#the universe wouldn't have survived the two of them in their early/mid twenties at the same time

[banannabethchase]

...but what if early painslut pink hair Mox and twunky trucker boy Adam Page met and had a Thing?

[getvalentined]

Okay so that ask opened the floodgates for me. I've been sitting on my headcanons about Vincent's mother for ages, but I think this is as good a time as any to start writing it down for interested parties.

So. Let me talk about Sayoko Valentine, where she came from, who she left behind, and what that means for my version of Vincent.

Sayo's maiden name is Otayo, and she was born in 1929 to High Summoner Otayo Katsuhisa and his wife, Ota Seira—the family name similarity is intentional, as Seira came from a branch family in the same line, but was technically Katsuhisa's cousin. (This is normal. Vincent's paternal predecessors are actually worse. Welcome to the genealogy of nobility.)

As stated, Sayo left home at seventeen, eventually ending up in Junon, where she was able to test into university thanks to the impressive education provided to her back home. She went into botany—which is what she wanted to do back home, but her father wouldn't allow it because of her position as heir to the temple—and met Grimoire when he was working as an assistant teacher in one of her secondary classes. He fell in love instantly, she absolutely did not. It took about a year before they got together, although they were married pretty quickly after that, and Vincent came along more or less immediately, when Sayo was twenty.

The real tragedy here is that while Sayoko is recorded as having died due to influenza complications, what actually killed her was a brain aneurysm—caused by her personal aeon struggling to front after being essentially held captive since Sayo left Wutai. This eventually happens to all summoners with personal aeons, provided they survive to adulthood but don't "maintain" the aeon properly, although usually it isn't until mid-thirties. Sayoko's struggle with the flu made her constitution weak, and that's why it killed her so young. She died at twenty-seven. (Just like her son.)

(Grimoire went on to eradicate influenza from the face of Gaia. He was just too late to save his wife, and he never fully recovered from that failure.)

Sayoko has/had a brother around a decade younger than her who is still alive today and currently heads up the summoner temple in Wutai, having taken Sayoko's place as the heir after she ran away from home at seventeen. He's in his mid-sixties during the Crisis, and is actually slightly closer to Vincent's age than that of his late sister. Seira passed away giving birth to him, and although he was very fragile growing up, his health improved starting around age four, following the very early presentation of his summoning abilities. Sayo left two years into his childhood training, when she was sure he would survive. (If he hadn't improved, she would have stayed out of a sense of duty to her family, even if heading up the temple was the very last thing she wanted.)

Because he was so ill as a child, Sayo's brother was given an ancestral name, a tradition that meant to allow the soul of the ancestor in question to serve as a distraction against death. Allegedly, doing this confuses the Lifestream into believing that the sick child has already died, because a soul with that name from that bloodline is already in the Lifestream. Sayoko's little brother is named Braska.

Vincent knows he's alive, but has never met him and has no intention of ever doing so—fairly intensive research postcanon led Vincent to the discovery that summoner religious beliefs would define his very existence as an extreme sort of heresy. Vincent knows, from the little bit he remembers from stories told by his mother, that her family loved her very deeply, and so he has no intention of letting them know that the daughter they loved so much ran away to make her own life and instead produced the single most horrific monster their belief system can conceptualize.

They would probably refer to Vincent as an Unsent, although unlike any they've ever even imagined. In actuality Vincent is what they should refer to as an Undying, a concept that is so far beyond ancient there's almost nothing written about it anywhere, but Vincent never came across that in any of his research so he doesn't know.

Other random notes:

Ota Seira's younger sister was selected as a bride by the emperor of Wutai at the time, making her Yuffie's great-grandmother. This means that she and Vincent are somewhat distant cousins. Because of that intensive research Vincent did postcanon, he is completely aware of this, but Yuffie isn't, and he is never ever going to tell her. (It also means that Yuffie carries the summoner gene, but that doesn't really matter since it's rare enough she's really unlikely to end up with anyone else who has it.)

At least two old Junonese families also carry the summoner gene, but it's so recessive there are no records of it presenting since the founding of Junon. One of these families is, obviously, the Valentine line, which is how Vincent presented with the gift. The other is a noble family that fell from grace in the early 1800s, formerly known as Faucille, who artistically translated their name from old Junonese to Standard upon the loss of their house into order to keep their fallen fortune from being easily connected to the original line: in the modern day, their surname would be Crescent.

Vincent's entire existence may have been specially orchestrated by Minerva herself in order to produce a viable vessel for Chaos, but that's just a theory. Genesis says it's true, but can you really trust that guy? (When it comes to anything related to Weapons or Minerva, postcanon, you absolutely can and in fact should, but Vincent doesn't want to think about it.)