Snapedom

Presumably, the Prince family are purebloods, since Snape calls himself "the Half-blood Prince" as a boy, and if his father is a Muggle, Eileen is probably a pureblood. Furthermore, Eileen was Sorted into blood-conscious Slytherin, although since Snape and Tom Riddle were Slytherins, we know that not all Slytherins are necessarily pure of blood.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that Eileen is a pureblood. What might her relatives be like? If they were a proud, bigoted family like the Blacks, they probably would have disowned Eileen for marrying a Muggle, in which case, Snape would have had little or no contact with them. If that is so, where did his ideas about wizarding and pureblood superiority come from? Eileen's marriage was apparently not a happy one, so perhaps she regretted marrying Tobias, and impressed upon her son a disdain for Muggles. Or Snape might have hated his father, and projected that hatred onto Muggles in general.

Or perhaps Eileen's family did maintain some limited contact with her. I doubt that they would ever have visited her in Spinner's End, and they probably wouldn't have had any contact with Tobias, but maybe they allowed her to bring Snape to the family home for visits occasionally. Her parents might still have wanted to get to know their grandson even if he was a half-blood; maybe they hoped that his Prince blood would be strong enough to cancel out his Muggle blood.

One possibility for the animosity between Eileen and Tobias is that she didn't tell him that she was a witch until after they got married, and maybe he took the news badly. If he feared her magic, and/or resented her for lying to him (or at least concealing the truth), then he may have forbidden her to use magic in their home, and maybe even forbade her to teach magic to their son.

In that case, perhaps the Princes--or at least one of them--felt that it was their duty to teach Snape how to use magic. So perhaps Snape got his prejudices from them. I'm sure that they would have lectured him on the superiority of wizards and the inferiority of Muggles. And the fact that they could do magic, use powers that his father didn't have, would likely have impressed a child who most likely had negative feelings about his father.

Even if the Princes weren't purebloods, they might still have tried to pass as purebloods. Maybe they have a little Muggle blood far back in the family tree that they're ashamed of, and that might well make them defensive and even more vocal about Muggle inferiority, in an attempt to cover up their not-so-pure blood. If that were true, they'd be even more furious with Eileen for sullying the family name by marrying a Muggle.

So what about Snape's Muggle relatives? As I said earlier, I never gave them much thought. Tobias doesn't seem to be a very pleasant man, so if his relatives are anything like him, I doubt that Snape got along very well with them. I think that Tobias probably wouldn't have told them that Eileen is a witch, either because they wouldn't believe him, or because he's ashamed of that fact, similar to the way that the Dursleys regard Harry as a freak. Even so, the other Snapes probably would have sensed something odd about Eileen and Severus, and maybe looked down on them because of it. If Snape had cousins his age that he encountered occasionally at family gatherings, they might have teased him for his oddness, which would only have given him more reasons to despise Muggles.

I think that once Snape started going to Hogwarts, he had as little to do with his Muggle relatives as possible, and that after he graduated, he cut ties with them completely, including his father. I've even thought that it's possible that he might have killed his own father to prove his worthiness to the Dark Lord, as a way of symbolically purging himself of his Muggle blood, and that this was one of the crimes that weighed heavily upon his conscience later after he became "Dumbledore's man". In spite of Book 7, I insist upon believing that there must be something more to Snape's redemption than simple Lily lurve! That may have been the initial catalyst, but I still feel that he would eventually have come to regret his actions as a Death Eater for moral reasons as he matured.  I refuse to believe that he would have turned out to be a loyal Death Eater, merrily torturing and killing people in an alternate universe where Lily never died.

EDIT 6/1/08: Upon further thought, it's likely that Snape hasn't personally murdered anyone yet, or he wouldn't be so concerned about the state of his soul when Dumbledore asks Snape to kill him. I vaguely recall having this conversation before in another Snapedom post. Or you could say that he doesn't want his soul torn up any more than it already is. But I guess I'm kind of getting away from the "family" theme of the essay, so I'll stop here.

Snape's Family in Fanfiction:

I examined Snape's relationship with his family in a Snupin story that I wrote called Bell Dancer. The first chapter focused on his relationship with his mother, and to a lesser extent, his father. (Chapters two and three dealt mainly with Snape's post-war relationship with Lupin, although his mother's cousin does play a minor role; more on him a bit later.) In this story, I wrote that the Princes were originally the Bashirs, a pureblood family from the Middle East who emigrated to England to escape a clan feud. There's no basis in canon for this, of course, but I wanted to incorporate elements from my AU Snupin series Always, in which Snape's mother is a Bashir. And it seemed like a good explanation for why the Princes don't appear to be as prominent in the pureblood community as the Blacks and the Malfoys--because they're new to the country and still trying to establish themselves in the social hierarchy.

In my story, Eileen is a child when her family first arrives in England, too young to attend Hogwarts. Because money is tight, the Princes have no choice but to temporarily take up residence in a run-down Muggle neighborhood, and Eileen, who is lonely and homesick, is befriended by young Tobias, who lives next door. They become good friends and eventually fall in love. When Eileen learns that her family wants to arrange a marriage for her with a suitor from another wizarding family, she tries to convince Tobias to elope with her. He loves her, but wants to attend university before they get married, and since he doesn't know that she's a witch, he doesn't believe that her family can force her to marry against her will.

