Rowena Ravenclaw

[witch6]

i think none of the founders married each other. Reasons-

-we know for sure that after salzar left hogwarts he got married and had children because his bloodline was continued until voldemort. He had said that the chamber would be opened only when his true heir comes back to school so it couldn't be that Helena was his child. also. i don't think he was the kind of person who'd leave his family behind so he couldn't have married Helga either.

- Rowena couldn't have married godric because helena was nothing like godric. she was too scared to come back and visit her mother even when she was on her deathbed. also. if godric was her father he would have made sure that she returned back to them.

- as for helga and godric, well, it could be possible that they were married but i dont think they were. why? dunno.. just a feeling.

so, i think that all four of them might have had crushes on each other but nothing more than that. would love to know what others think of this theory!

[cmwinters]

Yes, English women do take their husband's surname, but I always thought she founded Hogwarts as a girl, and got married later, and just kept her surname during school for convieniance.

I think her founding it as a girl is unreasonable. They were "four of the most powerful witches and wizards of the age". Doing something of that magnitude was not likely to be something they did, quite frankly, until their mid-twenties at the VERY earliest, and more likely their mid forties to fifties. Yes, there could have been some disparity in age; you know, Salazar could have been 3 years older than Godric, and they were 8 and 5 years older than Rowena, who was 2 years older than Helga, perhaps, or whatever, but I really don't think they were children.

Quite frankly, it's not unlike being President. It's just not something you can do without some life experience behind you.

-we know for sure that after salzar left hogwarts he got married and had children because his bloodline was continued until voldemort. He had said that the chamber would be opened only when his true heir comes back to school so it couldn't be that Helena was his child. also. i don't think he was the kind of person who'd leave his family behind so he couldn't have married Helga either.

Slytherin saying his "one true heir" could have been subjective. If Salazar was a pureblood, and he was such a blood purist, would he really consider ANY half-blood his true heir? Yet a young Tom Riddle was able to get into the Chamber. I think this has more to do with personality and prejudice than purity of blood, unless you believe that NONE of Slytherins descendants went to Hogwarts. It doesn't appear that the Gaunts had enough money to go to school elsewhere, and there weren't any books around and I can't really see Marvolo teaching his kids.

So assuming Helena *was* his child, he could have not considered her his "heir" because she (presumably) didn't share his views. And if she were grown, leaving her wouldn't be like walking out on an infant, especially if things had gotten completely unbearable for everyone.

- Rowena couldn't have married godric because helena was nothing like godric. she was too scared to come back and visit her mother even when she was on her deathbed. also. if godric was her father he would have made sure that she returned back to them.

This argument annoys me greatly. No child is ever exactly like one parent or the other. Sometimes (in fact, frequently) they're not at all like EITHER parent.

The founders are deified enough without turning Godric into some super diety.

Can you even point to Albania on a map? (I can, as my husband is Albanian, but the vast majority of people can't). In the Middle Ages, it may as well have been China as southeast Europe as far as England was concerned. The world is a big place; Godric would have had to have known where she was to start with, which I sincerely doubt he knew.

And actually, Helena wouldn't have gone to hide in Albania. She would have gone to hide in Dalmatia as the name Albania wasn't even in use yet.

Beth: Strong arguments. 5 points. - awarded

[Phoebe Gruzelieur]

[B][SIZE="3"][FONT="Garamond"][COLOR="DarkGreen"]I think her founding it as a girl is unreasonable. They were "four of the most powerful witches and wizards of the age". Doing something of that magnitude was not likely to be something they did, quite frankly, until their mid-twenties at the VERY earliest, and more likely their mid forties to fifties. Yes, there could have been some disparity in age; you know, Salazar could have been 3 years older than Godric, and they were 8 and 5 years older than Rowena, who was 2 years older than Helga, perhaps, or whatever, but I really don't think they were children.

Hey, I didn't mean she was 12 or 13, I just meant when she was youngish (i.e. 22). But the thing is, everyone had really bad lifestyles in the Middle Ages, so they couldn't have waited until they were 40 because they'd be dead in a few years. I know this sounds melodramatic and morbid, but that's what it was like in those days!

