Being doing some research for a fanfic and it’s slowly starting to dawn on me how really, spectacularly shitty life must have been for Meredith Quill after she gave birth to Peter. It’s 1980. Here’s a baby, she’s not married, and she can’t produce the father. Can’t give the address or maybe even the last name of the father. The social stigma must’ve been huge. Meredith probably got off better than a lot of people – she was white, seems to have had a fairly supportive family (at least eventually) and maybe even had a bit of wealth, we don’t know – but man, there must have been so many nasty whispers and cruel jibes.
Oh my goodness yes. And the best thing she has to say about his father is that he’s ‘from the stars’.
Ego actually mentions having visited a few times (”I returned to see her three times”), and she’s out and about driving with him the one time we see her healthy and hale. She’s apparently living in a fairly ruralish area, so compound that with the point that “Jason” is an out-of-towner, and therefore in a lot of small town, automatically suspicious.
Peter also says “She told everyone that my father was from the stars, but she had a brain tumor, so everyone thought she was delusional.” At the same time, before Nova Prime checked his health scans over, he had had no idea that his father wasn’t some random Terran. This is actually a pretty interesting statement given that Peter a) knows damn well that aliens exist, having not been back to Earth for a good twenty years at this point, and b) was abducted by said aliens, although he might or might not assume he had been specifically targeted by Yondu (probably not), as well as c) Yondu’s abduction and this
If Meredith has money, I think it’s by leaning significantly on her parents, especially when Peter was small. It’s very clear from Peter’s comment that literally everyone around her thought she was mentally ill for quite a while, particularly if she had been claiming Ego as “from the stars” for some time before her diagnosis.
She and Peter were clearly close, so close, and I have to think that in part that was because he and Meredith literally had no one to socialize with where they lived aside from his extended family. At best, the town probably treated her as a pitiable lunatic fucked over by some out of town asshole; at worst… well, uh, probably the same thing, only without the pity and with some scorn for her bad judgement or loose morality.
All of this. And also, it’s occurred to me… not only did Ego take advantage of Meredith in every way possible… he also ensured she would never be believed if she told anyone. The brain tumour took care of that. He took everything from her – her body, her health, her reputation, her credibility. Abuse on a cosmic scale. Godddddd.