Families are often at the core of intrigue and political plots, but are also the heart of many character-centered stories! With World Anvil family trees, you can represent your characters’ families in a visual and interactive way to make the information easy to process for both your readers and yourself.
1. Character-focused family tree
A common way to use family trees is in articles about a single character, which is particularly useful if the character’s backstory and arc is heavily influenced by their family. These family trees are focused on that person’s ancestors to provide more context about their family and how they’ve been shaped by it. You can see this style of family tree in eccbook’s article about the family tree of Frieda Jacobs:
Check out The Family Tree of Frieda Jacobs by eccbooks!
2. Family-focused family trees
Another common approach is using family trees in articles that focus on a family as a whole (usually Organitzation articles). This is great for intrigue story and building powerful dynasties, and it often includes both ancestors and descendants to give a wide overview of the family throughout time. From the same author as before, the Silver Family is a good example of this:
Compared to the previous one, this family tree gives a broader understanding of the family’s history. Check The Silver Family by eccbooks to see it in action.
Pro Tip: Remember that family trees are interactive! Click on any of the characters in a family tree to re-focus the tree on that character.
Family trees for noble houses
Speaking of dynasties, noble houses are the perfect usecase for this feature! After all, in medieval-inspired worlds and other settings with hereditary systems, family is the source of legitimacy for power. And the family tree can also tell a story of what’s important for a given noble house. For example, in Dhelian’s House of Pentiwichen family tree, you can see the priorities and culture of this dynasty: Âldal the Daybreak had his son with “Unknown Woman”, and Aliczyelle’s mother isn’t even part of the tree:
Check out House of Pentiwichen by Dhelian!
3. Use extended relationships for more detail
Not all relatives like each other, and keeping track of non-family relationships is just as important! This is where the extended relationship system comes in: you can describe relationships in detail, from the opinion they have of each other, to detailed information about their history. That’s what Lemmylou did in their article about Adelaide of Rosum:
Check out Adelaide of Rosum! As you can see, they presented the relationship’s History section from the perspective of the characters, which is a very creative use of this feature! And with the help of CSS, they made it look like chat speech bubbles. Take a look at this article about CSS for more ideas.
How do you use family trees in your world? Leave a comment! And to learn more about family trees, check the guide to family trees.
