Spock, Part I: There's a cousin joke in here somewhere
First: an addendum to the previous resourcey meta post. 
sinatra does a more concise account of money in the Federation. I would only say further that "money" is not the same as "currency," and that the politics of the Federation are such that capitalism is no longer the driving force behind economic growth.
Additionally, intelligence abounds in skywaterblue's thoughts on 24th century economics, in terms of Class M (hominid-habitable) planets and energy credits that is well worth looking at. I have to say I'm pretty firmly planted in the 23rd century right now, but she makes some excellent points--and I think that further supports my assertion of that currency is not equivalent to money per se in the UFP.
However, that's some stuff I might come back to later, because I have finally sacked up and put together my posts on Spock.
It is in three parts.
Yeah, I know.
(Quick reminder: the Star Trek universe is often wildly contradictory in and of itself, and that's okay! But the information I'm presenting here is based largely on a compilation of those stories designed to provide new or revisiting fans with an infodump for their fanworks. It's perfectly fine to use contradictory source material.)
*
Let's go. To understand Spock, you have to understand where he came from, and to understand that you need to know about Amanda Grayson and Sarek. I was delighted that they appeared in XI, despite the circumstances that played out, because in the TOS episode "Journey to Babel" their introduction was so influential on the audience's understanding of Spock. So: Spock's momma.
Amanda Stemple Grayson [Memory Alpha; Memory Beta]. Born 2202 in Seattle, Washington, USA, United Earth. Sister Doris, who had two children, Jimmy and Lester. (Yes, this means Spock has cousins.) In 2229 she married Sarek, who was then the Vulcan ambassador to the Federation. Amanda was a schoolteacher with considerable linguistic skills that, following her marriage to Sarek, she utilized in the furtherance of the Universal Translator's rendering of the Vulcan language. Following their marriage, the couple returned to Vulcan and set up house in Shi'Kahr (or ShiKahr, or Sh'i'Khar, it is seriously as bad as the Jaffa, I swear). She was in her late twenties at the time; from the Vulcan perspective, she would have been almost appallingly young. But I'll pick up those problems in a second.
With the assistance of the geneticists Daniel Corrigan and Sorel, her only son Spock was created and born. There are little further accounts of her life; she and Sarek remained married until her death in 2293, when she passed away from complications due to Reyerson's Disease.
[Note: I purposefully choose to reflect the events of the TOS novel "Sarek" because it's my opinion that it more accurately reflects the arc of Amanda and Sarek's storyline. However, in the Crucible series, Amanda dies in 2311 in a shuttle accident.]
A couple of important things to consider are that Amanda was a resident of Vulcan and, given the standing of the house of Surak, was most certainly afforded the respect of a clan matriarch even if it was done so under duress. Furthermore, it's highly unlikely that Sarek would have married Amanda without T'Pau's consent. Given T'Pau's status, wealth, age, and political force, Sarek would have probably lost everything--and certainly wouldn't be an ambassador from Vulcan--if he had gone against her will. Sarek was not obligated to marry at the time, and was free to chose someone himself, even a human; but the approval of that marriage likely rested with T'Pau.
My point is this: aside from the fact that nothing in Amanda's storyline quantifiably changes until her premature death in Trek XI, it's clear from both the original storyline and her position assisting at the katric ark at the time of Vulcan's destruction that she was a honored and respected member of Vulcan cultural tradition. Accounts of Vulcan life and society indicate a very rigid, traditional, structured lifestyle, and certainly one that would be difficult for an alien to break in to successfully--much less hold a position of great power. Yet in TOS and AOS both, she has done so. Furthermore, she is smiling, happy, if quieter than she probably was before she married Sarek. This is important! Both iterations of Spock clearly revered Amanda even while professing to Vulcan ideas of filial relationships. Yet even as she worked with T'Pau and the other Elders she never lost her humanity, never lost her smiles and affection, both for Sarek and for Spock. So if you write about Amanda, take that into consideration: much like Sarek held a truly unique perspective on Terran culture, so too did Amanda on Vulcan. And she proved herself more than capable of working and communing with the greatest among them while retaining her own cultural heritage.
Now for the babydaddy!
