I think canon has pretty much Jossed that tie-in photo, tbh. I mean…you have Frank and Alice (his parents) calling him Monroe. When’s the last time you met parents who called their child by his last name? That would be highly unusual.
Then you have their wedding. To be honest I think that was meant to be both a tease and a reveal, because prior to that, there was still some debate over whether Monroe was his first or last name (I mean, his parents could just be really weird right?).
But then you have the officiator at their wedding announcing them as Monroe and Rosalee…and we never get a last name. Which suggests by literally everything we know about names and weddings that we got both their first names but had the last name withheld (it also suggests that Rosalee took his last name, which means we have no idea what her last name is now as well).
So to me at least, that makes the tie-in photo explicitly non-canonical. His first name is Monroe. Will they ever tell us his last name? Well they made us wait three seasons to find out Wu’s first name and whether Monroe was even his first or last name or not…so somehow I see them drawing this little mystery out as long as they reasonably can.
This is Monroe’s driving license as featured in Aunt Marie’s Book of Lore. Given that a lot of the information in the tie-in books is either wrong to start with (Juliette is almost always referred to as Nick’s fiance in the comics or the novels, when in canon, in the first series for Pete’s sake, she actually refused Nick’s proposal) OR is later Jossed by the show, it’s hard to say whether this is accurate.
Also, living in the UK, I’m not entirely sure how to read a US driving license.
On my UK one, which looks completely different, my name appears like so:
1. LAST NAME
2. TITLE/FIRST NAME/MIDDLE NAME
On this one, it looks like it’s the same – I know in British English when you put a a comma after someone’s name and then follow it with another of their names, it’s their surname you put first. For instance,
SURNAME, Emma Siobhan
for myself.
Sooo, according to the tie in, Monroe is his last name, and he has a first name and a middle name. I have not blurred out his name, that is exactly how it appears in the book. His date of birth is also blurred out, but his height and weight are apparently not secret.
From close inspection, his first name looks like James, but the middle name is far too blurred, but judging by the length it’s probably hideous.
This fits in with canon, as when Monroe and Rosalee are married, the priest or whoever gives them as ‘Monroe and Rosalee’ not Mr and Mrs Calvert or Mr and Mrs Monroe or whoever. Their marriage is brought up numerous times after they are married, and their last names become conspicuous by their absence. Rosalee is never again referred to as Calvert as far as I’m aware, please correct me if I’m wrong.
On the other hand, as has been mentioned before by somebody else, Monroe’s parents call him Monroe, and it would be weird to call your own kid by your own surname.
However, as I’ve already said, never take a Grimm tie-in’s word for anything, because they like to do stupid stuff like put all of Captain Renard’s Woge on one side of his face instead of two.
I like your headcanon, and a pun like that is exactly the sort of stuff that the Grimm Writers love.
But this driving license, which I have meant to being up before and forgot about, does bring up some questions. Why bother putting Monroe’s driving license in if you have to blur out some of the information? They could just have easily have chosen to add a photograph or his fingerprints like they did for Adalind. Someone chose to add a driving license and blur out the info for a reason. It puzzles me.
Liza here!
There are a couple of reasons I wouldn’t take anything in a tie-in book seriously, the first and biggest real-world reason being that a lot of times the tie-in materials are made to generate merchandise sales, not so much to expand the world or keep to canon. Tie-ins, unfortunately, aren’t often bound by what is strictly canon, and canon is almost never bound by the material in tie-ins. So for me, at least, if it doesn’t happen on the show it isn’t canon.
As Siobhan said…the license suggests that his last name is Monroe (and if you squint it really does look like it says Monroe, James Christian, which would make his full name James Christian Monroe). But several points in canon, including the wedding and scenes with his parents, really heavily imply that Monroe is his first name, not his last name. So unless you have a preacher and two parents who defy pretty much all normal social convention when it comes to names and how they’re used, his first name is Monroe and we don’t know his last name, making the license in the tie-in effectively non-canon.
Another reason I don’t take this tie-in seriously is there is no way they’re going to be so conspicuous about not telling us his name on the show and then risk revealing it in a tie-in novel. Like…it really isn’t that hard to deduce what the blurred-out part says, and a person handy with Photoshop could probably clean it up enough to remove all doubt.
And finally…the in-universe reason I wouldn’t take this seriously? Assuming Aunt Marie did somehow get a copy of Monroe’s driver’s license, do we have any expectation that the information on it is accurate, or that it’s even real or official? I mean…again, sticking only with what we know for certain to be show canon, Monroe used to kill people. He was a murderer and quite possibly also ate his kills. When he reformed, he more or less seems to have cut himself off from the majority of the people in his old life.
When you retire from being a murderer and go into hiding, you don’t keep your real name. That would somewhat defeat the purpose of going into hiding in the first place. Now generally, if you take an alias it’s a good idea to make it something close to your real name in some way, so you remember it. And what better way to hide your somewhat unusual first name than to switch it to a much less eyebrow-raising last name?
Not to mention it lists his height as 5′09′’, which I know for certain is several inches too short.
So…that’s my take on it. The blog as a whole does not have an official stance on the canon status of tie-ins, but as far as I, individually, am concerned, they’re apocryphal.
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