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It's time for a discussion about Snape and the Princes. Was Eileen the last? Did she fall out with her family for marrying a Muggle? Were they an 'old wizarding family'? They don't show up on the Black family tree. There seem to be no others mentioned. How did she go from captain of the Gobstones team to unhappy housewife. Or did she? Did she hide her magic from Tobias? Snape certainly knew he wanted to be a Slytherin by the time he was ten or so. For that matter, is it common for wedding and birth announcements to make the paper? As always, if I've forgotten something important, feel free to expand as you see fit.
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Snape and the Princes
The World of Severus Snape
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In canon there isn’t any other mention of Prince. I read both fan fics that have here as the last one and some that didn’t. I like to imagine that she did have relatives. But I don’t see them as an old family, or someone that important in the wizarding world.
Did she fall out with her family for marrying a Muggle?
I know that it is a common theme that she did, but right now I don’t think so. There might have been some relatives who didn’t accept it. I guess I think this way because Snape knew a lot about the magical world and I don’t think it was only his mother that taught or showed him. I also don’t see her interested in the dark arts. I guess I think if she did things would have been different in the Snape house hold. I imagine that maybe his grandfather, an uncle or maybe a cousin. Also I’ve read fan fic’s were Snape has an older sibling, which I think could be possible. I only see canon as text and I don’t remember anything saying he didn’t have a brother of sister. If Eileen did have family and Severus spent some time with them, I would think that he would also face some prejudiced from them because he was half-blood. And I’m trying to think if in canon the issue was address about the problems half-blood’s faced, which would be totally different than what muggle borns experienced, but it still would be something difficult.
Were they an 'old wizarding family'?
If they were I think that they were dying out, or maybe they were not even from UK.
How did she go from captain of the Gobstones team to unhappy housewife. Or did she?
She could have worked, and I think more than likely she did. I don’t know anything about Gobstones, is that something cool or geeky? I like to think that there was more to Eileen and Tobias than what we saw in Snape’s memory. I know we see her cowing, but I’ve seen women cowing at times and then also fighting back. I don’t think she was physically abused or even Snape for that matter. I guess I figure that we would see a different Snape maybe a very timid person or a very violent person.
Did she hide her magic from Tobias?
I don’t think so. Severus knew a lot about magic at around seven years old. Mostly children learn from observing, and I don’t think Eileen sat Severus down with long talks about the wizarding world. Maybe he had relatives that were in different houses and the majority of his family was in Slytherin. I kind of think of family get together where people are saying their football team is better.
This reminds me of one reviewer telling the author that Eileen wasn’t in Slytherin, but in Ravenclaw, and I don’t think canon mentioned what house she was in. I’m assuming Slytherin.
For that matter, is it common for wedding and birth announcements to make the paper?
I think so, and usually it is not the person themselves that put it but a relative. Mosley her mother I would guess. Unless Eileen was rebelling against her family and wanted to show them that she married a muggle. Or maybe the Princes were pro muggle.
Yes if Sev knew magic, he probably learned it from his Mum, which means his father knew at some point that his wife was a witch.
I also don't know much about Gobstones. Harry and the trio don't seem to play them and neither do Draco and his co-horts, which leads me to believe Gobstones are kind of geeky.
I originally assumed Eileen was in Slytherin which is why Sev wanted to be in there too. It's never stated so she could have been in any House.
If her family is 'old' and 'well known' then they are not in Britain. Very possible she was first generation British.
Prince can be derived from the German, Prinze, which literally means "Prince". No royalty in the Wizarding World, perhaps she had Muggle in her way back when, perhaps even royalty.
I assumed since the WW in Britain is a small one that wedding and birth announcements are usually published, maybe it's even mandatory to publish births, at that time at least.
Again hate to pimp fan fics here but since her character is almost all speculative, it's hard not to.
In my fic, and it's still being updated so I don't want to give away too much, she was in Ravenclaw, she was a Filch on her mother's side and Romanian/German on her father, Prince, side. She was like Sev in that she kept to herself and did not tell Tobias she was a witch until after Sev was born. Sev had no siblings and his grandparents were all dead by the time he was born. All he had to learn from was his mother and her library of books from her family.
From the date of the Potions book (1946-1948?) she was born in the early 1930s and thus was in her late 20s or maybe even 30 when she had Severus. I think Rowling meant that to indicate she married late for women of her days - and the reason she wants us to attribute to that is that she had trouble finding a wizard to marry because she wasn't pretty, wasn't nice or inviting (cross and sullen), wasn't a cool Quidditch player nor particularly outstanding in any other way (Hermione started her search by looking for winners of Potions awards, but apparently found none under Eileen's name, all she found was the article about her gobstones captainship). IOW the story is supposed to be that Eileen married Tobias because she despaired of ever marrying a wizard.
