#and i probably could have gone on about snicket siblings schism dynamics for ages but it was just getting incoherent

[littlestsnicket]

Thought: Maybe the main reason so much tragedy happened in Lemony's life was because he and Jacques were on drastically different sides of the Schism and nobody really realized it. Also, Lemony put that lock on the door to VFD headquarters as a way to sabotage VFD by making sure nobody could use the training facility (which would mean they would call off the kidnapping.)

Last part first: I assume you mean the Vernacularly Fastened Door to the Headquarters in the Mortmain Mountains? That doesn't make any sense.

Here is how Quigley initially explains the door:

“That's what I read,” the scout confirmed looking at a page in his notebook. “You're supposed to type in three specific phrases in a row. The phrases change every season, so volunteers need to have a lot of information at their fingertips to use this door. The first is the name of the scientist most widely credited with the discovery of gravity.”

Though I think there is a lot of evidence towards Quigley not being terribly well informed about VFD, and specific bits of his information being wrong (especially around the surviver of the fire), there's no reason for Lemony to be concealing his motives at this point in the story if he was trying to sabotage volunteer training, and Vernacularly Fastened Door seem to be a fairly common VFD security measure as Volunteers are expected to know a wide variety of trivia relative to Fire Starters and the general public and be able to use informal information networks to have the information to open the doors, so one wouldn't use a Vernacularly Fastened Door to keep Volunteers away from something.

But since it's my blog, I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about something mostly related to the first part of your ask: where does Jacques fall relative to his siblings in the VFD schisms?

So, to start with, it's really common fanon that Jacques Snicket is the most loyal to VFD, and the one who most needs to rationalize VFD's more shady practices. He is also deeply invested in protecting his siblings at the expense of practically anything else. The second part is pretty inarguable fact, but I think the first part may not be the most compelling interpretation of the facts.

I think this assessment of J comes primarily from two pieces of information: (1) L explains in his assessment of the Snicket Lad that J said they were allowed to finish their tea first, and (2) J feels a need to point out that VFD "asks first" before taking children from their homes. But, I think these are both just statements of fact. VFD does ask first. It does matter. I think it's very important to him to separate anti-VFD propaganda from the very real danger VFD puts it's members in.

A better assessment of J's character is that he is just about solely focused on protecting other people. This usually dovetails with VFD's mission statement and what the organization asks of him. But I think he might be the most clear headed about the reality of VFD--in both the good and bad that it does. He is trying to protect Jerome and his siblings from the downsides of being involved with VFD.

The things we really know about J's VFD related behavior is that he is trying to get information from Olivia about where is brother is, he arranges for L to escape after the debacle following his theatrical review and seems to be serving as a go between for L and VFD and the Daily Punctillio, he was investigating the fire at the Royal Gardens (probably to try and clear L's name, as referenced in the footnotes of the Rare Addition of the Bad Beginning), he was following Count Olaf to VFD (almost certainly for the same reason), and he writes a wildly inaccurate article about the Antwhistle Aquatics fire (which I realized while thinking about what I wanted to say in this post) likely motivated to protect K from consequences of her involvement.

So, J is motivated by protecting people, especially his siblings. And his desire to protect them from VFD is something he's aware of, and not a source of internal conflict. J's side of the schism is "I must protect my siblings and clean up their messes", while K and L are driving forces in the sugar bowl plot with R, B, and B. Likely, this grew out of the subsection of Volunteers who wanted to reform VFD, which does not include J--not because he is a loyalist to the organization but because he is, in a lot of ways, risk adverse and has a very narrow view of how much good you can do before the negative and unattended consequences of your actions come back to bite you.

So, yes, J and L are sort of on different sides of the internal to the Volunteers schisms, but I don't think that has much, or really anything, to do with the tragedies that L experiences.