Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24.247.91.107-20140511154823/@comment-14909251-20140906062546

BenRG wrote: Okay, so we now know more about Ruby and Yang's family. Based on this, my existing theory the back-story of the previous generaion needs some serious revision. Here's my first attempt to do so.

As always, we start with four friends at Beacon Academy :

 Team QRTS (Quartz) 
 * Qrow Rose
 * Raven Fall (Yang's mother)
 * Taiyang Xiao Long (Yang and Ruby's dad)
 * Summer Rose

Raven and Taiyang were lovers for most of their time in Beacon and everyone expected them to marry after graduation. However, shortly after Yang's birth, Raven suddenly announced that she had plans in which being a mother had no part. This was a bit cold but not unprecedented - Huntresses who wish to remain active commonly give up their children for fostering and often have no further role in their children's upbringing. Summer, although wilder than Raven, enjoyed being Yang's mother-in-all-but-blood (she is the source, unconsciously, of most of Yang's wild behaviour patterns). She and Taiyang set up a home together and no-one was surprised when she became pregnant with his second child.

What most people didn't know was that Raven was Ozpin's oldest child. He had registered his children's births under their mother's maiden name to protect them from his many enemies (both political and criminal). Raven was doing some jobs for her father as an unofficial agent. She was also helping raise her younger sister, Cinder, who was a very difficult child; possibly suffering from a personality disorder.

Somewhere along the line, Summer was killed on a mission for Ozpin; maybe Raven died later of her injuries too. Yang was only about five years old and Ruby was about three. The consequences of both women dying at the same time on Taiyang's psyche were immense. He shut down and was unable to care for the girls. Qrow, absorbed in hunting down the killers of his team-mates, was unable to help him. Ozpin ("One mistake out of so many... so many others...") erroneously concluded that his grandchildren (blood and emotional) were better served by not exposing him to his enemies' awareness.

Yang, learning of Raven from her father's only half-sober recollections, tried to find her biological mother, thinking that she would be able to care for Ruby (and herself, although she's too generous to consciously consider that). Her childish investigation identified a now-abandoned location in the wilds of Patch Island as being associated with her mother and she ran away with Ruby, childishly hoping to find Raven there. Fortunately, Qrow was able to save them when all Yang found were Beowolves.

Qrow confronted Taiyang, beat him to a pulp and threatened to kill him if ever heard of him neglecting the girls like that again. Taiyang sobered up, realising how close he came to losing all he had left of Raven and Summer. He became a caring if somewhat smothering father; Ruby came to resent that somewhat as she grew older.

Meanwhile, Cinder never forgave her father for sending her beloved older sister and the "aunt" she also idolised - Summer - on what she perceived as a futile suicide mission. She became dedicated to getting her revenge on him, his old team-mates (whom she considered as equally responsible since they were part of Ozpin's inner circle of co-conspirators), and the world in general.

So! What do you think? One has to admire your incessant need to have Cinder related to Ruby's family in some way. :P