(Actually, I have no idea what the wizarding laws are like regarding marriage. There's nothing in canon to indicate that a person can be forced to marry against their will, but it's certainly possible that a very determined and ambitious family like the Princes might resort to illegal methods, such as an Imperius Curse, to force their daughter to make an advantageous marriage.)

Eileen is afraid that Tobias might reject her if she tells him the truth, that she is a witch, so she ensures that he will never be able to leave her, and uses Dark Magic to bind their souls together and force him to marry her. Tobias resents her for this, which leads to a troubled marriage where they are always arguing. Or in my version, it's more that Tobias is always berating her, and she meekly accepts it because she feels guilty about the way that she compelled him against his will. Young Snape doesn't know the whole story, so his father appears to be a bully who's always picking on his mother, and he can't understand why Eileen lets him treat her that way.

She finally tells Snape the truth when Tobias is diagnosed with terminal cancer. The spell that binds them together means that she will die when Tobias does, and she gives Snape the magical artifact that she used to enspell Tobias, a set of magical bells that is a family heirloom, and explains how to use them while cautioning him about the risks.

Now that they are both dying, Eileen and Tobias are finally able to be honest with each other, and Tobias reveals that he has always loved her and didn't care that she was a witch. What caused his resentment was that he was hurt that she didn't trust him enough to tell him the truth, that she thought she had to force him to marry her when he would have done so willingly if she had only explained the truth to him.

His father's illness is partly why my Snape decides to join the Death Eaters, even if it costs him Lily's friendship. He hopes that the Dark Lord might know of a spell that can help him save his father. However, he isn't able to find a cure in time, and both his parents die, although they die peacefully, content that they were able to reconcile before the end.

Because this was written for a challenge on lupin_snape and had a deadline, I kept the focus on Eileen, Tobias, and Snape (and of course Lupin), and didn't spend much time on Snape's other relatives. I conveniently got rid of the Princes by saying that they disowned Eileen when she married a Muggle, and similarly got rid of the Snapes by saying that they were bigots who disowned Tobias for marrying an Arab girl.

However, I did keep one of Snape's relatives because he's a favorite supporting character of mine in the Always series: Ali Bashir, who is mentioned briefly in canon as the wizard who is always pestering Arthur Weasley to lift the ban on flying carpets. That gave me the inspiration for making the Bashirs (in this story, the Princes) a clan of merchants. And I wanted to keep Ali a Bashir, so in Bell Dancer I wrote that he decided to drop the Prince name and go back to Bashir when he came of age. Ali is Eileen's cousin, and he is the only member of her family who remains friendly and stays in touch with her after her marriage, partly because he's a bit of a black sheep of the family himself, and partly just because he likes her. He visits Snape and Eileen from time to time, bringing gifts from his trips abroad and slipping Snape a little extra spending money. When Tobias falls ill and is no longer able to work, Ali helps to support the family, and he promises to look after Snape after Eileen and Tobias are gone. He does subtly caution Snape not to join the Death Eaters, but Snape doesn't listen, and distances himself from Ali until after the final war is over and Voldemort has been defeated, in order to protect him and keep him from coming to the Death Eaters' attention.

In my story, Snape survives the final battle and is exonerated by Harry, although he is still regarded as somewhat of a pariah by most of the wizarding community. Then Ali comes to him and offers his friendship once again, and also offers Snape an escape: a vacation home in Egypt that Snape can stay at if he chooses to leave Britain. Snape has decided to accept Ali's offer when Lupin shows up to apologize for believing him a traitor, and he and Lupin get entangled in an affair while Lupin is still publicly dating Tonks. And Snape is tempted to use his mother's bells to make Lupin his, body and soul. How does it end? Well, you'll have to read to find out! ;)

Hmm, in hindsight, Ali did play a bigger role in the story than I had realized. It started off as a Snupin love story, but it also ended up being a story about family as well.

Oh, and I should warn that the Bell Dancer artwork that the story is based on is NC-17 and most definitely NOT work safe, so click on the link with caution. The story itself is rated NC-17 overall as well, although the first chapter is more PG.

More Snape and Family Fanfiction:

ellid has a wonderful ongoing post-war Snupin fic called War Wounds, in which two physically and emotionally wounded war veterans manage to find some healing and friendship with each other. In Part 5, it is revealed that Snape has several Muggle relatives, including a Snape cousin who is a constable. This comes in handy when a drunken Lupin is arrested by that very same cousin. The cousin appears only briefly, but it's a humorous scene, and there's something comfortingly familiar about the slightly nagging, affectionate banter that passes between him and Snape--the same as any other family.

The other parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. See story headings for rating, summary, and other info.

Also, red_day_dawning rec'ed a couple of Snupin fics by busaikko that feature Eileen in the comments of this post.

And there is a really awesome Eileen fic by bluestocking79 called Wholly to Be a Fool (and also here on LJ) that has a wonderful portrayal of Eileen and Tobias. They are by no means perfect, and they made a lot of mistakes raising Severus that cannot be easily forgiven. But it paints a very human picture of them that avoids the usual cliche of abusive!Tobias and shows that there was genuine love between them, and that they were both responsible for the problems in their marriage. As an added bonus, it also has great portrayals of Luna and Draco.