Baudelaire family

"Baudelaires" redirects here. For the French poet, see Charles Baudelaire.

The Baudelaire family (pronounced /ˌboʊdəˈlɛər/ boh-də-lair) is one of several prominent fictional families created by American author Lemony Snicket for his novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, are the protagonists of the series.

Concept and creation

In a 2010 video interview with The Independent, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) said:

It may interest people to know that my sister…was always very good with kind of mechanical devices, where I was kind of hopeless and more of a reader, kind of like Klaus. And then I always think Sunny reminds me of all babies, because really all babies do is speak unintelligibly and eat things.^[1]

Snicket named the Baudelaires after French macabre poet Charles Baudelaire.^[2] The French surname Baudelaire (pronounced /ˌboʊdəˈlɛər/ in English), historically also recorded as Badelaire and Bazelaire,^[3] refers to a short sword or knife used as a heraldic blazon: Thomas Nugent, in his Pocket-Dictionary of the French and English Languages (1808), translated baudelaire as a "short, broad, and curved sword" used in heraldry;^[4] Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, in his Encyclopædia of Antiquities (1825), described the baudelaire as a "little portative knife" used as a medieval English blazon;^[5] W. T. Cosgrave described it as a "short and broad backsword, being towards the point like a Turkish scymitar".^[6] The French word baudelaire comes from Medieval Latin bādelārius, bādelāris, or bādārellus,^[3][7] meaning a "kind of short sword" (ensis brevis species).^[3]

Despite the apparently Romantic origin of "Baudelaire", Snicket stated in February 2007 that "the Baudelaires are Jewish! I guess we would not know for sure but we would strongly suspect it," citing their "manner" as an indicator.^[8] Snicket elaborated: "I think there is something naturally Jewish about unending misery. […] I'm Jewish so, by default, the characters I create are Jewish, I think."^[8]

Family members

Bertrand Baudelaire

Bertrand Baudelaire is a character in the novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. He is the father of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, the husband of Beatrice Baudelaire, and a member of V.F.D.. Throughout the series, the children remember anecdotes about their father, such as him cooking or at a dinner party.

As a child Bertrand was friends with Beatrice (his future wife).^[9] When Beatrice arrived early to her first day of V.F.D. training, Lemony Snicket complimented her for her punctuality, which embarrassed her because she was with Bertrand, the future Duchess of Winnipeg, and "others".^[9]

As a member of V.F.D., Bertrand is known to have helped in the training of the volunteer feline detectives (Mortmain Mountain lions).^[10] Bertrand was also good friends with Dewey Denouement, and Dewey mentioned that the two liked to recite an American humorist poem of the nineteenth century composed by John Godfrey Saxe together.

Count Olaf implicates Bertrand as a co-conspirator in the murder of his own parents. At the outset of the series, Bertrand perished when the Baudelaire Mansion was destroyed in a fire.

Beatrice Baudelaire

Main article: Beatrice Baudelaire

The mother of the Baudelaire Orphans. It is unknown if she, or her husband Bertrand are descended from the Snicket family at all. If she is descended from the Snicket Family, it may explain why she and Lemony met when they were children. Lemony was in love with her.

In The Penultimate Peril, Kit recalls seeing the Baudelaires' mother at an opera called La Forza del Destino, and that she was wearing "a red shawl with long feathers along the edges". The elder Baudelaires also recall that when their mother was pregnant with Sunny, she would always spend most of her time lounging in the Baudelaire library, and ask their father to fetch lemonade and pumpernickel toast, or moving the pillows underneath her around, so she would always feel comfortable. Their father would also play some of their mother's favorite pieces on the phonograph, and sometimes she would try to stand up and dance along to the piece and make silly faces at the elder Baudelaires while they were watching from the doorway. They also tell Kit about staying at the Hotel Preludio.

Violet Baudelaire

Violet Baudelaire is the first child. She is best known for her exceptional inventing skills. She is fourteen at the beginning of the series and turns fifteen in The Grim Grotto. Violet's siblings are Klaus Baudelaire, age twelve, turning thirteen in "The Vile Village", and Sunny Baudelaire, described as an infant throughout the series. Violet and her siblings adopt Kit Snicket's baby daughter after Kit dies in child birth, whom they name Beatrice Baudelaire, after their own mother.Her sister,Sunny almost died until wasabi saved her in "The Grim Grotto" as they find her birthday cake.

Klaus Baudelaire

Main article: Klaus Baudelaire

Klaus Baudelaire is Bertrand and Beatrice Baudelaire's second child. He is an avid reader and a good researcher. He is identified by his prominent glasses. Early in the series, it is said that he and Sunny Baudelaire did not enjoy each other's company, but by the middle of The Bad Beginning both he and Sunny could not be torn apart. He is twelve at the beginning of the series and turns thirteen in The Vile Village, on June 12. .