S'chn T'gai Sarek [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta]. Born 2165 in Shi'Kahr to Skon and T'Rama. Brother Silek (more cousins!). Skon was a diplomat, and Sarek was brought into the same field in 2185. In 2206 he became a part of the Vulcan ambassadorial entourage to Terra, and in 2212 he became the ambassador himself. In 2221 he experienced his first pon farr cycle, and returned to Vulcan to undergo the ritual with the priestess T'Rea. His first son, Sybok, was conceived from this union. Sybok's birth was initially hidden from Sarek, and his relationship with T'Lea lasted intermittently until 2224, when they parted ways.
Sarek returned to Terra and resumed his ambassadorial duties. In 2228 he met Amanda Grayson, and in 2229 they were married. In 2230 Spock was conceived and born; philosophical musings about this later on. Aside from the whole hybrid family angle, the family lived a relatively Vulcan-normal life until 2243, when Sybok came to join Sarek's household for a time. Faced with the tension of an elder son who did not follow the ways of Surak and a younger son who was a child of two worlds, the home life got pretty tense for awhile. As a brief point of commentary, having two sons, neither of which clearly or cleanly conformed to the Vulcan ideology of which he himself was a shining example, must have made for some pretty tense family dinners. Yet Sarek's choices were made and he had to abide by them.
Sybok left the family shortly after, and things were relatively peaceful until Spock chose to enter Starfleet Academy instead of the Vulcan Science Academy in 2249. Sarek dramatically opposed this course of action, believing his son to stray from his Vulcan path (thus potentially bringing further shame on the House of Surak), and abjured Spock, not speaking to him except through Amanda for 18 years. Amanda was initially angry with Sarek, leaving him that same year to take a teaching position in San Francisco. However, she returned to Shi'Kahr in 2250 upon the death of Sarek's father Skon.
Following this dramatic tearing apart of his family, Sarek subsumed himself into work and continually proved successful as an ambassador. It was not until 2267 [TOS "Journey to Babel"] that Spock and Sarek were reunited, when Spock provided blood to prevent his father's death.
His ambassadorial duties continued to define his life and the lives of his family; he worked on several peace accords that altered the direction of Federation history. In 2293, his wife Amanda passed away. He remarried in 2327 to another Terran woman, Perrin. By the 2360s, he had begun to develop symptoms of Bendii Syndrome, which affected his ability to control his emotions [TNG "Sarek"]. He died in 2268 in Shi'Kahr after several years of struggling with the disease.
Sarek's primary internal struggle was the result of his choices and his difficulty reconciling those choices with Vulcan ideology. He became subject to pon farr and produced a son in Sybok, who would go on to discredit the family by eschewing the path of logic that defined not only the planet but the House of Surak; and then married a human and chose to create a son with her who by his base genetic structure was anathema to Vulcan. (Hypocritically so; surely there can't be a more xenophobic people who embrace the principle of IDIC.) In truth, his choices were always a balancing act between his emotions (succumbing to pon farr, marrying Amanda for love) and the demands of Surakian philosophy (disowning Sybok, being a hard-ass with Spock regarding his Vulcan identity). It's particularly poignant watching Spock go through such similar struggles reconciling his own emotions and logic, in light of the rift that existed between Spock and Sarek for so long.
There's an argument to be made (one that I think is supported by the new film) that Sarek's actions regarding Spock were primarily driven by fear: fear for Spock, fear for Amanda, fear for repudiation from the world he served. Spock was not the first Terran-Vulcan hybrid, but he was certainly the first one so publicly known and acknowleged. Despite the logical fallacy of the demand on his hybrid son to be "truly Vulcan," adhering only to one life's path though born of two worlds, it was that fear that Spock would not be Vulcan which made him push Spock to follow that path to the exclusion of his mother's. Again, highly hypocritical given Sarek's own life choices. But even Vulcans suffer illogic when it comes to their families.
Spock and Sarek, in the Prime universe, did not reconcile until eighteen years of silence had passed. And Spock truly did not believe his father had a great regard for him unitl Picard showed him the emotions from his meld with Sarek shortly after Sarek's death. You see something very similar play out in the XI universe, but truncated because of Amanda's death. Her loss in both their lives spurs Sarek to admit to Spock that love--simple emotion--was the cause of their marriage, and thus for Spock's birth. By admitting that, he is admitting to love for Spock, a love Spock did not believe existed. So one really fascinating divergence is the possibility of a much closer relationship between Sarek and Spock, from the loss of Amanda.