I think she initially hid her magic from Tobias, until Severus had magical outbreaks Eileen couldn't hide from her husband. Neither of the 3 other magical people who married Muggles in canon were forthcoming about their magic. That would be a reason for Tobias to be unhappy (being lied to over something central to his wife's identity). But he might have been disappointed that magic couldn't solve their economical hardships - so what good was it? Anyway, after that point she did practice magic in front of Severus - he saw it as something special, and something to look forward to learning. She must have been the one who gave him the idea that Slytherin was the house for him, so I think that it was her House and there was enough in her conduct or the magic she did in front of him at home to make him want to identify with his mother. (Had she kept avoiding doing magic or had she lost much of her ability Merope-style I can't see her son identifying with her, eager to go to Hogwarts, looking out to befriend another magical child, believing that magical people were worthy of attention but Muggles were not.)
Had Eileen been a Ravenclaw Severus would have seen that as the brainy House. I wonder which House he would have chosen had his mother been Gryffindor or Hufflepuff? The war only started shortly before he went to Hogwarts and I don't know if early on it was even broadly known that Voldemort was from Slytherin, let alone that most of the Death Eaters were from their. We know James Potter arrived at Hogwarts with an anti-Slytherin prejudice, but we don't know how widespread it was in those years.
If she had relatives that were still alive when Severus met Lily, I don't think he saw them much. He told Lily that he was a wizard and his mother was a witch, he didn't say 'all my mum's family are too'. Someone gave Severus the idea that at least to some people it mattered whether a child had a magical parent or not. Was that Eileen or her family? Both are possible. Marrying a Muggle still leaves her son one magical parent, so whether one believed it was blood or upbringing that were 'wrong' about Muggle-borns, her son was OK.
What about the books? There were lots of them, with shelves covering the walls and even the sitting room door. Is it possible Severus bought them all himself? If not then I think only a small number of the magical ones were there in Severus' childhood, the bulk of them arrived after whatever maternal relatives he had passed away. I doubt the spells that allowed a book-bearing door to open without crushing the books were cast while Tobias still lived in the house.
- Oryx
My theory on how Eileen and Tobias got together was that they lived near each other in a mixed magical/muggle neighborhood and became friends and fell in love, but she hid her magic until after they were married, possibly until Severus began manifesting magic, and that accounts for the trouble in their marriage--he either couldn't handle the shock, or was angry that she lied to him or both.
Alternately, they had a casual fling and she got pregnant, and it was a shotgun wedding, which would also account for a troubled marriage, since neither of them particularly wanted it.
I'm not quite sure where Snape got his Slytherin pride from. Initially, I assumed it was from Eileen. But if she was that proud of her magic, it seems like she shouldn't be so cowed, because she would know that she has the strength to render Tobias helpless, whether she chooses to do or not. Maybe her magic wasn't that strong, or as Oryx suggests, it weakened in a manner similar to Merope's. In one fic I wrote, she acts submissive towards Tobias out of guilt, because she had used a spell to force him to marry her. But when Tobias wasn't around, she taught Severus about magic and the wizarding world.
If not from Eileen, then maybe her relatives convinced Severus that Slytherin was the best House to be in. Maybe they were trying to make him into a good Slytherin to sort of cancel out his Muggle blood. Or maybe they snubbed him for being a half-blood, and he decided that he'd become a Slytherin out of defiance, to prove that he's as good as they are. Or maybe it has nothing to do with his family, and he was just tired of living in poverty, and he decided his best chance to become successful in the wizarding world was to go into Slytherin, the House of ambition, where he could find influential allies.
I'm not quite sure where Snape got his Slytherin pride from. Initially, I assumed it was from Eileen. But if she was that proud of her magic, it seems like she shouldn't be so cowed, because she would know that she has the strength to render Tobias helpless, whether she chooses to do or not. Maybe her magic wasn't that strong, or as Oryx suggests, it weakened in a manner similar to Merope's. In one fic I wrote, she acts submissive towards Tobias out of guilt, because she had used a spell to force him to marry her. But when Tobias wasn't around, she taught Severus about magic and the wizarding world.