Sunny Baudelaire

Main article: Sunny Baudelaire

Sunny is the youngest of the Baudelaire siblings (before Beatrice Baudelaire was adopted). She is very fond of biting things and has unusually large teeth for her age. In The Carnivorous Carnival, it shows that she develops interest and talent in cooking. She speaks unintelligibly most of the time and only her older siblings can understand her, though towards the end of the series her speech becomes easier to understand.

Beatrice Baudelaire (the Baudelaires' adoptive sister)

Beatrice Baudelaire is a fictional character in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. She is the daughter of Kit Snicket,^[11] who dies after giving birth, making Lemony Snicket's niece yet another orphan. Baby Beatrice is adopted by the Baudelaire orphans, hence the use of the surname Baudelaire. At age one, "she looks very much like her mother," according to Chapter Fourteen.

The younger Beatrice was named per tradition, which was to name the baby after a deceased friend or loved one [1]. This was why Violet Baudelaire was almost named Lemony- after her mother's thought-to-be deceased ex-fiancee. The final connection in hearing the baby utter her own name links together the clues that Lemony Snicket was always in love with the Baudelaire orphans' mother, who he dedicates every book to.

The last word of the last volume, Chapter Fourteen, is "Beatrice," uttered by baby Beatrice herself.^[11]

In the Beatrice Letters, which is set ten years later than the main series, the second Beatrice Baudelaire is now a 10-year-old girl in search of her uncle, Lemony Snicket, and the Baudelaire orphans, who have apparently disappeared.^[12] The young girl writes Lemony Snicket a series of letters asking him to answer her questions about the Baudelaire orphans. "I must have at least twelve," she writes. (And there are twelve books before The End.)

Beatrice writes one letter on a typewriter in her uncle's empty small, dusty office, on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings in the city. The office overlooks an empty lot where green sprouts are emerging from the remnants of a burned building. A map on the wall contains pinned up notes marking locations where Lemony Snicket might be found. Another of Beatrice's letters is written from a cave where Lemony Snicket has been hiding. She remarks that it is "a miserable place – drafty, bat-infested, and decorated with hideous wallpaper."

Another letter is written sometime later in the year, while the second Beatrice is sitting in her business letter writing class in the secretarial school that isn't really a secretarial school. The implication is that Beatrice has found her way to the VFD training school that her mother and uncle also once attended. However, Lemony Snicket still does not want to see his niece and is actively running away from her.

In her fourth letter, Beatrice mentions that she has shadowed Lemony Snicket from the library, to the park, as he strolled along the edge of a nearby pond, and made a mad dash for the bus. By the time she caught a rickshaw, followed him back to his dreary office building and "managed to pick the lock on the front door," he had already made his way up several flights and she could hear him wheezing from the climb. She knocks on his office door but he refuses to answer her.

A fifth letter is written an undetermined amount of time later, after the second Beatrice has set up her own office on the fourteenth floor of the Rhetorical Building, Lemony Snicket's dreary office building. From this office she writes yet another letter to her elusive uncle. She drops it into a small metal tube, drills a hole through the floor, and drops the metal tube through the hole onto Lemony Snicket's desk in the office below. She begs him again to meet her and answer her questions and vows not to rest until she has found the Baudelaire orphans. "I owe my life to them," she writes.

The sixth letter is a notecard inscribed "Beatrice Baudelaire, Baticeer Extraordinaire." But Beatrice has apologized about "embarrassing him in front of his friends". This could mean that Beatrice the first wrote the letter. She sends the card in the care of a waiter to Lemony Snicket as he is drinking a root beer float. If he doesn't want to meet her, she writes, he needs only to rip up the card and she'll go away and never approach him again. The notecard in the book is intact, which implies that Lemony Snicket has finally met with his niece.

Lemony Snicket explains that, in referencing the older Beatrice, "Because I loved her so much ... it never occurred to me that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire." He decides to join his niece's letters together with those written by and about the first Beatrice, in hope of making a coherent whole of the story. "Strange as it may seem," he writes to his editor in the final letter, "I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily."

Extended family

Relationships are listed in relationship to the Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny. Relationships formed by adopting Beatrice are not listed here, but would include all members of the extended Snicket family and all relatives of Dewey Denouement. For further possibilities, see Snicket family#Family tree.

