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Witch Weekly · November 15, 2021 – 2:14 AM

While the extended Selwyn family has ties to some prominent pureblood clans, including the Lestranges and Macnairs, this particular clan has done little to impress.

What did anyone ever see in the Selwyns, anyway?
Many of the writers at Witch Weekly were shocked to see the announcement of the upcoming marriage of Emrys Selwyn to Mrs. Angelica Vorona, a widow and until this month the professor of arithmancy at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While Mr. Selwyn had been observed in conversation with Mrs. Vorona on a few occasions earlier in the social season, there was no indication he had paid her serious or personal attention (as readers may remember he was certainly paying Miss Clarissa Cosgrove as recently as September, as was reported in this very magazine). Did Miss Cosgrove do something to put Mr. Selwyn off pursuing her? Did Mrs. Vorona scheme her way to the altar with a man who had displayed no intention of heading there with her? Is Mr. Selwyn merely fickle?

No matter what the story behind the upcoming wedding, we can be sure of one thing: Miss Cosgrove has likely saved herself a good deal of grief. Selwyn men make notoriously bad husbands. Trystan Selwyn, the eldest of the family, has one recognized bastard — Liliana Parkinson nee Selwyn — and plentiful rumors of other, unrecognized bastards waiting in the wings. While his wife has remained faithfully by his side through over a decade of marriage, she is obviously not pleased with how things have turned out: she was notably absent from Mrs. Liliana Parkinson's wedding, despite it being held at her own house. The youngest Mr. Selwyn, who owns a publishing house and newspaper, is more reserved but likely to be no less disappointing in the marital realm. Why else would his wife spend so much of her time running off to stay with her mother multiple times a year? If Mrs. Benwick was really ill, as the story often goes, why wouldn't Daniel and Freya Selwyn simply invite her to live with them? No, it's far more reasonable to suspect that Mrs. Freya Selwyn is not running to the aid of her mother, but rather running away from her husband.

The Selwyns also have very little to recommend them as a family, particularly compared to the other established pureblood lines. The failure of the two sisters to marry or to involve themselves in society in any meaningful way means that Emrys Selwyn's new wife will be deprived of the built-in social connections that ought to come with joining a new family. The most promising social connection for a new Mrs. Selwyn would be the aforementioned Liliana Parkinson — and when your best bet at earning an introduction to someone new is relying on a bastard teenager, you know you're off to a bad start.

We wish Miss Cosgrove luck in her future endeavors. If anyone could have salvaged a marriage to Emrys Selwyn, and all of the associated family baggage that came with it, it might have been a graduate of the Pendergast School for Young Roses — but in any case we believe the girl deserves far better than being pushed to the fringe of society with nothing but a toxic family for company.

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Issue #269 — What did anyone ever see in the Selwyns, anyway?