Order of Siblings (was: The ancient and most noble house of Black)

[krista7]

No: HPFGUIDX 147226

Written by Neri:

> Phineas is Elladora's older brother (he was born in 1847 and she in
> 1850) and he's on her left – well and good. Callidora is older than
> her sister Charis (1915 vs. 1919) and she's on her left – well and
> good. But what about Belvina? She's on the left of her brother
> Arcturus, but is she older than him? Her birth date isn't very clear
> in the picture, but it looks to me like 1886, which would make her
> *younger* than Arcturus (1884). 
<snip of Black birth order theory)
> However, Belvina's birth date foils this nice consistency a bit. Can
> anybody please convince me it's not 1886?  I offer a free bag of ACID
> POPS as a prize.

I do agree it is 1886, but here's some hope for you: I think the order of children
 was altered for reason, not whim. If you look at the family tree purely 
as structure--just the lines--you see lines descending from the first and 
third children, and then those lines branch out widely to make room for *their*
 kids. This doesn't leave a lot of spare room on the page. Besides the threat
of having cousins bumping into each other in the next row, keeping the 
original kids in order would create an unsightly imbalance on the page. 
(Since Belvina's kids aren't listed, you'd have a big white gap beneath her, on the right,
and a pack of squashed kids beneath the other two, on the left.) If you're a human
being doing this by hand, the temptation, I imagine, would be to 
make the tree look pretty and balanced. 

In re: the Black girls. I don't think space is immediately a reason to doubt
their list order isn't the same as their birth order. You don't have fat branches
coming off any of them yet, to cause this kind of space/balance concern.
 (Well, unless Draco has managed to reproduce several times over, 
God help us all!)

Just my guess!
Krista