It's also worth noting that Sarek, who is in many respects the ideal Vulcan, is consistently attracted to humanity, both as compatriats, co-workers, and spouses. Remember that Vulcan, after first contact with Terra, tried really hard to restrain the potential of Starfleet and the Terran exploration/contact within the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. This is reiterated in "Spock's World" when Vulcan is discussing a secession from the Federation. There's a deep-seated fear of humanity at the root of that, a fear that humanity is not unlike a mirror of their own destructive past. For Vulcans, humanity is like looking into their own hearts and fearing that under humanity's influence they will lose themselves again. Which is of course irrational in and of itself--see how it's kind of a cycle, about Vulcans? Anyway, Sarek and Sarek's progeny in Spock is sort of the great example of how well humanity and Vulcans can and often do work together, but it took a really long time (most of Spock's life) for that to be acknowledged and culturally accepted.
Whew.
Sybok [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta]. Born to Sarek and T'Rea in 2222. After his parents parted ways, Sybok resided with his mother until her death; he was 21 at the time, and went to live with Sarek and his household. Though he was well-tutored in Vulcan education and ways, he ultimately rejected the path of logic to embrace the path of emotion. His interpretation of his studies contributed to the actions that resulted in his banishment from Vulcan: he attempted to acquire his mother's katra from the katric ark and use it to learn more about the fabled Sha Ka Ree. He was unsuccessful in this and ordered never to return to his home planet.
He wandered for many years until 2287, when he re-entered the life of his half-brother Spock in an attempt to broach the Galactic Barrier and speak with the god he saw in his visions. Then the events of Trek V: Final Fronteir [watch it; I promise it won't kill you, just hurt a little bit. Better with alcohol] occured which resulted in his death that same year.
As Sybok was definitively born before all of the Narada business, he's part of the reboot universe. He went to live with Sarek et al in 2243, and was gone by the time Spock went to the SF Academy in 2249. That effectively places him off the planet Vulcan in 2258 when it is destroyed by Nero, and opens the door for a really awesome story about him returning to the new Vulcan colony. Seriously, it would be awesome. Go write it. Imagine how crazy and awesome the conversation between pre-Trek V Sybok and Spock Prime would be!
Perrin Landover [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta].Born in London, England, United Earth, eldest of two daughters. Not much is known about her early life, but she was xenolinguist and a diplomatic aide who encountered Sarek platonically within similar circles. They did not become involved until well after Amanda's death in 2293; Perrin and Sarek were married in 2327. She too resided in Shi'Kahr, presumably in Sarek's household estate.
While we have no firm date on Perrin's birth, it is likely she was born after 2280. She was much younger than Spock, and the relationship between them was strained. However, when Sarek was suffering the end-stage effects of Bendii Syndrome, she nursed his health and stayed by his side. She was widowed in 2368, and present at the opening of the Sarek School of Diplomacy and Ambassadorial Studies on Vulcan.
T'Pau [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta.] Born 2122. In 2154, she was the leader of a rebellious Vulcan faction known as the Syrrannites. Prior to the Federation, the ruling council of Vulcan had become xenophobic and corrupt, and she worked to uncover the corruption and lead Vulcan back to the true teachings of Surak. With assistance she overthrew the High Command, and after the Confederacy of Vulcan was instituted she was democratically elected to be the First Minister. She became instrumental in the incorporation of the Federation.
In addition to being the leader of the Vulcan world, she was also the clan matriarch for the House of Surak. She was present in several rituals in Spock's life, and certainly was an imposing figure both politically and personally.
Within this narrative, T'Pau plays an important background role in the lives of all these other characters. If you take "Spock's World" as canon, which I do, she would have certainly been involved in adolescent, marriage, and birth rites. T'Pau can be considered a reformist and a visionary; certainly her involvement with Captain Archer et al affected her opinions of humans, Terra, and the forming of the Federation. It seems likely that Spock would have a welcome ally in T'Pau with the choices he makes in his life. The House of Surak is also one of the highest class clans on Vulcan, for its hereditary link with Surak. This amplifies everything its clan members do to popular opinon and certainly puts a spotlight on T'Pau, Skon, Sarek, Sybok, Spock.
There is no particular reason to think T'Pau is dead due to the destruction of Vulcan. In the scene in Sickbay, there's clearly an older Vulcan female that I think is plausibly T'Pau. You can play it either way, though, because there's no strict evidence. It would make the reconstruction of Vulcan that much more difficult if she wasn't alive., that's for sure.
