Castlevania Dungeon Forums
The Castlevania Dungeon Forums => General Castlevania Discussion => Topic started by: AxeLord on August 06, 2018, 09:47:24 PM
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http://www.familyecho.com/?p=START&c=jnzo9nnu5u&f=474193380380052727 (http://www.familyecho.com/?p=START&c=jnzo9nnu5u&f=474193380380052727)
Within this link the tree doth rest.
I spent ages on this, but it's important to realize that I don't claim to have made the "official" family tree. A lot of it is headcanon, my personal beliefs on how things played out, etc.. (The inclusion of both Sonia and Leon should have tipped you off to this).
There are 144 people here from Leon to Julius, many of whom are unnamed Belmonts or Belnades. I crammed as many "official" characters as I reasonably could in there - it's just about everybody who ever had the Belmont last name. The Belnades branch is sparse, but you'll find characters like Zouk and Charlotte if you look hard enough.
I operated under the following assumptions:
1.) Most people have kids around age 30.
2.) The ladies who married into the family took their husband's last names.
3.) "Fernandez" and "Belnades" are the same name; Camilla and Carrie's last names have been changed accordingly.
4.) Alucard aged, and then stopped aging at 20 for some reason.
Again, this is my family tree, not Konami's. I encourage you to make your own and show me what you think! Happy genealogy-ing.
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I remember coding this shit for hours back then: https://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Belmont_Family_Tree
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I see Richter as Juste's son and I'm out... Sorry. Same amount of time between Simon and Juste as there is Juste and Richter. Juste is Richter's Grandfather.
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I heard that Charlotte isn't related to the Belnades.
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For fuck's sake, Alucard is not the father of Trevor.
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Wow that reminded me of one I made ages ago
http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/CVPics6/familytree.gif (http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/CVPics6/familytree.gif)
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Doesn't one of those official Konami timelines (IGA era, of course) say that the Morris family sprouted out of the Belmonts (as in Belmont daughter married Morris husband, originating the Belmont-blooded Morris line) after Trevor, but before Christopher? So, it could be Trevor's daughter, or Trevor's granddaughter. Though, that's just something I recalled. I don't remember if it was in a official Japanese LoI guide or a CoD guide, but something like that.
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For fuck's sake, Alucard is not the father of Trevor.
Some things, like Dracula, just refuse to die.
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DragonSlayr81@
IGA did mentioned something to that extent.
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Doesn't one of those official Konami timelines (IGA era, of course) say that the Morris family sprouted out of the Belmonts (as in Belmont daughter married Morris husband, originating the Belmont-blooded Morris line) after Trevor, but before Christopher? So, it could be Trevor's daughter, or Trevor's granddaughter. Though, that's just something I recalled. I don't remember if it was in a official Japanese LoI guide or a CoD guide, but something like that.
It's all over the place. The LoI guide indeed says the Morris family split off from the Belmonts between Trevor and Christopher, but one version of the official time claims they split off after Richter, and there's also Japanese material from around the time of Bloodlines' release that claims John Morris is a descendant of Simon.
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It's all over the place. The LoI guide indeed says the Morris family split off from the Belmonts between Trevor and Christopher, but one version of the official time claims they split off after Richter, and there's also Japanese material from around the time of Bloodlines' release that claims John Morris is a descendant of Simon.
Okay, this line of thought intrigued me, so I dug out my old genealogy notes from a while back, and started a couple more hours of digging because can't stop won't stop.
So, given that in America, the concept of "old families" generally means well established since the 1700's to the early 1800's, it would be kind of weird (at least at first glance) to have the largely American Morris clan crop up a full 200-300 years earlier than that. Based on that assumption, I'd peg their historic emergence probably around Richter's time, perhaps a little later. It fits in with the American perception and timeline of Old Families, and since the Belmonts couldn't use the whip after/because of Richter, I'd say the integration of Belmont blood into the Morris family may have effectively served as a sort of genealogical Plan B.
However, it's entirely possible that the Belmonts married off a daughter or a lesser/illegitimate son to the ancestors of the Morris family, which, based on the history of the surname, also makes sense -- it's been around since the mid-1200's, and, like Belmont, derives from in and around Normandy, in France.
So, the Morris family may have been linked to the Belmonts around the late 15th or early 16th century as posited by the LoI guide, back when they were (probably) known as the St. Maurice family, which, in the real world, was apparently some manner of French nobility that became "Morris" after emigrating to England. Becoming English explains how the Morris family arrives in America: they were very likely colonists in the early days before the American Revolution, and likely headed west to Texas (where we later find Quincy is from) with the large push of Westward Expansion, which, by Quincy's time, had made enough new fortune in the Ranching business to be able to rub shoulders with the English elite and be a serious contender for the hand of Lucy Westenra in marriage. It's worth noting that the Victorian era London Elite is generally considered to be slightly more snobbish and exclusive than the New York City Elite, which if you know anything about the New York City Elite from the same period (Winthrops, Hearsts, Carnegies, etc.), is saying quite a lot. If you've made it to the point where you can rub shoulders and compete with them, you've damn well made it big.
