the parents' will question

[M David Steel]

So at the end of the first book, Mr.Poe told the children their parents' will said they must be raised by a relative, so they couldn't live with justice strauss, but later on they lived with people/had people put in charge of them, who clearly were not relatives, so what do you make of it?

[ghostie]

they probably ran out of relatives. so the social workers did the normal protocol by finding another home for them (and another, and another).

[The Duchess]

Maybe it actually said "VFD members" but they weren't allowed to find out.

[Hermes]

I don't think it's clear that these people were not relatives. The guardians who don't have any stated relationship are Sir and (probably) Jerome, but they can perfectly well have been distant cousins. After this, Mr Poe tries to get their nineteenth cousin, MR Fagin, to take them, and when he refuses they are sent to VFD. Now, it's true that at that point they could have been sent to Justice Strauss, but bear in mind they wanted to go to VFD, to investigate the mystery of its name.

[Dante]

Maybe Justice Strauss stopped being available at some point - she was too locked up in a high court case to be asked, or some perfunctory explanation like that. I think there are other viable arguments that you could use, though. Prufrock Prep. was explicitly a stopgap whilst Mr. Poe tried to find other homes for the Baudelaires, and it was never meant to be a permanent home. Sir offered to take in the Baudelaires as part of a business arrangement, so you can compare that to TAA as a stopgap, too - it wasn't a formal adoption and thus not subject to the same rules. Jerome was, at least, a friend of the family, whereas Justice Strauss had no connection to the Baudelaires. So there are excuses you can come up with.

[facelesscreature]

Here's a theory:

The Baudelaire's will said their children must be raised in "the most convenient way possible." Since their parents were VFD members, they meant that their children must be raised by VFD members too. With this theory, Justice Strauss would not be a VFD member. However everyone else (until TVV), would be.
In TPP, it certainly implies that everyone else except for Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor are VFD members. It it unclear if Mr. Poe is though.

[ghostie]

I was under the impression that Jerome was a member...

[Hermes]

Jacques's letter to Jerome in TUA shows that he was not at that time a member of VFD: Jacques reveals there for the first time that he is a member of a secret organisation (though unfortunately Jerome never got the letter). In TPP he - like Strauss - is described as a member of VFD in a way: they have become volunteers by their efforts to help the Baudelaires. But it's possible that Esme was a member (on the bad side), though the evidence is unclear.

I do have difficulty seeing Sir as a member of VFD, though. We learn from TPP that he supplied VFD with timber, but he then says 'We never heard from that organisation again, did we?', which would be an odd thing to say if he was a member himself. On the other hand, Charles might be a member - Dewey is strangely ambiguous about this - so perhaps it was actually Charles who was listed as a possible guardian, but Sir, being the dominant partner, decided to take charge.

[bandit]

I was always under the impression that she was a member, because there are plenty of references to Esmé's past with the VFD; when all the members had to read Anna Karenina, or the E that keeps showing up in meetings in TUA (who everyone seems to know, even though she's obviously an intruder). Although there are of course incidences that point the other way, such as her ignorance to Verdant Flammable Devices in TSS.

[ghostie]

She may have been bluffing about the Verdant Flammable Devices so Olaf wouldn't be suspicious of her.

[bandit]

Suspicious that she's not evil??

[ghostie]

Basically yes

[facelesscreature]

Replying to Hermes:

I believe that Sir is a VFD member and so is Charles. In the UA, it confirms that Lucky Smells lumbermill provided the wood to build various VFD headquarters. Charles is on the good side of the Schism and Sir is on the bad. It is unclear in TPP, but Sir and Charles could have been referring to The Inhumane Society from ATWQ.

It is just a theory, but it's the most accurate I've researched.

[Dante]

The organisation in question is one that contacted Sir for a delivery of lumber used to construct the Hotel Denouement. It's unlikely that it was any other organisation than V.F.D. Being contracted to secretly provide lumber does not necessarily make Sir a volunteer; if anything, I'd say the reverse, as he otherwise seems highly ignorant about the organisation - if he hadn't heard from it again after the lumber delivery for the hotel's construction, then that would have been a long time ago, and a long time for a volunteer to be out of the loop with the organisation.

[Hermes]

There is indeed the Anna Karenina clue, but that's actually very odd indeed; if Esme read it in the same summer that Beatrice did, that's after V and K were born, which is much too late for any plausible date for the schism. Esme's appearance in TUA might just mean that the volunteers know of her as an associate of Olaf, But as for the VFDevices, Olaf didn't know about them either, which suggests they were developed after he deserted, so I don't think that shows anything one way or the other.

Regarding Sir: of course some volunteers are out of the loop, but the way he speaks about VFD doesn't suggest he was a member. We do know from TBL that L and B knew Sir and Charles when they were younger, but that doesn't need to mean they were volunteers; indeed if one of them was related to B that would explain it.