#john baxter

We're starting off with the Baxter family, my main household! I don't have photos of the early years so I've included a few photos of the current house and grounds instead.

The challenge began in the year 1300 with my founding couple, John (1275-1308) and Mathilde (b. 1280) Baxter, and John's younger sister Sibyl (1283-1324). With a grant from the local Lord to settle the wild land, the three made their home on a small island a few hours' journey from the mainland. (That's how they came to be farmers with a last name meaning "baker"!) This relative isolation permitted the inhabitants to be a little looser with standards of dress and conduct, and still does to this day; for example, you'll see in subsequent posts that many of the married and widowed women do not strictly follow the custom of veiling.

John and Mathilde struggled to conceive but eventually ended up with two daughters, Isolda (1305-1312) and Annora (1309-1329).

John died several months before Annora was born, leaving Mathilde to raise her children alone with only the support of Sibyl...

(L-R: John, Sibyl, and Thomas. I'm very much failing at my attempts to cure same-face syndrome!)

...and her husband, Thomas Kitchener (1273-1316), a man from a neighboring town. The families shared Baxter Farm. While married, Sibyl and Thomas had a total of seven children, three of whom were stillborn and only one of whom made it to adulthood. Both Thomas and Sibyl died young; thankfully, their surviving children were looked after by the other adults in the household.

Speaking of other adults: several years after John died, his cousin, William Baxter (b. 1278) arrived at the farm in need of shelter. His wife and most of his children perished in a house fire, leaving him and his daughter Cecily (b. 1310) with nowhere to go. Soon love blossomed and Mathilde and William were married. They had two sons, Gabriel (b. 1318) and Luke (1321-1348).

Years passed. At 19, Annora fell pregnant after a dalliance with the local weirdo, Noel Pratt. Annora and her newly-married stepsister/best friend Cecily planned to pass the baby off as the child of the latter; Annora would then come to live with Cecily and her new husband under the guise of being a mother's helper to her stepsister. This plan was only partially fulfilled as Annora died in childbirth, leaving behind her daughter Cecilia (1329-?) to be adopted by Cecily.

(I will explain each one. 🙏🏽)

The Man With No Name as a coyote because coyotes are a symbol of cunning, intelligence, and adaptability. The coyote embodies the dual nature of life and represents both positive and negative qualities. It is also depicted as a trickster figure.

I think this fits TMWNN, especially being an anti-hero with his ways of being able to get what he wants by "playing both sides" throughout the trilogy. (With the Rojos and Baxters, Douglas Mortimer and El Indio's gang, and himself, Angel Eyes at one point, and Tuco.) Which gives him the cunningness.

He is described as intelligent a lot in the trilogy, and it's very clear with how carefully he plans and, again, how to get what he wants.

Adaptability because we see him in all sorts of settings: cities, deserts, villages, etc. and none of those have seemed to bother him one bit.

A Fistful of Dollars:

The Rojos as red wolves mostly because they travel in packs and are aggressive towards other canids, which we'll get to next.

(Edit: I just remembered Rojo also means red lmfao I swear that wasn't on purpose)

The Baxters as Coywolves because they travel in small family packs and compete with other canids such as wolves (the Rojos).

Both families are portrayed as powerful rivals like red wolves and even coywolves (likely because both animals live in the East United States).

Marisol, Julio, and Jesús (I couldn't fit Julio) as cattle because cows are quiet animals that symbolize humility and simplicity.

Which I thought was kinda fitting because with the lives they had to live, it gives them their humility.

Simplicity because the family follows TMWNN's orders with fairly little resistance.

For a Few Dollars More:

Col. Douglas Mortimer as a silver fox because silver foxes represent nobility, maturity, confidence, and charm.

I think the nobility for him comes from his long journey of avenging his sister and as a character that seems to have good personal and general morals.

The maturity because of his age, experience, and behavior.

Confidence is very easy to see lol he is very sure of his abilities, especially when he first meets Juan Wild in El Paso. (Man's got balls of steel, Jesus Christ)

This may be subjective, but the charm isn't that hard to see in him lmao

El Indio and his gang are Mexican wolves. Not just because they're a gang and wolves travel in packs, but also because those packs can be really big, like El Indio's gang. Plus, Mexican wolves tend to be highly social, which could be a stretch as a connection to El Indio and his gang, but they seem to accept new recruits to their gang pretty easily lol

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

Angel Eyes as a Gray fox. I promise I'm not being uncreative lmao. Gray foxes, given their competition in the wild, most likely tend to be more aggressive and dominant. Gray foxes also represent cleverness and adaptability.

In Tgtbtu, Angel Eyes can definitely be a very aggressive character, and the powerful part of the meaning of dominance is also very apparent in his character.

I find Angel Eyes's history of being able to track people down and identify them as a sign of intelligence.

Like, TMWNN, Angel Eyes can also be found in different settings and adjusts to them pretty quickly, especially given his job as a hitman.

(Sorry, it felt like I was grasping at straws on this one, but I couldn't find a lot on gray foxes, I just thought it was fairly fitting.)

Tuco Ramirez as a badger because they both are known for digging lol, but on a serious note, badgers are extremely aggressive towards other animals and have grumpy attitudes, which I find very fitting for Tuco lol.

1976

Sin Pit by John Baxter, 1963, for Greenleaf's Ember imprint.