So that's the family. Next up: the Life of Spock, and the Whole Deal With Vulcans and Romulans.
sinatra does a more concise account of money in the Federation. I would only say further that "money" is not the same as "currency," and that the politics of the Federation are such that capitalism is no longer the driving force behind economic growth.
Additionally, intelligence abounds in skywaterblue's thoughts on 24th century economics, in terms of Class M (hominid-habitable) planets and energy credits that is well worth looking at. I have to say I'm pretty firmly planted in the 23rd century right now, but she makes some excellent points--and I think that further supports my assertion of that currency is not equivalent to money per se in the UFP.
However, that's some stuff I might come back to later, because I have finally sacked up and put together my posts on Spock.
It is in three parts.
Yeah, I know.
(Quick reminder: the Star Trek universe is often wildly contradictory in and of itself, and that's okay! But the information I'm presenting here is based largely on a compilation of those stories designed to provide new or revisiting fans with an infodump for their fanworks. It's perfectly fine to use contradictory source material.)
*
Let's go. To understand Spock, you have to understand where he came from, and to understand that you need to know about Amanda Grayson and Sarek. I was delighted that they appeared in XI, despite the circumstances that played out, because in the TOS episode "Journey to Babel" their introduction was so influential on the audience's understanding of Spock. So: Spock's momma.
Amanda Stemple Grayson [Memory Alpha; Memory Beta]. Born 2202 in Seattle, Washington, USA, United Earth. Sister Doris, who had two children, Jimmy and Lester. (Yes, this means Spock has cousins.) In 2229 she married Sarek, who was then the Vulcan ambassador to the Federation. Amanda was a schoolteacher with considerable linguistic skills that, following her marriage to Sarek, she utilized in the furtherance of the Universal Translator's rendering of the Vulcan language. Following their marriage, the couple returned to Vulcan and set up house in Shi'Kahr (or ShiKahr, or Sh'i'Khar, it is seriously as bad as the Jaffa, I swear). She was in her late twenties at the time; from the Vulcan perspective, she would have been almost appallingly young. But I'll pick up those problems in a second.
With the assistance of the geneticists Daniel Corrigan and Sorel, her only son Spock was created and born. There are little further accounts of her life; she and Sarek remained married until her death in 2293, when she passed away from complications due to Reyerson's Disease.
[Note: I purposefully choose to reflect the events of the TOS novel "Sarek" because it's my opinion that it more accurately reflects the arc of Amanda and Sarek's storyline. However, in the Crucible series, Amanda dies in 2311 in a shuttle accident.]
A couple of important things to consider are that Amanda was a resident of Vulcan and, given the standing of the house of Surak, was most certainly afforded the respect of a clan matriarch even if it was done so under duress. Furthermore, it's highly unlikely that Sarek would have married Amanda without T'Pau's consent. Given T'Pau's status, wealth, age, and political force, Sarek would have probably lost everything--and certainly wouldn't be an ambassador from Vulcan--if he had gone against her will. Sarek was not obligated to marry at the time, and was free to chose someone himself, even a human; but the approval of that marriage likely rested with T'Pau.
My point is this: aside from the fact that nothing in Amanda's storyline quantifiably changes until her premature death in Trek XI, it's clear from both the original storyline and her position assisting at the katric ark at the time of Vulcan's destruction that she was a honored and respected member of Vulcan cultural tradition. Accounts of Vulcan life and society indicate a very rigid, traditional, structured lifestyle, and certainly one that would be difficult for an alien to break in to successfully--much less hold a position of great power. Yet in TOS and AOS both, she has done so. Furthermore, she is smiling, happy, if quieter than she probably was before she married Sarek. This is important! Both iterations of Spock clearly revered Amanda even while professing to Vulcan ideas of filial relationships. Yet even as she worked with T'Pau and the other Elders she never lost her humanity, never lost her smiles and affection, both for Sarek and for Spock. So if you write about Amanda, take that into consideration: much like Sarek held a truly unique perspective on Terran culture, so too did Amanda on Vulcan. And she proved herself more than capable of working and communing with the greatest among them while retaining her own cultural heritage.
Now for the babydaddy!
S'chn T'gai Sarek [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta]. Born 2165 in Shi'Kahr to Skon and T'Rama. Brother Silek (more cousins!). Skon was a diplomat, and Sarek was brought into the same field in 2185. In 2206 he became a part of the Vulcan ambassadorial entourage to Terra, and in 2212 he became the ambassador himself. In 2221 he experienced his first pon farr cycle, and returned to Vulcan to undergo the ritual with the priestess T'Rea. His first son, Sybok, was conceived from this union. Sybok's birth was initially hidden from Sarek, and his relationship with T'Lea lasted intermittently until 2224, when they parted ways.
