#between their poverty/starvation and the destruction of twelve

[porchwood]

ToastedTHG: Extended Families in Twelve

[Gale] could be my brother. Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same gray eyes. But we’re not related, at least not closely. Most of the families who work the mines resemble one another in this way. (p. 8)

“I thought he was your cousin or something. You favor each other.” (p. 84)

In a district of 8,000 people, where new blood hasn’t been introduced in who knows how long (unless we’re talking about Peacekeeper-fathered children, in which case I have a whooooole can of worms we could open up), I find it inconceivable (pun somewhat intended) that everyone wouldn’t be at least distantly related to everyone else. So it’s curious but not surprising that Katniss throws in that “at least not closely” bit (though they simultaneously deny that they’re cousins in MJ, which I’d forgotten), and I’m assuming that she physically resembles Gale in more than coloring.

I’ve never understood degrees of cousin-ship (”once removed,” et al), but my personal headcanon is that Katniss and Gale have a common great-great-grandfather (Galen Greenbrier, if anyone cares), whose two daughters produce the Hawthorne-Everdeen fork. (Aisling’s daughter Wren is Hazelle’s mother, Elspeth’s daughter Ashpet is Mr. Everdeen’s mother. Or, Jack and Hazelle’s grandmothers were sisters.) I like the idea that Gale’s mom and Katniss’s dad were the hunting cohort, if you will (I actually think Hazelle was a snare-master rather than a bow-hunter, but anyway-), especially as Hazelle and Katniss seem to share some commonalities and Katniss holds Hazelle in a certain esteem.

But aside from the Hawthornes and Everdeens, other residents of Twelve must be related - especially among the smaller merchant class - and I’m curious if others have meta’ed this or what headcanons they’ve formed. Everyone must be aunt/uncle/cousin to someone. Mortality rates were obviously very high in Twelve, but I find it difficult - no, impossible - to believe that no one has living grandparents and everyone’s parent was an only child, which raises all kinds of interesting questions:

Are Mrs. Everdeen’s parents still alive? Did they have other children? Are any of her immediate family still alive - and if so, where were they when Mr. Everdeen was killed? If they were still around and simply refused to help her/the family, why doesn’t Katniss ever mention her merchant grandparents/aunts/uncles, even bitterly? She was so desperate on the day of the bread scene, she would’ve surely appealed to them if they were still living. (There’s a reference to the apothecary in CF that I believe has to be a glitch on Collins’ part, unless it’s been pared down to a basic dispensary by that point - just a place to buy bandages and rubbing alcohol.)

My headcanon: The Ebberfelds (the apothecary couple) only had one child, Alyssum (Mrs. Everdeen), as they had they best knowledge/resources to control their number of children, and they both died fairly soon after their daughter ran away to the Seam, at which point the apothecary shop went defunct.

Did Mr. Everdeen have siblings? Or aunts and uncles, giving Katniss actual Seam cousins??

My headcanon: (does anyone care who hasn’t heard this already?) Jack (Mr. Everdeen)’s father Asa and newborn sister Laurel died when Jack was eight; his mother Ashpet died just after his final reaping. Fun twist: Asa had three little sisters, one of whom married a Tolliver and fathered Micah, who became Rooba’s third husband and fathered Jude and Jenny before dying himself.

Less pressingly but equally intriguing: what about Peeta’s extended family? Grandparents, cousins, aunts/uncles?

(Does anyone actually want to hear my headcanons on this? :( Because it’s loads of interesting, in my humble opinion, but pure speculation.) Basically, Peeta has an aunt - Rooba - and four cousins on his mother’s side and a bachelor uncle, Marek, on his father’s. Peeta’s beloved paternal grandmother Lydda died when he was little, and I’m not quite sure what to do with uncanny Grandma Elske in the canonverse. I’ve assumed she’s dead but I don’t think I’ve ever said so outright, which raises possibilities...) 

In a harsh district like Twelve, I think remarriage after the death of a spouse/ blended families would be quite common, especially when it’s so difficult (maybe impossible without tesserae) to keep a family with only one working parent. I’m a little astonished that Hazelle didn’t remarry, since she’s so dang practical and had three sons (and a daughter about to arrive) at the time of her husband’s death.

Which of course, is (partly) why I headcanon Rooba with four kids and three husbands. ;)