Marriage of Beatrix Duquet and Kuntaw Sel

The marriage of Beatrix Duquet and Kuntaw Sel joins two family histories that the Duke business dynasty would later treat as competing claims: Beatrix was the biological daughter of Charles Duquet’s legitimate son Outger, while Kuntaw belonged to a Mi’kmaq and French settler lineage. Their sons Josime Sel and Francis-Outger Sel carried Charles Duquet’s only surviving bloodline, a fact that unsettles the adopted descendants’ hold on the family fortune and ties inheritance to Indigenous family history.

Beatrix’s Lineage

Charles Duquet and Cornelia Roos had two legitimate children after he adopted Nicolaus and Jan from an Amsterdam orphanage and Bernard from the streets of La Rochelle. Their daughter Doortje’s line ended with her only son, Lennart Vogel, who died unmarried. Outger Duquet, by contrast, lived for a time on Penobscot Bay and had a daughter with an Indigenous woman. He lavished attention and education on Beatrix, but when he moved to Leiden she remained in Maine and later returned to Native ways. Her separation from her father’s European household did not end her place in his family line; it shaped the route by which that line continued.

Marriage and Descendants

Beatrix and Kuntaw were legally married. Kuntaw was described by the family investigator as a métis descended from Mi’kmaq people and a French habitant. Their sons, Josime and Francis-Outger, made the marriage a crucial link between Charles Duquet’s blood descendants and the Sel family. The novel later returns to that kinship through correspondence: after the death of Amboise, Jinot Sel writes to Francis-Outger, who replies from Penobscot Bay and gives him news of Elise and Dr. Hallagher. The letter demonstrates that the family connection remains active across distance and generations, not merely a genealogical fact in an investigator’s report.

Bloodline and Inheritance

When Lavinia Duke commissions an inquiry into possible heirs, R. R. Tetrazinni explains that the Duke line descending from Nicolaus rests on adoption, not blood. Nicolaus had married Mercy and fathered Patience, Piet, and Sedley, Lavinia’s grandfather; Charles Duquet had treated his adopted sons as sons and divided his goods among them equally. Tetrazinni contrasts that established inheritance with the descendants of Beatrix and Kuntaw: Josime and Francis-Outger’s grandchildren are the only living bloodline descendants of Charles Duquet. He has not yet identified their names or residences, and says finding them would require travel in Canada and contact with Indigenous communities. He nevertheless considers them rightful heirs if blood relationship alone determines the claim, while personally favoring the adopted lines and invoking possession as a practical advantage.

A Family Connection Across Generations

Lavinia ends the investigation before Tetrazinni can pursue the Canadian descendants. She tells him not to disturb the situation and closes the inquiry, despite the report’s disclosure that Beatrix and Kuntaw’s descendants have a blood claim to the Duke fortune. The marriage therefore matters both as a family union and as a suppressed challenge to the company’s accepted inheritance. Its consequences extend into later Sel generations: Aaron Sel, Jinot’s only surviving son, returns to Mi’kma’ki and joins Kuntaw’s family band, where he struggles to learn practices and knowledge he has not inherited through upbringing. The family’s dispersed branches, remembered through letters and genealogy, stand against the business dynasty’s attempt to make legal possession the final measure of belonging.