Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-4830106-20130824210701/@comment-207.161.191.84-20130826040240

Ruby's father died in some sort of battle shortly after she was born, so she never knew him. He also had silver eyes, a rare trait, and was a friend of Ozpin's. Summer Rose is Ruby's mother, who died when she was young, but Ruby still remembers her, so she visits her grave. With both parents dead, Ruby was adopted by the Xiao Long family. As for if Qrow is a Rose or a Xiao Long... no clue.

One of Weiss' parents is the CEO of the Schnee Dust Company. Despite being incredibly large, it started as a family business, so Weiss is in line to run it next. One of the ways it's amassed such wealth is through the workers being overworked and underpaid. These workers are primarily fauna, and the work conditions border on slavery. Blake lost a human parent to the same conflict as Ruby, and the other parent was a fauna. Blake worked at the company for a short time before setting off with Adam, hence her extensive knowledge of it and the raid on the train.

Jaune's great great grandfather must have been pretty significant, since Jaune made it into Beacon without designing his own weapon, being prepared enough to come up with a "landing strategy," or knowing what aura is. Given that Pyrrha didn't know he had a lot of aura until she unlocked it, I can't imagine that got him in either. I can't see how he got into Beacon by anything but his name.