Quigley,Isadora or Duncan?

[Dante]

There is at least one clue, though - I think the sweater he's wearing is described in terms similar to those of Isadora and Duncan's. Also, didn't the back cover of TSS mention a "surprising survivor of a terrible fire"? People had been guessing for a while that Quigley might have survived, so there was precedent. Quite possibly him showing up was less surprising than Carmelita. But I digress.

I think my favourite is... I can't pick a single favourite, because I prefer Isadora and Duncan. You can't really conceptualise them individually - they're basically a single unit - and what I like about them is that when they come into the story they are an exact analogue to the Baudelaires and assure us that there are other stories like the Baudelaires' going on in the world. The boundaries of the plot open up with their very introduction, and that's before they breathe a word about a certain three initials.

[Charlie]

Yes, I also think that Duncan and Isadora function as a single unit. Do we think that Quigley was always a third wheel, or that he only became so after being separated from them?

[Dante]

Only after he became separated from them, I think. But equally it's possible that Duncan and Isadora became a lot closer and chose to act more alike because they lost their third triplet.

[Anka]

I also think that Isadora and Duncan are a single unit and maybe that's why I like Quigley more. He doesn't realy seem like a third triplet but more like an older brother, he is more like the adults in the series than like the children. Maybe he grew up faster when he had to survive all alone and was separated from his siblings.

[Charlie]

Yes, that seems possible to me

[nopoweronearth]

Isadora and Duncan

[Becca]

Quigley for sure. He made Violet so happy and I will ship them till the day I die.

[Ernist]

mine is Quigily

[A comet crashing into Earth]

Come to think of it, it actually sounds absolutely horrifying for two triplets who have lost their brother to need to correct everybody on calling them twins. I guess fridge horror is another trademark of Snicket's world.


Quigley gets more time to develop in the books, so I instinctively prefer him - true, Isadora and Duncan were featured in more books than him, but the idea of Quigley was planted in our heads at the same time as they were, and in most of the books, I&D were only briefly seen. Their characters were confined to damsels in distress, and they had to share the attention. Quigley has his own seperate story, and so it's much easier to appreciate him as a character than either of the other two. That being said, I love that while they, as a number of members discussed above, function as a single unit, they're given distinctly different motivations that nonetheless complement each other well.

By the way, what kind of parents would name their triplets Isadora, Duncan and Quigley Quagmire? Quigley was pretty much bound to follow a different path, wasn't he?

[Seymour Glass]

I like Quigley.

[Dante]

Good for you. He made a pretty strong impression considering that he was only in one book. (And his siblings appeared in less than a quarter of the series at three books out of thirteen.)

[rheichou]

I really like all the Quagmire Triplets because they remind me of the Baudelaires. They've gone through the same experience as the Baudelaires have, which is why they have gotten along with each other. I really wished that there were more Quagmire and Baudelaire interactions in the ASOUE series.

[Dante]

Yes, I also find them interesting because of the way they parallel the Baudelaires, and yet it's strange that they almost don't seem like they're in the series much. It's incredible that a series of thirteen books often feels like it hasn't given enough weight to many of its recurring characters and ideas. There's just so much else going on.

[rheichou]

I agree with Dante because I feel like the ASOUE series wasn't able to focus on the characters aside from the Baudelaires and maybe, Olaf. However, I felt like there were so many things happening, and that you had so many pent up questions, even from the beginning, which had to be answered, or semi-answered, in order to understand the plot. If the plot wasn't so diverse and complicated, I think Snicket would have made the Baudelaires have more interaction with other characters.

Then again, despite that fact about the ASOUE series, I really enjoyed reading it.

[gliquey]

It's weird how such a long series - 13 books, even if the first few were quite short - can feel like it never had time to focus on, well, just about any aspect of ASOUE you could name. I would have loved to see the Quagmires in another book: together, which would have been a new thing for us and a chance to see how Quigley interacts with his siblings (although hopefully we wouldn't have to see a heartfelt reunion), or just one or two of them (Isadora is more prominent to me than Duncan as a character, probably because of her poems' importance in TVV, so maybe Duncan on his own would have been nice to see). But that's not the way the plot went, and I'm fine with the few short appearances the Quagmires get.

My favorite Quagmire would be Quigley, for all the obvious and boring reasons. His appearance was an interesting plot twist, and he was a very likeable character. I wish we could have seen just a bit more of his cartography skills - and, while we're at it, seeing Duncan's journalism put to better use would have been nice, too.