Could the Squalors be who Mr. Poe was referring to in TRR?

[doetwin]

We know that Esme's full name was "Esme Gigi Geniveve Squalor". Some women, when they get married, take their husbands' surname and then treat their maiden name like a middle name. So it's quite possible that Esme's maiden name was "Geniveve". However, it's also possible that she was born with two middle names, "Gigi" and "Geniveve", and that upon marrying Jerome, she simply replaced "Squalor" with whatever her maiden name had been.

In TRR, Mr. Poe told the Baudelaires that Dr. Montgomery was their "late father's cousin's wife's brother". Since the Baudelaires were more closely related to their father's cousin than to Dr. Montgomery, it makes it a bit of a mystery as to why Monty was given priority over his sister and her husband in terms of guardianship over the Baudelaires. Well, if Jerome was Mr. Baudelaires' cousin, the answer to that would be explained at the beginning of TEE. Jerome stated that he'd wanted to adopt the Baudelaires as soon as they lost their parents, but couldn't because orphans had been "out" at the time. In fact, it's very possible that orphans became "in" at 667 during the Baudelaires' stay at Prufrock Prep, so that would explain why, prior to TAA, the Baudelaires had been sent to live with relatives who were much more distant from them than their father's cousin.

If Esme was Monty's sister, and if Monty knew that she was on the fire-starting side of the schism, that would explain why he never mentioned his sister to the Baudelaires. Neglecting to talk about a close relative you despise is very normal, so it would have been perfectly natural for Monty to act as if Esme wasn't related to him at all, or that he even had a sister.

What are your thoughts on this?

[Dante]

That's an interesting theory, doetwin. It is almost certainly not what was intended, or else some indication of the relationship between Jerome or Esmé and the Baudelaires would have been mentioned in TEE, but it's a neat way of tying an obscure detail and an unexplained relationship together. I presume you realise that there is no contradiction if both the cousin and the wife had died before TRR? Or there may be any number of other explanations.

[Invisible]

I had to think long and hard before I realised it could potentially work.

[takatoguil]

Feb 19, 2018 13:08:37 GMT -5 Dante said:

That's an interesting theory, doetwin. It is almost certainly not what was intended, or else some indication of the relationship between Jerome or Esmé and the Baudelaires would have been mentioned in TEE, but it's a neat way of tying an obscure detail and an unexplained relationship together. I presume you realise that there is no contradiction if both the cousin and the wife had died before TRR? Or there may be any number of other explanations.

Among them "Uncle Monty lived quite close to the city and the cousin and his wife lived very far away, so Mr. Poe never bothered contacting them". After all, Uncle Monty and Aunt Josephine are both *closer* relatives on the family tree than Count Olaf is, but he got the orphans first.