation.

As you say, the Black elders were trying too hard. Though conversely, not hard enough. But then, it's exceedingly likely that grimoires were written in Latin rather than the vernacular, so--not being students of Chaucer and Shakespeare--it might never have occurred to them that the written language would have changed. In fact, if ghosts and portraits keep up with language shifts as long as their building is inhabited, as seems to be the case, it might not really register how much spoken language has changed over the centuries. (Fat Friar, Nick...) Plus, I think the Blacks were mostly trying to fool themselves.

(Noble and Most Ancient-gah! Who starts a family tree that way?)

And that house! As the principal seat of an ancient family (and if it weren't, why would the tapestry be there?) it just doesn't cut it. I mean, I'm American, and the very, very old family vacation home on Michigan's west coast, to which my rich banker progenitors sent their families to summer out of the heat and pollution of the city, full of heirlooms and ancient family history, dates to ... 1890. So, y'know, Grimmauld Place looked old to ME. As it certainly looked old to Harry. But not nearly old enough.

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.

Walburga's practice of blasting people off the tapestry doesn't seem like something that's been handed down. An ancient tapestry, or one pretending to be, wouldn't be disturbed other than to add new names as they came along. Walburga seems to have been disturbed, and part of showing that was having her blast the tapestry. I think it was just her, not a long line of tapestry-blasting women marrying into the family. Maybe she was so obsessed with purity that, in her delicate mental state, she saw any impurity as being a threat, not just unacceptable. Maybe she altered, or created, the current hanging to hide not-so-pure elements in the past. Maybe she knew something that is now lost to Black family history. Sirius says that she is the one who put permanent sticking charms on it - maybe for a reason. Is there an older version of the hanging behind it?

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.

And I could see the cadet son being given a copy of the family-tree tapesty on the occasion of his wedding or eldest son's birth or as a housewarming gift. What I can't see is why anyone would want to MODERNIZE THE SPELLING. The point of the thing, if it has one, is that it's ancient!

Plus, Kreacher explicitly says that this tapestry has been in the family seven hundred years. Okay, he could be wrong, but he at least think it's the original. And he should know of Black Manor or Niger Castle or whatever, if it exists.

We dont' ever see or any Blacks in canon outside Phineas's descendents, however. And you'd think the elder branch would not let a family property (complete with 15th-centurey goblin-made silver and other goodies) fall into the possession of life-sentence prisoner. Why on earth should Sirius have been allowed to inherit (or to remain in possesssion, if he technically inherited on his father's or brother's deaths in 1979) after he was sentenced to life in Azkaban? If there were any surviving legitimate Blacks, couldn't they have made some sort of claim?

Of course, we could keep the BFTA and your idea of Grimmauld being the cadet's home, if we assume that Cygnus was the cadet in question, and that for whatever reason (maybe Walburga and Arcturus did not get along) Orion and Walburga were raising their children in HER family home rather than his. (Of course, then it was purchased when it was older rather than spanking-new, but that might appeal more to wizards anyhow.) And the reason Lucius, Augusta, and Andromeda were not fighting to get possession of Twelve Grimmauld, is that they've been embroiled since 1991 in a legal battle over who gets Black Manor.

Or, of course, Phineas's father could have been a cadet and the senior line thriving. In 1840. 150 years after Seclusion had closed the pool of eligible spouses. But another five generations of inbreeding (the cadet line accepted a known mere six-generation-pure wife in the 1920's and didn't start marrying off first cousins until the 1950s; maybe the senior line was nicer in its requirements, or was trying to keep property and power in the family like the Hapsburgs) had sent it the way of the Gaunts by the 1990's--and the original manor so ruined by mismanagement that no one wants it(we saw Grimmauld after a mere decade of neglect).

Or maybe Phineas's father or great-grandfather was indeed a parvenu with pretensions, and the whole tree made up.

But seriously, I cannot wrap my mind around the idea of copying a twelvth-century tapestry and updating the spelling..... (If it weren't for Kreacher, we wouldn't have a problem--the records comprising the tree date back to the Middle Ages, the tapestry was created to display it comparatively recently--maybe purchased from the Morris factory, and then embroidered with pride by Elladora. But Kreacher says, the tapestry is seven centuries old....)

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.

Let’s not call the estate Black Manor. Malfoy Manor is okay because of the alliteration, but most estates are not called ‘[Family name] Manor’. I’ll call it Blackworth Park, ‘worth’ being an old Anglo-Saxon place-name element meaning homestead. Grimmauld Place would still be in probate after a mere decade, with the inhabitants dead almost simultaneously except the estranged heir in prison. And the nearest cousins are all daughters: one imprisoned, one disowned, and one married to a husband who barely escaped prison himself. Dumbledore doubtless did considerable arm-twisting (or rather, mind-twisting) to confirm some sort of theoretical title for Sirius when he decided to resurrect the Order of the Phoenix and need a headquarters away from Hogwarts. Blackworth Park will probably be in probate for centuries.

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.