Apart from that I agree, especially on Helena not being GG's daughter!

[cmwinters]

Hey, I didn't mean she was 12 or 13, I just meant when she was youngish (i.e. 22). But the thing is, everyone had really bad lifestyles in the Middle Ages, so they couldn't have waited until they were 40 because they'd be dead in a few years. I know this sounds melodramatic and morbid, but that's what it was like in those days!

Apart from that I agree, especially on Helena not being GG's daughter!

Well . . . according to Jo, wizards have a much longer lifespan than Muggles. So I would assume this would hold for the Founders as well, even though very little of that statement is supported. Headmaster Dumbledore died at about 130 (even though she'd already said he was 150), and Professor Marchbanks, who examined him on his OWLs, had to have been about 20 years older than Professor Dumbledore.

So I'd still say that the Founders would have been at least in their 40s.

[bling_baby]

Hey, I didn't mean she was 12 or 13, I just meant when she was youngish (i.e. 22). But the thing is, everyone had really bad lifestyles in the Middle Ages, so they couldn't have waited until they were 40 because they'd be dead in a few years. I know this sounds melodramatic and morbid, but that's what it was like in those days!

Apart from that I agree, especially on Helena not being GG's daughter!

It's true, witches live longer than muggles. And even if this wasn't so, muggle witches married at the age of 18 - even younger - so you still cannot really say that she created Hogwarts before she was married.

And Helena and her mother aren't that alike either. If Helena was truely wise, she would have senced the dangers of Tom Riddle rather than being fooled by his flattery. I really don't think you can use personalities to decide who is whose daughter. Also - even if you could - if Helena and Godric did not truely get a chance to know one another, she would not be raised like him.

[Phoebe Gruzelieur]

Yeah, but (on ages) it's not just age span. Everyone was malnourished. There were plaugues all the time. The houses were filthy. The were no police men. They didn't have medicine (or, not much of it). I don't think anyone quite appriciates how disgusting the Middle Ages were.

[cmwinters]

Okay, that is not entirely true. yes, it's true they didn't have indoor plumbing and yes it's true that they didn't understand medicine the way we do today. But in the Founders time, there weren't any plagues going on. The Plague of Justinian hit around 541 and hit about every 25 years after that but *disappeared* after 750. Even assuming that the Plague of Justinian and the Bubonic Plague or Black Death are the same disease (which is not an entirely unwarranted assumption), it did not come to Europe again until 1370.

And further, this has little bearing on the wizard populace as the Black Plague was a Muggle disease. It's quite probable that the percentage of wizards to Muggles increased rather dramatically after said plagues, but this did not effect the Founder's time.

Also, when you calculate life-expectancy over time, you have to realise some things. One, infant and child mortality was very high for very many people in medieval times. It's high in many nations *now*. And further, an awful lot of women died in childbirth. People see an "average life expectancy" of 30 and think that if you lived to 31 you were an anomaly; that's not *exactly* the case. To quote Wikipedia directly, "if you survived childhood you could expect to live into your old age in any time throughout history".

Having said all that, remember that even though indoor plumbing was not widely in use in Europe during the Founder's time, it had existed for many centuries prior to that, and that Slytherin's basilisk was able to get around the sewage pipes.

So I think it's a reasonable assumption that the "world" the Muggles were living in was entirely different from the "world" the wizarding populace was living in, and I still stand by my statement that it's unlikely that the Founders established the school in their early 20s.
_____________

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#History

(Who says fanfiction doesn't teach you anything?!)

[bertiebott12]

Thank you to everyne in the discussion. Right now, I am trying to find a good picture of her, from you alls' description. I will edit my post with it, once I'm done.

Slight Spoiler Alert

Here are a few. They are the cards that I like most.





I also LOVE the picture of the diadem.


What do you all think?

[Phoebe Gruzelieur]

I love the pictures! None of them are quite how I imagined her, but we can't have it all, can we?

[bling_baby]

Same. I have drawn my idea of her, but I can't quite get hold of a scanner. I'll post it here when I can