Sarek returned to Terra and resumed his ambassadorial duties. In 2228 he met Amanda Grayson, and in 2229 they were married. In 2230 Spock was conceived and born; philosophical musings about this later on. Aside from the whole hybrid family angle, the family lived a relatively Vulcan-normal life until 2243, when Sybok came to join Sarek's household for a time. Faced with the tension of an elder son who did not follow the ways of Surak and a younger son who was a child of two worlds, the home life got pretty tense for awhile. As a brief point of commentary, having two sons, neither of which clearly or cleanly conformed to the Vulcan ideology of which he himself was a shining example, must have made for some pretty tense family dinners. Yet Sarek's choices were made and he had to abide by them.
Sybok left the family shortly after, and things were relatively peaceful until Spock chose to enter Starfleet Academy instead of the Vulcan Science Academy in 2249. Sarek dramatically opposed this course of action, believing his son to stray from his Vulcan path (thus potentially bringing further shame on the House of Surak), and abjured Spock, not speaking to him except through Amanda for 18 years. Amanda was initially angry with Sarek, leaving him that same year to take a teaching position in San Francisco. However, she returned to Shi'Kahr in 2250 upon the death of Sarek's father Skon.
Following this dramatic tearing apart of his family, Sarek subsumed himself into work and continually proved successful as an ambassador. It was not until 2267 [TOS "Journey to Babel"] that Spock and Sarek were reunited, when Spock provided blood to prevent his father's death.
His ambassadorial duties continued to define his life and the lives of his family; he worked on several peace accords that altered the direction of Federation history. In 2293, his wife Amanda passed away. He remarried in 2327 to another Terran woman, Perrin. By the 2360s, he had begun to develop symptoms of Bendii Syndrome, which affected his ability to control his emotions [TNG "Sarek"]. He died in 2268 in Shi'Kahr after several years of struggling with the disease.
Sarek's primary internal struggle was the result of his choices and his difficulty reconciling those choices with Vulcan ideology. He became subject to pon farr and produced a son in Sybok, who would go on to discredit the family by eschewing the path of logic that defined not only the planet but the House of Surak; and then married a human and chose to create a son with her who by his base genetic structure was anathema to Vulcan. (Hypocritically so; surely there can't be a more xenophobic people who embrace the principle of IDIC.) In truth, his choices were always a balancing act between his emotions (succumbing to pon farr, marrying Amanda for love) and the demands of Surakian philosophy (disowning Sybok, being a hard-ass with Spock regarding his Vulcan identity). It's particularly poignant watching Spock go through such similar struggles reconciling his own emotions and logic, in light of the rift that existed between Spock and Sarek for so long.
There's an argument to be made (one that I think is supported by the new film) that Sarek's actions regarding Spock were primarily driven by fear: fear for Spock, fear for Amanda, fear for repudiation from the world he served. Spock was not the first Terran-Vulcan hybrid, but he was certainly the first one so publicly known and acknowleged. Despite the logical fallacy of the demand on his hybrid son to be "truly Vulcan," adhering only to one life's path though born of two worlds, it was that fear that Spock would not be Vulcan which made him push Spock to follow that path to the exclusion of his mother's. Again, highly hypocritical given Sarek's own life choices. But even Vulcans suffer illogic when it comes to their families.
Spock and Sarek, in the Prime universe, did not reconcile until eighteen years of silence had passed. And Spock truly did not believe his father had a great regard for him unitl Picard showed him the emotions from his meld with Sarek shortly after Sarek's death. You see something very similar play out in the XI universe, but truncated because of Amanda's death. Her loss in both their lives spurs Sarek to admit to Spock that love--simple emotion--was the cause of their marriage, and thus for Spock's birth. By admitting that, he is admitting to love for Spock, a love Spock did not believe existed. So one really fascinating divergence is the possibility of a much closer relationship between Sarek and Spock, from the loss of Amanda.
