In Keeper of Enchanted Rooms, various characters have complicated relationships with their families. Both Silas and Merritt are shaped by unhappy family histories, but they respond to these experiences in different ways, revealing that every family is unique and that family experiences can shape an individual’s life and outlook.

Young Silas is the victim of his father’s drunken rage and misplaced resentment, which begins his trajectory as the novel’s antagonist. The novel’s discussion of how magical ability is transmitted biologically suggests possible reasons for Lord Hogwood’s hatred of his son: Silas’s inheritance from his powerful mother and father makes him potentially more powerful than either of them. Silas turns this inheritance on his own family, however. After he learns, through the burst of power that he acquires from the unpremeditated killing of his father, that he can transfer the magic of others to himself, Silas takes advantage of his proximity to his mother and brother to feed his own growing power. Silas therefore responds to his father’s hatred and rejection by lashing out at others and seeking to dominate them, becoming an ironic mirror image of the father he despised.

Merritt is also the victim of paternal dislike and abuse.