Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26273984-20150403165446/@comment-26018514-20150421022351

The Devil's Advocate WP wrote:

Snow White's mother actually is the one who is dead in most versions of the story. Whether the father is also alive varies more as the focus is on the evil stepmother. It does have to be mentioned again that they are not meant to be perfect parallels of their fairy tale counterparts, just similar. That amounts to the same thing... I could have stated "dead/absent father" except that "absent" does not work in RWBY because if the father is unrelated by blood to the Schnee's that would make her mother the heir and unlike "Snow white" there exists no explanation for the mother's absentia like business because Schnee industries is the business and nothing short of a life as a huntress or in an asylum would explain such abandonment.