It's also worth noting that Sarek, who is in many respects the ideal Vulcan, is consistently attracted to humanity, both as compatriats, co-workers, and spouses. Remember that Vulcan, after first contact with Terra, tried really hard to restrain the potential of Starfleet and the Terran exploration/contact within the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. This is reiterated in "Spock's World" when Vulcan is discussing a secession from the Federation. There's a deep-seated fear of humanity at the root of that, a fear that humanity is not unlike a mirror of their own destructive past. For Vulcans, humanity is like looking into their own hearts and fearing that under humanity's influence they will lose themselves again. Which is of course irrational in and of itself--see how it's kind of a cycle, about Vulcans? Anyway, Sarek and Sarek's progeny in Spock is sort of the great example of how well humanity and Vulcans can and often do work together, but it took a really long time (most of Spock's life) for that to be acknowledged and culturally accepted.
Whew.
Sybok [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta]. Born to Sarek and T'Rea in 2222. After his parents parted ways, Sybok resided with his mother until her death; he was 21 at the time, and went to live with Sarek and his household. Though he was well-tutored in Vulcan education and ways, he ultimately rejected the path of logic to embrace the path of emotion. His interpretation of his studies contributed to the actions that resulted in his banishment from Vulcan: he attempted to acquire his mother's katra from the katric ark and use it to learn more about the fabled Sha Ka Ree. He was unsuccessful in this and ordered never to return to his home planet.
He wandered for many years until 2287, when he re-entered the life of his half-brother Spock in an attempt to broach the Galactic Barrier and speak with the god he saw in his visions. Then the events of Trek V: Final Fronteir [watch it; I promise it won't kill you, just hurt a little bit. Better with alcohol] occured which resulted in his death that same year.
As Sybok was definitively born before all of the Narada business, he's part of the reboot universe. He went to live with Sarek et al in 2243, and was gone by the time Spock went to the SF Academy in 2249. That effectively places him off the planet Vulcan in 2258 when it is destroyed by Nero, and opens the door for a really awesome story about him returning to the new Vulcan colony. Seriously, it would be awesome. Go write it. Imagine how crazy and awesome the conversation between pre-Trek V Sybok and Spock Prime would be!
Perrin Landover [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta].Born in London, England, United Earth, eldest of two daughters. Not much is known about her early life, but she was xenolinguist and a diplomatic aide who encountered Sarek platonically within similar circles. They did not become involved until well after Amanda's death in 2293; Perrin and Sarek were married in 2327. She too resided in Shi'Kahr, presumably in Sarek's household estate.
While we have no firm date on Perrin's birth, it is likely she was born after 2280. She was much younger than Spock, and the relationship between them was strained. However, when Sarek was suffering the end-stage effects of Bendii Syndrome, she nursed his health and stayed by his side. She was widowed in 2368, and present at the opening of the Sarek School of Diplomacy and Ambassadorial Studies on Vulcan.
T'Pau [Memory Alpha, Memory Beta.] Born 2122. In 2154, she was the leader of a rebellious Vulcan faction known as the Syrrannites. Prior to the Federation, the ruling council of Vulcan had become xenophobic and corrupt, and she worked to uncover the corruption and lead Vulcan back to the true teachings of Surak. With assistance she overthrew the High Command, and after the Confederacy of Vulcan was instituted she was democratically elected to be the First Minister. She became instrumental in the incorporation of the Federation.
In addition to being the leader of the Vulcan world, she was also the clan matriarch for the House of Surak. She was present in several rituals in Spock's life, and certainly was an imposing figure both politically and personally.
Within this narrative, T'Pau plays an important background role in the lives of all these other characters. If you take "Spock's World" as canon, which I do, she would have certainly been involved in adolescent, marriage, and birth rites. T'Pau can be considered a reformist and a visionary; certainly her involvement with Captain Archer et al affected her opinions of humans, Terra, and the forming of the Federation. It seems likely that Spock would have a welcome ally in T'Pau with the choices he makes in his life. The House of Surak is also one of the highest class clans on Vulcan, for its hereditary link with Surak. This amplifies everything its clan members do to popular opinon and certainly puts a spotlight on T'Pau, Skon, Sarek, Sybok, Spock.
There is no particular reason to think T'Pau is dead due to the destruction of Vulcan. In the scene in Sickbay, there's clearly an older Vulcan female that I think is plausibly T'Pau. You can play it either way, though, because there's no strict evidence. It would make the reconstruction of Vulcan that much more difficult if she wasn't alive., that's for sure.
So that's the family. Next up: the Life of Spock, and the Whole Deal With Vulcans and Romulans.