Revisiting the Black family tree

[alshainofthenorth]

No: HPFGUIDX 118274


Hi,

When Sirius says that all pure-blooded families are inter-related, 
people usually tend to take it literally and infer that every old 
family we've seen in the books so far has to be on the Black family 
tree. I'd like to challenge this conception a bit and at the same 
time check if I'm reading more into the text than what is actually 
there (then again, this wouldn't be unusual in HPFGU either), and 
save the family tree from breaking under the weight. Basically I'm 
viewing it as equal parts of generalisation and hyperbole.
 
For all that pure-bloods are said to be rare, there seems to be a lot 
of them dotted throughout the books. The Blacks, the Crouches, the 
Lestranges and the Malfoys are explicitly pure-blooded, the Fudges 
probably so as well (assuming that Cornelius isn't just projecting 
his own insecurities when he's placing overmuch importance on blood 
purity), the Longbottoms, the Snapes as per JKR, the Death Eater 
families -- Crabbes, Goyles, Notts, Mulcibers, Traverses, Rosiers, 
Wilkeses. Several possible others, including but not limited to 
Weasleys, Flints, Bletchleys, Warringtons, Bulstrodes, Derricks, 
Boles, Higgses, Montagues, Zabinis, Parkinsons, Puceys, Browns, 
Cornfoots, Greengrasses, and MacDougals. Unfortunately I don't have a 
degree in genetics, so I can't tell how many generations of 
intermarriage it would take for thirty-ish families to produce a gene 
pool so uniform that fresh blood would become necessary. What I'm 
dead certain about, however, is that the WW must have its Capulets 
and its Montagues, families that wouldn't interbreed even if their 
survival depended on it.

I tend to interpret Sirius' words as meaning "All pureblood families 
are interrelated, though not necessarily all with one another. My 
mother would have thrown a wobbler if I'd married Lucia Zabini. Or 
Edith Bulstrode. Or Lavinia Higgs. And imagine having to be related 
to Snape, even if it was by marriage." Why doesn't he say so 
outright? Because that isn't the purpose of the exchange and would 
overshadow the crucial point, establishing the family ties between 
the Blacks and the Malfoys, that Kreacher may have other loyalties 
than his master, and that he'll at one point take orders from other 
family members.

At the same time JKR retains some mystery; if the Black family tree 
isn't conclusive, other pureblood players can still enter the scene 
with or without family connections. (Though I wish she wouldn't be so 
inventive with funny names and stick to working with what she already 
has instead. It struck me when checking the chocolate frog cards at 
the Lexicon that the family names in modern magical society are 
entirely absent from historical accounts. Surely there must have been 
medieval Malfoys, Blacks, Snapes or Longbottoms who distinguished 
themselves enough to be mentioned in History of Magic or on chocolate 
frog cards? But that's beside the point.)

Alshain