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Actually I said I did *not* think Eileen was another case like Merope of losing some or all magical ability as a result of depression or a similar condition. I can't see Severus developing his enthusiasm about magic if that were the case. I do think her cowering may have been the result of guilt - I imagine the scene in Severus' memory was the day Tobias discovered his son was a wizard and that he had been married to a witch all these years and didn't know it. Hence his anger and her guilt. I also think that under such circumstances Eileen wouldn't want to use magic to defend herself so as not to scare Tobias too much.
We don't know if that scene is representative of the power balance between Tobias and Eileen all the years. For all we know, in later years Eileen may have started defending herself magically, if Tobias seemed likely to escalate the situation. All we have is Severus saying his parents argued and that his father didn't like magic, or anything else much. Now, kids in troubled home situations do tend to downplay things, so arguing could be euphemistic for 'dad beats mum to a pulp once a week', but OTOH his claim that his father didn't like magic much could also have been a euphemism for 'mum hexes dad with regularity' - or anything in between. All we really know is that at that time both his parents were around and they were not happy together. I suppose we can also assume his father had given up on him by then based on Severus' clothes and Tobias' absence from the train station (while Lily's family was there).
- Oryx
Oop, sorry! *headdesk* This is what I get for reading too quickly when I'm tired. >_<
I agree that there's so little information in canon that it's hard to tell exactly what the situation is with the Snapes, which is sort of frustrating. But I suppose in a way it's nice, since it gives fanfic writers the freedom to invent almost anything they want.
So - my surmise was that the Princes were an old and noble family that had fallen on hard times. Eileen was the last of them - and they had always mingled with Muggles, which is why they were not so degenerate as the Gaunts (or, in some views, the Blacks). Eileen was not a pureblood. As Anne and I agreed, Severus is most likely a thorough "mutt" - Muggle and Wizard, Catholic and Protestant, Native English and Immigrant, on BOTH sides of the family. Specifically, I think his ancestry is Pictish, Danish, Irish, Spanish and Rom. (All of these* are dark-haired, dark- eyed people.)
After DH, it's clear that Rowling wants us to see Eileen as both Pureblood and Slytherin. But I'm not sure you have to. Nowhere does she state that Eileen was a Pureblood, nor what house she was in. What's clear is that the little boy clung to magic as something that made him 'special', like his Mam, and that someone in the family (probably Eileen, but possibly her parents) had told him Slytherin was the best house. And, by the time he was ten, he'd learned to look down on Muggles - probably a form of self-defense, psychologically.
But I was actually surprised at how little Rowling ended up telling us about Snape and his family. It seemed she just didn't care, and didn't bother.
*(Of course, as a fair, freckled, largely Irish person, I realize some of the Irish are blond! But there is a large percentage of the population with dark hair and eyes. )
(And no, I'm not discounting Lily's love for Harry. But she would never have had a choice if it were not for Severus's love for her.)
Snape and the Princes
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4516664/1/
I envision them as a Pureblood family fallen on hard times financially. Any similarities to the Gaunts is entirely intentional!
Alison
The Half-Blood Prince
So, how did Eileen Prince end up in the "muggle dunghill" of Spinner's End? I speculated that she had left Hogwarts during the second World War, a time when even some wizards were motivated by a sense of duty towards their country, and, like a lot of women, she got involved with war work--thus meeting Tobias Snape while he was in uniform.
To marry a muggle meant making a choice. Either Tobias would need to be brought into the wizarding world, or Eileen would need to break with it. Since they lived in a muggle community, I decided that she had made the break and that the only magic she practiced was making potions. She made them for her own use and to supplement the family income by selling them secretly out her back door to a network of muggle women. It was by helping Eileen with her potions that Severus learned both basic skills and how to experiment.
She was not eager to have children, knowing that there was a good chance they would be magical--which would only mean losing them slowly once they hit eleven and only cause problems with Tobias. Severus was very much an accident. Once he manifested and Eileen realized that she was bound to lose her son, she tried to send him to her wizarding family to raise.
I envisioned the Princes to be living in a Austen-type world, complete with entailments on the property. So, like the difficulty Dumbledore worried about with Harry inheriting the Black property, Severus was ineligible to inherit the Prince property because he was a "half-blood." His status within his mother's family was basically that of a "poor relation" or bastard. He was allowed to live upstairs and be waited on by the elves, but he was mainly neglected, except by Eileen's younger brother, who taught him to duel and a variety of dark hexes (explaining his superior knowledge in his first year at Hogwarts). Most of Snape's knowledge about the wizarding world would have come from this period, either from his mother's family or from reading their extensive library.
