Order of the Stick - Past Strips Discussion Thread

Update on Rich Burlew’s status. Cliff’s: Don’t expect any movement on either the strip or Kickstarter stuff until November at the earliest. Really, don’t expect much until next year. FTA:

A bump with a new question, albeit a fairly trivial one.

Who was taking care of Julia while Roy was off adventuring?

Obviously, her parents were taking care of her for most of her life. But her father died in 1180 and her mother died in 1181. Julia, at this time, was only fourteen years old.

Roy had gone off adventuring in 1180. But he was just starting out and hadn’t established any regular group at this point. He wasn’t aware of the rifts at this point so he had no reason to feel he had some overriding need to complete some world-saving mission. And we’ve seen that Roy takes his responsibilities very seriously, worries about his sister, and he feels guilty about not being able to save his brother Eric when they were young.

So why didn’t Roy return home when his mother died to look after his teenaged sister? It seems pretty obvious he would have seen his duty to take care of Julia for a few years as more important than anything else he was doing at the time. But he apparently just continued adventuring while his younger sister was in somebody else’s (whose?) care.

I would assume she was already at the mage academy. It’s obviously a boarding school, since she lives there now, and is probably in session all year. What practical care could he offer that wasn’t already being supplied by the school?

She’s been living there full time ever since their mother died? That seems like the equivalent of Roy dumping his sister in an orphanage and I don’t see him doing that.

I’m assuming there’s probably some other relatives or family friends (like Uncle Myrtok) who took Julia in when her mother died. But it’s a loose end and I was just wondering.

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