Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24.247.91.107-20140511154823/@comment-4010415-20150727085347

Live is right.

It's actually quite likely that Qrow's last name is Branwen (note the username and date), so that means...

1. He is not Taiyang's brother, as Taiyang's last name is Xiao Long, same as Yang's.

2. He's also not Summer's brother, as Summer's last name is Rose, same as Ruby's.

3. He's related to Raven Branwen, who is suspected by many to be Yang's mother.

And if he is Yang's mother's brother, it still makes sense for Ruby to call him Uncle Qrow because...

1. Before Summer went missing/was killed, Yang thought Summer was her mother. This isn't outright said, but it's definitely implied, considering Yang said that she didn't find out about her real mom's existence until after Summer was gone. I quote: "And my dad just kind of... shut down. It wasn't long before I learned why. Summer wasn't the first love he lost; she was the second. The first... was my mom." That was when she found out Summer wasn't her real mom. From there, we can easily figure out that both Ruby and Yang were completely unaware that he was biologically the uncle of only Yang. There was no reason for any of the adults to tell them.

2. There's this thing I like to call "uncle by familiarity." Plenty of people in real life come to consider someone completely unrelated to them to be a member of their family. They point to a close friend of theirs and say "This is my cousin" or an adult who's a good, close friend of their parents who they've come to love, trust, and bond with and say "This is my uncle/aunt."

Just because Yang and, maybe, Ruby now know the truth that Qrow is not Ruby's uncle, that's not going to stop Ruby from calling him her uncle. She loves him. She bonded with him. She sees him as her uncle, even though he's not related to her because he might as damn well be family. Family isn't always about blood.

About that maybe: We honestly have no clear indication on whether or not Ruby really knows about Yang's mom or the fact that Qrow isn't her uncle. There's no reason she shouldn't, but that doesn't change the fact that we actually haven't been given any evidence that she knows. Even the end of the Yellow Trailer leaves things unclear. In the Yellow Trailer, Yang was looking for clues about her mom, and when she ran into Ruby, the conversation went like this:

Ruby: Yang? Is that you?

Yang: Oh, hey, sis!

Ruby: What're you doing here?

Yang: *Sigh* It's a long story.

End.

Did she tell Ruby, or did she say "It's a long story" as "It's such a long story, I won't bore you with it because I actually don't want to tell you"? Again, as far as we know, there's no reason for Ruby to not know, but like I said, there's no evidence that she knows.