Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-30049122-20160923233523

Why is it assumed that Nanao is the daughter of Kyouraku's brother? The whole story of her mother's marriage seems to be set much further in the past, when Kyouraku was young and maybe not yet a captain, while the chapter where her mother passes on the family zanpakutou is more recent, very close in time before when Nanao joined the Gotei 13. The manga never really touches on Kyouraku's brother being her father, just that her mother was at one point married to him and separated from the Ise family and that she and Kyouraku developed a friendly/familial and trusting relationship. I feel like if she had been Kyouraku's neice, she stayed as very young child for many centuries, and only grew up rapidly within the last 100 years. The manga also makes no importance of Nanao's relationship to Kyouraku's brother as her father clear as we are made to understand that he died early on into the marriage, so he either died before she was born or shortly enough after that Nanao had no memories or connection to him if she truly was his daughter. Additionally, it is obvious that Kyouraku had no intention of bringing up their shared history until the point he was forced to during the battle with Lille, he even tried to hide his identity from her for a while by changing his haori and taking out her mother's hairpins so she would be less likely to recognize him after being recruited to the 8th division. The only thing in favor of Nanao and Shunsui being biologically related is that Shunsui has short hair for both his memories with his brother and brother's wife and Nanao's memories of his meeting with her mother. However between the two, he does seem to have matured greatly in stature, he had simply not made the decision to grow out her hair yet, which is a point in favor for Nanao being a child for quite a bit of time between then and when she joined the academy. 