So, * Nanny McPhee Returns. *
Isabel Green is married to Rory Green who is currently serving in the war effort. Phil Green is Rory’s brother – Isabel’s brother in law – and is being pursued by Miss Topsey & Miss Turvey wanting to collect on his outstanding debt.
Vincent, Norman and Megsie are the children of Isabel & Rory.
Cyril & Celia are the cousins of Vincent, Norman & Megsie, and son and daughter of Lord Gray who is very high up in the war office.
So, how are Cyril & Celia cousins to Vincent, Norman & Megsie? Lord Gray is NOT the brother of Isabel Green, or the brother of Rory or Phil Green. Is he the husband of an unnamed Green sister? (i.e. a sister of Rory & Phil?) I’m assuming it’s not the latter because when questioned by Norman about his father’s whereabouts, Lord Gray doesn’t know who Norman’s father is which seems odd it’s his brother in law.
Or are there liberties being taken with the word ‘cousins’ perhaps meaning very distant cousins or something.
Is this ever explained? Or perhaps someone who has read the source material has some insight?
I’m not sure there’s any source material to be read. The character of Nanny McPhee is based off of some kids books called Nurse Matilda, except as far as I know, Nanny and Nurse are alike only in that they’re both ugly and take care of kids. Most of the plot in both movies, comes, as far as I know from Emma Thompson’s head while the character names come from the books.
I always assumed they were cousins in that britishy sort of way that means you know you’re related and if you sat down with some paper and a pencil you could work out the exact relationship or you could just go with cousins and do something fun with your afternoon.
The use of cousin may just mean ‘distant’ cousins. Or perhaps Lady Gray is the sister of Isabel Green. If Lord and Lady Gray are estranged from each other, then conceivably Lord Gray would not know a lot about Rory Green (his wife’s sister’s husband).
Except at one point Lord Gray says something like 'Oh yes, the unfortunate marriage to that farm girl" - I think we can assume that Mrs. Gray is NOT a farm girl based on the social standing of the ‘cousins’ and therefore not Isabel’s sister. That is, it seems that Lord Gray thinks that Rory married below his station (at least to me).
I’m not familiar with the movies/books, but I’d assume that the “cousins” are not first cousins. This isn’t really taking much of a liberty with the word; unless you’re actually doing genealogy work (or concerned about local marriage laws!) there’s little reason to bother specifying the exact relationship between distant cousins. I doubt many people are even clear enough on the distinction between second cousins and first cousins once removed, etc., to precisely describe their relationship to their more distant cousins.
FWIW I just checked the OED and it indicates that the term “cousin” was once commonly used to mean basically any relative outside your immediate family, and that even nieces and nephews were often referred to as cousins.
Ah - very interesting - that does seem like the most plausible explanation. I was just wondering if there was something detailed in the source work; however, I assumed tha the source work was more than just an influence on the character creation.