If you grew up in a small town, you might have occasionally stumbled across the fact that two people you thought were unlinked were actually relatives. Generations of people living in the same town mean that a lot of family tress have cross-fertilized at various times.

Now, in the Peanuts universe, there are characters that we know are related. Lucy, Linus, and Rerun are siblings. The same can be said of Charlie Brown and Sally, and (separately) of Snoopy and the various Daisy Hill pups. But might there be more links? There are relatives that are mentioned in the strip. For example, Lucy has an Aunt Marian, who is probably best remembered for saying that one should never try to discuss marriage with a musician (February 13, 1963.) And, by the theory of relativity, Linus and Rerun also have an Aunt Marian.

Charlie Brown, on the other hand, has… an Aunt Marian, which he first mentions on June 16, 1959. Sally also mentions her, on March 12, 1991.

And yet, neither of these Marians are the first to be mentioned. No, the first goes to Violet, who is sending her a birthday card on November 12th, 1958. The last character to be established as related to Aunt Marian? Snoopy, on September 18, 1999.

Now, how many Aunts Marian are there? Probably more than one, simply because when the Browns are talking to the Van Pelts or vice versa, they say “my Aunt Marian”, which would probably merely “Aunt Marian” if they shared an aunt. Still, the possibility that there are not separate aunts for each of the family, that some of them share an aunt and are thus cousins, cannot be ignored (although it in the case of Snoopy it would require a very mixed marriage.)

And to make things that much more confusing, in addition to having an Aunt Marian, both the Van Pelts and the Browns also have an Aunt Marion (mentioned October 10, 1980 and June 27, 1990, respectively) — note the different final vowel. And neither of those strips have a Brown talking with a Van Pelt, so there’s zero reason to assume they’re not the same Marion.  The Brown kids have five aunts (December 26, 1993), but Marion and Marian are the only two whose name we know, so we don’t know if they share the aunt that Lucy cannot quite recall the name of, but might be named Edna (May 15, 1999.)

Why yes, I am avoiding real work today. How did you know??

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