Sometime before his tenth birthday, Snape returned to his mother's home. He had no wand until his eleventh birthday, limiting him to helping with the potions and uncontrolled, accidental magic, such as we saw in DH.
It occurs to me that we don't really know that there weren't Princes on the Black family tapestry. After all, Harry wouldn't have really noticed the name, never having heard of any Princes before. And he never even noticed his own name, even though there were Potters within a couple generations of Sirius.
I saw the Princes as a dwindling family. Not necessarily financially poor, but dying out from the normal problem of pureblood prejudice limiting marital choices. Eileen crossing the magic line would have been seen as a betrayal of core family values. But I also saw the pureblood prejudice within the family as something that was dying out. Eileen and her brother were not nearly as prejudiced as their father about blood--the legal restrictions against Severus had been in place for hundreds of years. In the end, like the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice, the property ended up going to a cousin.
As for whether the Prince line included wizards and witches from other countries--other "darker" nationalities, it's quite possible. I don't think there would have been any objections to foreign spouses, as long as they were of good wizarding stock.
I realize this is quite a mountain built from only a molehill of canon evidence. But I agree that it's more fun that JKR left Snape's family so mysterious. I hope we never get the official story.
Re: The Half-Blood Prince
It occurs to me that we don't really know that there weren't Princes on the Black family tapestry. After all, Harry wouldn't have really noticed the name, never having heard of any Princes before. And he never even noticed his own name, even though there were Potters within a couple generations of Sirius.
True. Or also they could have been ripped out.
Re: The Half-Blood Prince
Of course - even if the book WAS bought second-hand, we can kind of assume she went to Hogwarts then anyway, since that was the time period in which Hermione found her.
In my opinion, I believe she 'settled' for a muggle. After all. one can probably assume that there was an actual wizarding war at the same time as WWII - since Grindelwald and Dumbledore were involved. I'm not sure anything has ever been specified about whether young wizards were marching off to war or not, but IF they were, then I'm sure quite a few died.
Certainly muggle England had a shortage of healthy, available men to marry in the post-war era. And I think it's notable that Sev isn't born until at least 12 years after Eileen probably finished school. Having a child at age 30 or so was rather unusual at that time. I have kind of always wondered whether the street name Spinner's End wasn't supposed to be a clue that Eileen had almost given up on marrying. The word Spinster comes out of Spinner.
So, I tend to think that perhaps Eileen married a muggle because she couldn't find a wizard who would marry her. That two relatively plain people (Tobias and Eileen) finally settled on a mate who was somewhat less than they had hoped, before they each found themselves to old to be considered. -- Hwyla
Re: The Half-Blood Prince
That is true, Hwyla, if the book were exactly 50 years old. However, IIRC, the book was "about 50" years old. I felt that gave me a little wiggle room.
And, of course, we don't know that the book ever actually belonged to Eileen Prince. It may have simply been a secondhand purchase that Severus made while picking up his schoolbooks. (As someone who bought all her college books secondhand, I couldn't help wondering why the Weasleys were buying their kids new books. I suppose it would be hard to find secondhand copies of the latest Gilderoy Lockhart books, but you'd think some of those ones would be remaindered.)
Anyway, it helped me to use the war as a way for a pureblood witch to meet a muggle. It's hard (for me) to figure a plausible reason for Eileen to meet a muggle in the normal course of events.
Re: The Half-Blood Prince
As for why I don't think it would be during the war, you would usually say 'about 50' for almost 50 - but if it had been more than one would usually say 'over 50 years'
As for the Weasleys - they do purchase second-hand books. There's a passage where Ginny is spello-taping her book together (I think it was bk2?) It's one of the reasons I don't feel we can be certain the book was once his mother's. But even if it wasn't she must have gone to school at the time the book was published - otherwise Hermione would not have 'found' her. -- Hwyla
Re: The Half-Blood Prince
I read this passage last night and in fact it says "nearly fifty years old", i.e., slightly less (I'd read it as 47-49, but that's just a guess). This is at Christmas 1996 so that gives us a range of about 1947 to 1950. If it were 1945 that would be "just over fifty" or "about fifty", so it has to be postwar, although just a bit.
But it's also possible that the Princes' pureblood status was quite recent. As per Ernie Macmillan, a family that's been pure for only nine generations -- less than 300 years -- is something to brag about. If the first pureblood Prince was Eileen's grandfather or great-grandfather, any current Princes would be furious with her for throwing herself away on a Muggle.