• Count Olaf, either the Baudelaires' third cousin four times removed or (more plausibly) their fourth cousin three times removed.^[13] Therefore:
  • Count Olaf's father (Oliver), either the Baudelaires' second cousin five times removed or their third cousin four times removed. It may be implied that he was murdered by Bertrand Baudelaire, Beatrice Baudelaire, and Lemony Snicket.
  • Count Olaf's mother(Olivia) , either the Baudelaires' second cousin five times removed or their third cousin four times removed. It may be implied that she was murdered by Bertrand Baudelaire, Beatrice Baudelaire, and Lemony Snicket.
• Montgomery (Monty) Montgomery, the Baudelaire's first cousin-in-law once removed (or more specifically, Bertrand's cousin's wife's brother).^[14] Therefore:
  • Bertrand's unnamed cousin, the Baudelaires' first cousin once removed.
  • Montgomery's unnamed sister, the Baudelaires' first cousin-in-law once removed.
• Josephine Anwhistle, the Baudelaires' second cousin-in-law (or more specifically, second cousin's sister-in-law).^[15] This implies that Josephine has a sibling (and does not refer to Ike's sibling, Gregor). Therefore:
  • Isaac "Ike" Anwhistle, the Baudelaires' second cousin's sister's-in-law husband.
  • Gregor Anwhistle, the Baudelaires' second cousin's sister's-in-law brother-in-law.
  • unnamed second cousin
  • Josephine's unnamed sibling, the Baudelaires' second cousin-in-law.
  • Mrs. Anwhistle, the Baudelaires' second cousin's sister's-in-law mother-in-law (or more specifically, Ike and Gregor's mother). She is described as having only one eyebrow and one ear.^[16]
• Elwyn, the Baudelaires' uncle (whether he is maternal or paternal is not specified). He raised pigs, in a reference to E. B. White (whose first name was Elwyn) and his book Charlotte's Web.^[17]
• Mr. Fagin, the Baudelaires' nineteenth cousin (his name is presumably a reference to Mr. Fagin in Oliver Twist). He refused to become the Baudelaires' legal guardian for fear of Count Olaf.^[18]

Baudelaire mansion

The Baudelaire mansion, the former home of the Baudelaire family, was burned down in an apparent arson. The movie based on the series implies that this was carried out by Count Olaf using a massive refracting lens. The Baudelaire parents are said to have died in the blaze leaving Violet, Klaus, and Sunny orphaned.

The house is connected by a tunnel to 667 Dark Avenue, the home of Jerome Squalor and formerly Esmé Squalor. The purpose of this passageway was possibly to direct members of the secret organization V.F.D. to safe places before the schism. This passage is likely the reason Jerome Squalor was urged by Jacques Snicket to buy the penthouse of 667 Dark Avenue and to never ever sell it. For the same reason, Jacques Snicket urged Jerome Squalor not to marry Esmé.

In Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, in an excerpt from The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill, written by Sir, and mentioned in The Miserable Mill as one of the few books in the Lucky Smells Lumbermill library, it is revealed that Lucky Smells Lumbermill supplied many buildings in its construction – including the Baudelaire, Snicket and Quagmire mansions – with its special "emerald lumber".

In the film, the Baudelaire Mansion is situated in 28 Prospero Place, Boston, Massachusetts.

Baudelaire fortune

The Baudelaire parents left an enormous fortune behind when they perished in the fire that destroyed the Baudelaire orphan's home. The orphans were to inherit the money when Violet came of age. When Count Olaf became the orphan's guardian, he concocted a plot to steal the fortune by marrying Violet. His plan was foiled by the Baudlaires, and throughout the series he continued to hatch plans to steal the fortune with the help of his theatre troupe and disguises. None of his schemes ever succeeded, and he never got ahold of the fortune, as he died on the island in The End because of the Medusoid Mycelium. It is unknown if the Baudelaires ever did inherit the fortune.

The fire

The fire which killed Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire was the starting point for the first book of the series, The Bad Beginning. While it has not been explicitly stated whether the fire was accidental or the result of arson, Snicket has several times hinted that someone else was at the Baudelaire mansion when the fire started. In letter correspondence between Mr. Snicket and the Vineyard of Fragrant Grapes the Sebald code is applied in The Unauthorized Autobiography and says something like, "Hello, if you are still alive watch out" and then something roughly indicating, "If you get married here, the count will burn you and your wife". The count is supposedly Count Olaf. This is a probable explanation as to who burned down the mansion, but has not been confirmed. In The Wide Window when Mr. Poe is listing the things Olaf is wanted for, he says, "The Lake Lachrymose Police Department will be happy to capture a known criminal wanted for fraud, murder, and the endangerment of children," and Count Olaf adds, "and arson." This implies that Count Olaf has been responsible for at least one fire. However, he cryptically implies that it wasn't him when, after the Baudelaires accuse him of murdering their parents, he asks "Is that what you think?". Sunny replies with "We know it."

Other characters, such as Duncan, Isadora and Quigley Quagmire have lost parents in similar fires, and members of V.F.D. are logical suspects.

