Ask Us Anything!

[alt_moderator]

The cast thread is filling up rapidly, and while we don't have to fuss about comment collapse, it is getting difficult to navigate...

So here's a new post, where we're asking YOU to ask US: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

Comments

Sandovals and Squibs: The Untold Story

[lapin_agile]

My turn to apologise: your questions hit at a really busy time, but I've taken way longer to get to this than I hoped.

What follows comes from Lana's initial character questionaire (a character-building tool we used) and from conversations later in game-planning as additional backstory became necessary or simply emerged in play. With respect to Squibbism, the Sandoval family history implies certain things about heredity and in-breeding among very old magical communities (in their case, Spain's wizarding society).

Family:
Parents: Inigo (age 64) and Isobel (Torralva, age 37) Sandoval
Sibling(s)? Orion (age 16), Honoria (age 11) *This information dates from Lana's final year of school, when she was 17.
Other significant family members: Uncles (including Eugènio and Octavio), aunts, cousins (including Lana's favourite, Ibbie [Isobella]), and (maternal) grandparents, who live variously in Barcelona, Madrid, Antwerp, Dijon, Toulouse, Paris, Brussels, Milan and Genoa. One of her cousins, Eduardo (age 32), came to New London when her parents did. He's the son of her father's favourite brother, Eugènio. Eduardo married Catalina Navarro, and they now have several young children.) Lana's paternal grandparents, Alberto and Luisa Sandoval (ages 88 and 83, respectively), also live in London, though they retain their fine old home in Barcelona. Of course, they’ve not been able to spend time there since the wards went up. [For more family details, see: http://alt-lana.dreamwidth.org/25619.html]
Pet names Lana uses: Papa, Mama, Abuelita and Abueloberto.
...snip...
Any secrets?: Lana has, on the handful of occasions when she’s had the opportunity, trailed Bellatrix Lestrange into cloakrooms and ladies’ rooms and dress shops and restaurants in order to observe her unawares. A more important secret is that her family includes squibs. Her father’s first marriage produced a whole series on non-magical children, the first two of whom were kept at home until they reached school age and had manifested no magic. By the time the second child reached age 11 with no sign of ability, Inigo Sandoval had tried everything money and influence could buy: all six of his children had been tested and treated by all known means and none of them had a stitch of magic in them. In a fit of pique, he packed them all off to an institution and separated from his wife, who died shortly after of ‘grief’. Sometime later, he married Lana’s mother, who is a trophy wife chosen not only for her beauty but for her family’s renowned magical prowess—a family of performers, whose feats of daring and magical spectacle have been famous in Spain for hundreds of years. And to Sandoval’s enormous relief, their first born child manifested her magic as an infant, flying her toys around her crib to entertain herself. They promptly had a second child, a boy, who also manifested his magic at an extraordinarily early age, but with the third child, there was no such blessing. The wait was agonising, and again, Sandoval hired every specialist he could find to discern whether the child was another squib or a late-bloomer, and all attempts were made to awaken any latent magic in the child, but every test told the same dire tale: the child was without doubt a squib. In 1981, when the family moved to London, that child was sent to the same asylum as its unhappy half-siblings. In the spirit of starting fresh that marked their decision to emigrate to New London, the Sandovals tried once again to have a child, and Honoria was born. Like her sister, Lana, and brother, Orion, Honoria showed her magic early, but she proved difficult in other ways, and, in any case, her mother had decided that she could not face the strain of and uncertainty of bearing any more children with Sandoval, so the couple agreed that they would leave well-enough alone rather than press their luck another time.

More on the Squibs (What does Honoria know when it comes up in Year 7?):
Honoria knows the name of the squib child her own mother had because her mother kept her name and birthdate inscribed inside an emerald ring she rarely wears, but which Honoria used to puzzle over whenever she had a chance to be alone in her mother's dressing room. That child's name is/was Inés Sandoval. She was born 8 October 1977. That means Inigo Sandoval packed her off to the institution as a lost cause when she was only four years old. 0.o

I think it's more powerful if Honoria has no idea what the names of her half siblings (Inigo's first six children) are/were. She should, however, have got the bare details of the story from her uncle, Eduardo, who lives in NL and immigrated along with her parents. There were six children by Inigo's first wife, Valeria. Honoria knows that Inigo 'set her aside'; that she went away somewhere; and that she died shortly after of 'grief'.

Sidenote: Honoria believes that her grandmother, Luisa (she calls her Abuelita), keeps a picture of Valeria Sandoval in her dressing room (though Honoria would admit it doesn't make a lot of sense that Luisa Sandoval would keep a picture of her disgraced daughter-in-law, and it's completely possible that it's just a story Lana and Orion made up to scare her). Anyway, that picture has always scared Honoria. (What Honoria doesn't know: Lana's boggart looks like the woman in that picture, whom Lana really does believe to be her father's first wife.)

Those are the backstory facts we played from. Yes, Inès Sandoval, Honoria and Lana's sister, was really a squib. She was rejected by their father as defective when she was only four, which would be very early to give up on a child, except that Mr Sandoval believed himself an expert on such tragedies by then and had fierce confidence in the experts who had examined his children. He was, perhaps, quicker to cast the child aside and move on because this latest squib suggested that the earlier failures were not all the fault of his first wife's magical feebleness, as he'd wished to believe.

While I don't mean to imply that Squibs can only happen in old families where the magic is waning alongside or because of the genetic flaws that arise from inbreeding, I certainly applied that logic to the Sandovals' story, and used it to supply Lana with deep, unacknowledged anxieties that intensify her commitment to the Protector's pureblood ideology. She was carrying the flag for her family, as it were, to demonstrate the virility of their blood and the strength of their magic: she was not going disappoint her father. (Because that thought was utterly terrifying.)

Honoria's response to the pressure of living up to Sandoval standards was... rather different.

Re: Sandovals and Squibs: The Untold Story

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you so much for including some of the original character notes! This is incredible!

I feel a little stupid for not considering the idea that severe inbreeding might play a part. In which case, the oldest, strictest Pureblood families are actually at greater risk of producing squibs. It seems so obvious when you think about it!