Riddle family

"Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular."

- Description of the town of Little Hangleton's reaction to Thomas, Mary, and Tom Riddle Sr.'s murders.

Riddle was the surname of a wealthy Muggle family that lived in a mansion overlooking Little Hangleton, of which they owned a great deal. They lived fairly close to the wizarding House of Gaunt.

Family History
The Riddle family was a very old Muggle family. Their members were snobbish, arrogant, and unpopular, all hated by the villagers of Little Hangleton. Thomas Riddle, his wife Mary, and their son Tom Riddle Sr. were killed in 1943 by Tom Marvolo Riddle, Tom's son by pure-blood witch Merope Gaunt, whom he had married while influenced by magic (which was theorized to be either a love potion or the Imperius Curse) and later abandoned. Tom Marvolo Riddle killed his father for abandoning his mother, and killed his paternal grandparents for good measure so as to obliterate his Muggle roots. The murderer framed his maternal uncle Morfin Gaunt for the crimes, and he was sent to the wizarding prison of Azkaban, where he died. The Muggle townspeople, however, suspected that the Riddles' gardener, Frank Bryce, had killed them.

Tom Marvolo Riddle soon abandoned the name of his "filthy Muggle father", instead using an anagram to declare himself Lord Voldemort. With the death of Lord Voldemort, the Riddle family, as well as the Slytherin family and Gaunt family, became extinct.

Members

 * Thomas Riddle - Mary Riddle's husband and Tom Riddle Sr.'s father. Muggle. Killed by his grandson in 1943.
 * Mary Riddle - The wife of Thomas Riddle and the mother of Tom Riddle Sr.. Muggle. Killed by her grandson in 1943.
 * Tom Riddle Sr. - The son of Thomas Riddle and his wife, Mary Riddle. He was married to a witch, Merope Gaunt, under the influence of a Love Potion. Muggle. He had a son, who killed him in 1943.
 * Merope Gaunt - The abandoned wife of Tom Riddle Sr., whom she married because Tom was under the effects of a Love Potion. She had a son. Pure-blood. Died during childbirth on New Year's Eve in 1926.
 * Tom Marvolo Riddle - The son of Tom Riddle Sr. and Merope Gaunt. He later became the most feared Dark Wizard in history under the pseudonym of Lord Voldemort. Half-blood. Died in his final duel with Harry Potter in 1998.

Etymology
A is a statement or question with a double or veiled meaning, and they were very common to Old English literature and poetry. This may also be in reference due to the fact that the Riddle family died in inexplicable circumstances for the Muggles living in Little Hangelton. Riddle games also appear frequently in folklore and mythology as a matter of life and death, such as in the tale of and the Sphinx and in the opera. The term "" was also used by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche to encompass the idea of the meaning of life. This could all allude to the mysterious and hidden origins of Lord Voldemort, who disliked and hid his Muggle ancestry, and who was obsessed with life and death.