Stardust Theme of Family

Want to keep someone busy for a few hours? Make them draw all the family trees for Stardust. It'll definitely do the trick, since family is one complicated topic in this book. We've got illegitimate half-human babies, arranged marriages, sibling murders, long-lost children (stolen by a witch, naturally), and more.

Sometimes your biological family is really important—like when it turns out that Tristran is the last living male heir of the Stormhold royal family and he inherited their incredibly useful Faerie-navigation-powers—while other times, adoptive family is all that matters. Oh, and Yvaine's mom is the moon. We just had to toss that in there. And the moon is also somehow related to unicorns. So, you know, good luck figuring out how that all works.

Questions About Family

  1. How would you sum up Daisy Thorn's feelings about Tristran in three words? Explain, providing examples from the text.
  2. Which family do you think has the healthiest dynamic in the book? Why?
  3. If you were born into the Stormhold family, what would your strategy of staying alive be?
  4. Do you think Tristran suspects that he isn't biologically related to everyone in his family before he's told?