In the movie version of the first three books, during the time when Olaf is forcing Violet to marry him, Klaus finds a giant magnifying glass which focuses the light. He finds that it is a clear shot to the house, indicating that Olaf used this glass as a method of arson.

Quigley indicated that he was the survivor of a fire and not Mr. or Mrs. Baudelaire. Lemony Snicket has said, at different times, that Beatrice and Bertrand are both dead.

It is possible that the fire mentioned in the hospital records was actually the Quagmire fire, and that the survivor referred to was, in fact, Quigley. However, it might have referred to Lemony Snicket himself, as he matched the description of the man whose face was unseen, and he is still alive but at large.

In The Carnivorous Carnival, when the Hook-Handed Man says that one of the parents is alive, Lemony Snicket says that the statement is not true. However, this could be taken several ways: i.e. it could be that they are both dead, or that they are both alive. But Lemony Snicket also indicates that Beatrice Baudelaire had died, especially in his dedications in the beginnings in each book. He also explicitly states at the end of the tenth book that Bertrand Baudelaire 'will never rise again'.

Poison darts

The Penultimate Peril also opens up more possibilities about the Baudelaire parents' past. Kit Snicket tells the children about a night that she attended an opera (La forza del destino) with their parents and handed them a box of poison darts before being seen by Esmé Squalor. Later in the book Count Olaf reveals that his parents were killed by poison darts and that he has good reason to hate the Baudelaires (obviously indicating that the Baudelaire parents were the ones who murdered his parents). This would explain Olaf's grudge against the family, his motive for burning down the Baudelaire mansion (as many believe he did), and possibly also why he became a villain in the first place. None of this is ever confirmed in the book, however.

One of the 13 Shocking Secrets You'll Wish You Never Knew About Lemony Snicket states that Lemony helped Beatrice to commit a serious crime before her death, which can possibly be the murder of Olaf's parents. Another reveals that Snicket is wanted for arson. However, in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, he mentions that he knows of other people starting fires, although he himself did not. There is a possibility that he is only reported to committed arson, and actually was framed.

In The End, Count Olaf, a known arsonist, refuses to confirm or deny the charge that he was responsible for the death of the Baudelaire parents and tells the Baudelaires that they know nothing.

See also

Lemony Snicket portal

• Violet Baudelaire
• Klaus Baudelaire
• Sunny Baudelaire
• Beatrice Baudelaire
• Snicket family
• Quagmire family
• Snicket family

References

1. ^ Woodroof, James (January 19, 2010). "Your questions for Lemony Snicket". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/your-questions-for-lemony-snicket-1864735.html. Retrieved January 23, 2010. 
2. ^ McMahon, Regan (October 13, 2006). "Lemony Snicket fans rejoice that 'The End' arrives today". San Francisco Chronicle. http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-10-13/entertainment/17317252_1_lemony-snicket-harpercollins-children-s-books-first-book/2. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} Carpentier, Pierre; Charles du Fresne du Cange (1766). Glossarium Novum ad Scriptores Medii Ævi, cum Latinos Tum Gallicos. Paris. p. 418. http://books.google.com/books?id=qn4-AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false. 
4. ^ Nugent, Thomas (1808). The New Pocket-Dictionary of the French and English Languages. London: J. Mawman. p. 36. http://books.google.com/books?id=xMsDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false. 
5. ^ Fosbroke, Thomas Dudley (1825). Encyclopædia of Antiquities and Elements of Archaeology, Classical and Medieval. London: John Nichols & Son. p. 799. http://books.google.com/books?id=zWQUAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false. 
6. ^ Froissart, John (1839). Chronicles; or, England, France, Spain, and the Adjoining Countries. London: Willam Smith. p. 662. http://books.google.com/books?id=jMkRAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false. 
7. ^ Finch, A. J. (1997). "The Nature of Violence in the Middle Ages: An Alternative Perspective". Historical Research LXX (173): 267. doi:10.1111/1468-2281.00043. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119157587/PDFSTART. 
8. ^ ^{a b} Nadine, Epstein (February 2007). "The Jewish Secrets of Lemony Snicket". Moment. http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2007/2007-02/200702-Handler.html. 
9. ^ ^{a b} LS to BB #5, The Beatrice Letters
10. ^ The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition
11. ^ ^{a b} Snicket, Lemony (2006). The End. A Series of Unfortunate Events. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-441016-1. 
12. ^ Snicket, Lemony (2006). The Beatrice Letters. A Series of Unfortunate Events. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060586583. 
13. ^ p. 15, The Bad Beginning
14. ^ p. 6, The Reptile Room
15. ^ p. 5, The Wide Window
16. ^ p. 48, The Wide Window
17. ^ p. 39, The Austere Academy
18. ^ p. 10, The Vile Village