Props to Iga, he also got Leon's timeline as an early Belmont spot-on -- the earliest records of Belmont as a family name are from around 1066, so it's highly likely that, assuming Castlevania's pre-LoI history closely resembles ours, Leon is either a first or second generation bearer of the name. The real-life Belmont clan was apparently related by some degree to William the Conqueror, which would explain Leon's nobility in-universe. Furthermore, Leon was a very popular name in France for centuries, his knightly colors are very French in design and color choice, and his features are as close to French as you can get with Ayami Kojima's art style... so I'm gonna go ahead and say he's probably French. The evidence does seem to fit this assertion.
We can also see a pattern in the countries associated with given names of various Belmonts: Leon (French), Ralph (Norman-French)/Trevor (British), Christopher (mostly French, but crops up basically everywhere), Soleiyu (French), Simon (like Christopher, basically everywhere in Christian Europe), Juste (French), and Richter (German). We can fairly determine that the family is largely a French one, with occasional external branches chiming in some influence.
I find this last bit particularly interesting because the geography of Castlevania isn't often discussed by the series, with only a few games having their specific settings stated beyond just "The Castle", but naming patterns like this can give a lot of background details about the surprisingly grand scope of the mythology.
It's also an interesting story: a French clan loses their noble title, heads pretty far east to Wallachia (predators tend to follow their prey and Wallachia def seems to have a super bad vampire infestation), settles, regains some manner of title almost 400 years later (thanks to the whole "saving the world from Dracula" deal), and then, after marrying with another noble clan, spreads back out across Europe and has links as far away as the New World, where they are still active over 600 years later.
Goddamn I love studying names and history.
EDIT & Noncanon bonus! Sonia is a predominantly French spelling of the name (as opposed to the Russian and Scandiavian "Sonya" and "Sonja" respectively), and she shares a lot of Leon's more obvious Western European phenotypes, though a lot of the precise details are lost with the low-budget anime art style employed in Legends. So even if LoI and SOTN never happened, the Belmonts seem to remain a predominantly French clan. So I thought that was neat.
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@Lumi: Awesome name origins analysis. I love reading your post.
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@Lumi: Awesome name origins analysis. I love reading your post.
Name origins and genealogy are some of my biggest passions for hobby research. :)
I first got into studying real history because of Soul Calibur II, studying the actual history that took place around the time SCII was supposedly set; needless to say that Castlevania does a much better job of staying historically accurate than other series, with it's diversions usually being "a giant castle hast mat'rializ'd ov'rnight wh're a giant castle very much hast nay business being presenteth!", or mistakenly placing something like the first Crusades just a couple years earlier than it should have started (the real one began in 1096 but is apparently well underway in 1094 in Castlevanialand if the narrator's comments are anything to go by). The errors are pretty easy to excuse because a) even people who know their shit professionally flub it occasionally, and 2) it's fascinating to imagine what might cause these "nudges" to happen.
It's truly amazing what you can deduce about the series from analyzing real world history and name analysis (even when the authors didn't put much active thought into it) because the human mind frequently isn't as random as we believe it is. Often things "just sound cool" to us because our subconscious links puzzle pieces together in the background without our knowledge.
Fitting those pieces together makes a fascinating pastime, and Castlevania has an utter wealth of such examinations to do.
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well it sure sheds truth that those damn developers sure dont give mothers more recognition and lead roles for the most part.
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@Lumi: I love Soul Calibur 2 too! (Now the theme song is stuck in my head)
You're right, the subconscious is a shocker! I also do that to other things like fantasy novels/movies and other video games (Assassin's Creed also has a wealth of stuff, but I quit after the renaissance, cuz I'm lazy).
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I see Richter as Juste's son and I'm out... Sorry. Same amount of time between Simon and Juste as there is Juste and Richter. Juste is Richter's Grandfather.
I always considered Juste as Richter's father, it may be because I find more interesting this way. He could have children in his mid forties. Lydie could have difficulty on getting pregnant, who knows...
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I always considered Juste as Richter's father, it may be because I find more interesting this way. He could have children in his mid forties. Lydie could have difficulty on getting pregnant, who knows...
I don't know I always saw him as his grandfather, as I feel like it works better, as the count would have not been seen for years, so it really racks up the tension.
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Juste is Richter's Grandfather.
Pretty much. People back in those days were getting married in their late teens and having children not long after the fact. There was no guarantee that anyone would be living a long and healthy life. The era when Juste lived was still very questionable in terms of good health, proper diet, access to medicine, keeping clean regularly, etc. It makes far more sense that Richter is Juste's grandson as it would be just too short a time period between HoD and RoB otherwise.
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http://www.familyecho.com/?p=START&c=jnzo9nnu5u&f=474193380380052727 (http://www.familyecho.com/?p=START&c=jnzo9nnu5u&f=474193380380052727)
I encourage you to make your own and show me what you think! Happy genealogy-ing.
My family tree consists of drug dealers, thugs and killers...
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My family tree consists of drug dealers, thugs and killers...
Castlevania: GTA?
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Castlevania: GTA?
Id play that in a heart beat.
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Castlevania: GTA?
Blasphemy...