That's assuming they were purebloodists, which I think they must have been, given Snape's nickname. If your mother was a Black who went slumming, you might call yourself The Half-Blood Black as a sort of ironic boast, because a Black is a pureblood almost by definition. But you wouldn't do it with a family of known "blood traitors" (there'd be nothing surprising about a half-blood Weasley or Longbottom).
Another point: Eileen went on living with a man who hated magic and made her miserable (and vice versa, presumably). Her son was dressed in his mother's castoffs and acted like he'd been raised by wolves. As I see it, either she had no support system, or any relatives who still kept in touch were too hopelessly eccentric to be of any help.
-L
While there are no Princes on the part of the Black family tree that Rowling revealed to us that part starts with Phineas Nigellus Black and his siblings. He could have easily have had cousins who had daughters, granddaughters, etc who married a Prince. But I am toying with canon compliant ideas of other ways in which Eileen could have been more closely related to someone familiar - anyone is invited to use them as plot bunnies if they are so inclined.
- Eileen was most probably born in the early 1930s. Suppose she had a brother, who married Miss Longbottom, the daughter of Harfang Longbottom and Callidora Black Longbottom (as depicted on the Black family tree). That would make this Mr Prince Gran Augusta's brother-in-law, and a great-uncle of Neville's. Great-uncle Algie Prince, the one who was so anxious about Neville's magical ability that he nearly drowned him and dropped him off a balcony. Can you see him as an uncle of Severus Snape?
- If Eileen was born in the early 1930s then her mother (of unknown maiden name, married name Prince) was probably born in the first decade of the 20th century. She could have been the sister of any of several women who married into the Black family: Melania McMillan (Sirius and Regulus' grandmother) or Irma Crabbe (their other grandmother), or even a possible wife of Marius Black the squib who was burned off the tapestry. Sirius could be Severus' second cousin.
- Alternately, Eileen's (older?) sister could have been the wife of Abraxas Malfoy, making Lucius and Severus first cousins.
- Or a younger sister of Eileen could have married an older brother of Arthur Weasley. Maybe that sister was present at Bill and Fleur's wedding. This would make some of the Weasley cousins also Severus' cousins, but he did not grow up with them becasue of age differences (the cousins' ages would be between the Marauders' cohort and Bill and Charlie's).
- Belvina Black Burke, daughter of Phineas Nigellus Black, born in 1886 had a daughter. Maybe Miss Burke (born somewhere around 1905- 1910 went on to marry a Mr Prince and had a daughter named Eileen. This would make Eileen a second cousin of Sirius' grandparents, as well as second cousin of Arthur Weasley, Neville's grandfather and Crouch Sr (making Severus a third cousin of Sirius, Regulus, Bellatrix, Andromeda, Narcissa, Frank Longbottom, Arthur's children, Barty Jr).
- Oryx
Snape and James as cousins?
Snape and James as cousins?
James was thinking about when Severus and his mother used to come and stay with his family whenever things got too rough with Tobias, and says "I always hated him; always with his head in a book, never interested in Quidditch or anything important." And neither acknowledged their blood relationship when at school, James had not even confided in Sirius that he and Snape were cousins.
It's here if anybody's interested in having a look:
http://www.thepetulantpoetess.com/viewst
It seems to me that the Wizarding population is so small that they are all hopelessly inbred. Perhaps they should start marrying Muggles to survive.
Alison
Re: Snape and James as cousins?
They have done, apparently; according to Ron in CoS, "Most wizards these days are half-blood anyway. If we hadn’t married Muggles we'd've died out."
[i]- Eileen was most probably born in the early 1930s. Suppose she had a brother, who married Miss Longbottom, the daughter of Harfang Longbottom and Callidora Black Longbottom (as depicted on the Black family tree). That would make this Mr Prince Gran Augusta's brother-in-law, and a great-uncle of Neville's. Great-uncle Algie Prince, the one who was so anxious about Neville's magical ability that he nearly drowned him and dropped him off a balcony. Can you see him as an uncle of Severus Snape?[/i]
Snape is most likely from the North of England - an area quite close to where the Longbottom's are probably from. Many think Spinners End is somewhere near Manchester, which is about 50 miles from Blackpool (with the pier Algie dropped Neville off).
I have speculated before on the possibility that Orion and Eileen might have dated (or at least been friends) at Hogwarts. IF Eileen really was in Slytherin, then she would certainly know Orion, since we are sure HE was a Slytherin.
With Eileen's heart being broken when Orion finally does as his family wants and marries his cousin (apparently something about getting the family home - #12 - back into HIS line in the family)