Samantha Edith

**Samantha Edith** was the wife of Maine Edith and the mother of Lucinda, Rosemary, Vinnie, and Rye Edith. Samantha had a strained relationship with her other children except for Lucinda, due to constantly having to care for Lucinda, due to her mental illness. Samantha had a particularly strained relationship with her second oldest daughter, Rosemary, with their relationship only beginning to improve after she won the 53rd Hunger Games.

She, her husband, Maine, and their other three children, Lucinda, Vinnie, and Rye, were killed by peacekeepers while attempting to leave their district, with others, during the height of the Second Rebellion.

## Biography

### Life Before the Games

Samantha was born to an upper class family in the countryside of district 10. She lived and worked on a very large ranch that was owned and operated by her parents and their family. Since her family were property owners, Samantha had a somewhat privileged life, and often wore nice dresses and had enough to eat. Samantha began working at the ranch with her parents around the age of nine, and her parents sheltered her by not allowing her to work in the "gross" parts of the ranch, instead having her break horses, feed the animals, and milk cows and goats.

Samantha had a few close friends and was a very likable young girl, and her two closest were two sisters named Abilene and Pamela Coney, who were also financially-well off, like Samantha's family. When Samantha was a teenager, her mother died from an unspecified sickness. Her father coped with her loss by drinking heavily, which both put a strain on their relationship and also meant Samantha had to be the main provider, working extra hard to ensure they didn't lose the ranch.

When Samantha was eighteen, she graduated from the local school, and began working at the ranch full-time, taking it over from her father. A few years later, she married one of her family's long-time employees, Maine Edith. Due to miscegenation being frowned upon in Panem, their relationship was often the source of scrutiny and shame by people in town. Samantha and Maine were very much in love, and began living in a medium-sized house near their ranch property, having four children; Lucinda, Rosemary, Vinnie, and Rye. As her oldest daughter grew up, Samantha had to spend more and more of her time solely caring for her, due to her suffering from an unknown mental illness that inhibited her ability to have regular social skills and made her afraid to leave the house. This gradual process strained the relationship between Samantha and her other children, as she appeared to be solely prioritizing and favoring one of her children over the rest.

#### The 50th Hunger Games

During the 50th Hunger Games and the Second Quarter Quell, Samantha was overcome with emotion when Lucinda was reaped at 15 years old. Everybody knew Lucinda was far too weak and fragile to ever even have a chance of winning, so Lucinda's best friend, Henrietta Romney (the daughter Samantha's best friend, Pamela) volunteered in her place. While Samantha was happy her daughter was safe, she was still very upset as Henrietta was like a daughter to her as well, due to Lucinda's close friendship with her, as well as the fact that she was Pamela's daughter and had watched her grow up.

Samantha tried to provide comfort for Pamela and the rest of the family during Henrietta's time in the Games, and after a certain point she began to have hope that maybe she could survive. However, this hope was shattered, when, on the sixth day, Henrietta was violently killed by the district 1 female, Eveline Starfire, by being speared through the neck. Her brutal death and the equally brutal aftermath was filmed for the entire nation to see.

After Henrietta's death, Samantha, her family, and Pamela and Abilene (as well as their families) planned a small, private funeral for her, during which Samantha sang to comfort the mourners, and they decorated her gravesite with yellow flowers, her favorite color. Following Henrietta's death, which Lucinda obviously witnessed, Samantha and Maine had to care for their daughter even more. Lucinda's mental state deteriorated to the point where she had to be cared for and handled nonstop, leading to Samantha solely caring for her and none of her other children, and also led to her having to leave her post at the marketplace, meaning the family now had less money and food. These reasons led to her and Maine having marital problems, which in turn led to her becoming more stressed and frustrated, often unnecessarily taking these frustrations out on the other children, particularly Rosemary, Her and Rosemary's relationship was in shambles, and she often blamed Rosemary for why things were going wrong.

### The 53rd Hunger Games

#### The Reaping/Saying Goodbye

Samantha was once again horrified when she heard Lucinda's name get called by Opal Essents. She knew in her heart that nobody would volunteer for her again, and also knew that Lucinda's mental state had deteriorated even more in just those three years since the 50th Hunger Games. She was shocked and also emotional when Rosemary volunteered in her place, and Lucinda was so overwhelmed by this that she had to be taken home and comforted by Samantha and Maine.

Rosemary, in spite of her tense and difficult relationship with her mother, asked Vinnie and Rye where their parents were when they didn't show up to the inside room in the Justice Building to say goodbye, indicating that she still sought her mother's comfort in spite of everything. She was horrified and finally overcome with emotion when she was informed that their parents had to take Lucinda home and had already left, not even knowing if she would ever get to come home.