–They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re altogether very often ooky, the Brandon family. Colonel Brandon, like Edward Ferrars, seems to be the pick of a not great litter. He has a deceased father who was a pretty bad lot, a deceased older brother who was a thoroughly bad lot, and a deceased cousin/childhood sweetheart named Eliza, apparently the same age as himself. The two tried to elope to Scotland when they were both sixteen or seventeen(1) but were caught through the treachery of Eliza’s maid. The future Colonel was forcibly packed off to India (implying somebody in the family had ties to the East India Trading Company). Cousin Eliza, who was an heiress, was bullied into marrying the Colonel’s older brother so her fortune could be used to pay off the debts Bad Dad Brandon and Bad Brother Brandon had incurred.

In terms of living relatives, the Colonel has Eliza Williams, his ward, an illegitimate child that Cousin Eliza had with some Henry Crawford type after becoming estranged from her husband, the Bad Brandon brother. According to Mrs. Jennings, the Colonel also has Fanny, a cousin of marriageable age whose parents he corresponds with. He has a sister who lives in Avignon, France in the present day of the novel and seems to be in bad health. It’s not entirely clear how the Colonel is related to the “brother-in-law” who owns Whitwell, a property about twelve miles from Barton with fine gardens and a private body of water big enough to sail on. Just as “mother-in-law” could be a stepmother in Regency English, “brother-in-law” could be a stepbrother. However, then as now, “brother-in-law” could be used for the husband of one’s sister, and since the owner of Whitwell is “abroad” at the same time Brandon’s sister is, this is probably her husband.

— The owner of Whitwell doesn’t let just anybody visit the estate while he’s gone, only people accompanied by Brandon (or possibly other family members). This seems to imply that the sister and her husband are on fairly good terms with Brandon, and therefore they were most likely not involved in bullying his childhood sweetheart into marrying the older brother. We can assume the same of Cousin Fanny’s parents.

–Brandon is thirty-five when introduced in the novel (which we are assuming takes place in 1797-1798), which means that he was born in 1762. His older brother was possibly “of age” (twenty-one) or close to it when Brandon was seventeen, because the father died around that time and there’s no suggestion that the elder son was not in control of the estate at that point. So, a minimum of four years older than Brandon. Given the sister’s health problems, she could be significantly older than the Brandon brothers, but we just don’t know for certain. It makes sense to assume she was already married and out of the picture at the time of the failed elopement, which would put her at a minimum of two-three years older than the Colonel.

–So, the Brandon parents married no later than about 1758 (assuming Bad Brother Brandon was the eldest child, not just the eldest son). The Colonel and his cousin fell for each other while growing up together, even though she and her fortune were earmarked for Bad Brother Brandon. This implies that Mama Brandon was either a good-natured, indolent type like Lady Bertram, who didn’t interfere with them, or else she was outright encouraging to the young lovers. If the latter, she was most likely dead at the time of the elopement. Might even have been her death that convinced them that their only chance was to elope. If she was the good-natured, indolent type, she was probably fluttering around uselessly in the aftermath of the elopement, a bit like Lady Bertram during Tom Bertram’s illness. In any case, she doesn’t seem to be alive in the present day of the novel.

–Based on all this, it seems like the Brandon parents were pretty generic at the time of their courtship: the man an expensive young rake(2) with an ugly temper and a knack for manipulating people, the woman a pleasant but not forceful young person with a decent fortune, strongly encouraged by her family to marry “Brandon of Delaford”. If their surviving son is anything to go by, they were not particularly good-looking. Because they married so much earlier in the 18th century than the other Austen parents we’ve seen so far, the ups and downs of their marriage could serve as a background for other Austen parents during the latter’s courtship phase.

–If you read between the lines when the Colonel is talking about his teenaged self, it seems that at sixteen/seventeen he was a swashbuckling idealist who saw everything in black and white and took it for granted that his childhood sweetheart would stand firm against every pressure and hold on to True Love. TBH, the teenaged Colonel sounds a lot more like Marianne in personality than the Elizas, mère et fille, do. This could mean that he compares Marianne to the Elizas because he’s not self-aware enough to see his younger self in Marianne. His polite, patient manner, unjudgmental towards people whom others see as vulgar or unfashionable, was possibly something he developed in his time in India, dealing with different cultures and religions(3) Just something to keep in mind for your Colonel Brandon fanfics.

-Mr. and Mrs. Jennings: Mr. Jennings was in trade, and highly successful at it. In the London stretch of the book, which seems to take place in early 1798, Mrs. Jennings(4) says he’s been dead around eight years or more, so he died around 1790. They had two daughters, whom we know by their married names: Lady Middleton (elder daughter, aged 26-27) and Charlotte Palmer (generally assumed to be 20-21). The Jennings daughters are both beauties, and the mother probably was also, circa the early 1770s when she met and married Mr. Jennings.

–About Mr. Jennings we know comparatively little. When he died, the future Lady Middleton was 18-19 and the future Mrs. Palmer was 12-13, so the former is going to reflect more of his influence than the latter. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that he was a introverted man in some line of trade where genteel manners were relatively an asset, and that he strove to cultivate those manners. He probably disapproved of his wife’s wackier moments and any ungenteel behavior on his daughters’ part, but only the future Lady Middleton took his comments to heart. It’s possible, but not absolutely necessary, to imagine him as a merchant class version of Mr. Palmer, given Charlotte’s and Mrs. Jennings’ bemused, dismissive treatment of Mr. Palmer, as if he’s a type they know all too well and are not intimidated by.

–The Jennings daughters are not sentimental about their husbands; they want to do right by them, and seem to believe their husbands will do right by them, but they don’t expect hearts and flowers. This presumably reflects their parents’ marriage. I imagine the Jennings couple as getting engaged in a brief dizzy period where he was blinded by her beauty, him going through a period of second thoughts while knowing he can’t break the engagement off without getting sued, and then him grudgingly coming to respect her social networking skills (not that he would have called it that) and financial shrewdness and realizing that they are actually a good team.

-Sir John Middleton and Lady Middleton: he’s described as being around forty in the book, and the eldest of his (closely spaced) children is about six, which implies that he and his wife married around 1790 or 1791, and that he was in his mid-thirties at the time (which makes it not surprising that he and his mother-in-law think it’s time for mid-thirties Colonel Brandon to be settling down). Lady Middleton would have been around 19-20 at the time. He was probably at least somewhat impressed by her good looks and smooth manners, and the money didn’t hurt either. She mostly saw him as her ticket into the gentry, and her chance at having children. They seem content with their marriage, but they would be more comedic background characters in someone else’s love story than protagonists.

–We don’t know anything for sure about Sir John’s parents except that they are deceased, probably held the same property that he does, and one of them was somehow related to Widow Dashwood’s family, presumably a sibling of one of Widow Dashwood’s parents if she and Sir John are first cousins. It’s a reasonable guess that Sir John’s father was sporting-mad country gentry like Sir John himself, and that Sir John’s mother was either a Lady Middleton type or a Mrs. Jennings type. If the former, it’s possible that “adopting” a nicer mother than his own subconsciously influenced his choice of wife. If the latter, it’s possible he saw Mrs. Jennings as a replacement for his own mother. But we’re *really* deep in the weeds of guesswork at this point.

(1) Ellen Moody says sixteen, to give the bad Brandons a year to wear Eliza’s resolution down before she agrees to marry the older Brandon brother when she and the Colonel are seventeen. I think that’s reasonable, but I don’t know that it’s absolutely required.

(2) I base this on how his eldest son, the Bad Brandon Brother, turned out.

(3) At this period, the troops in the British Indian Army was more Hindu than Muslim or Sikh, but there were some Muslims there. There might also have been Calvinist Scots or Catholic Irish, depending on which regiments the Colonel interacted with. Even allowing for the prejudices of Colonel Brandon’s time period and upbringing, this was probably someone with a much, much broader experience of humanity than almost anyone else we meet in an Austen novel.

(4) The Middletons’ only daughter has the portmanteau name Annamaria, and I like to imagine that Mrs. Jennings is a Mary, Lady Middleton is a Maria (the more posh version of the same name), and Sir John’s late mother was an Anne. But again, very deep in the weeds of conjecture.