There are already a lot of these on fanfiction, so I'm just adding to the collection here, but here's my English project freshman year.
Disclaimer: I'm not Shakespeare.
Once upon a time in Verona, 1395, there lived a large family with the name Montalet. Unfortunately, the members rarely existed in harmony; they had a tendency to fight amongst themselves. When they did have these commonplace arguments, the family was always broken into two separate sides and opinions. These sides were not always fair and even, so when one group from the family was the minority, more disagreements were sure to occur, as they always did. The fight would grow and escalate until brothers were drawing swords against one another, even if the quarrel was about something incredibly petty. Then, as he always did, the grandfather of the family would intervene, calming his descendants and introducing solutions.
This fight seemed like all the others. The grandfather was, in fact, in the process of resolving the conflict, as he always did, when he seemed to hesitate in the middle of his compromise. The family stared in horror as they watched their beloved patriarch slump to the ground. For a few moments, silence overtook their vast home. Then, the shouts and cries of shock came to steal the quiet away as the group crumbled into chaos.
The Montalet clan was full of darkness that day; the once yellow Banners of the Sun in their home were transformed to black shrouds, and no other but the color of shadows was found donned on any of the residents. They mourned the loss of their leader, but they swore that he would never be forgotten on their own and their posterity's lives. They began to arrange a memorable funeral for their grandfather, a memorable person.
Predictably, this invited a new crowd of disagreements. With the pressure of planning a service worthy of the family's lost member looming above them, there were new problems growing every day. The overall issue about this funeral was where it was to be held. The majority of the people of the family wanted it to be held in a garden or park, as their grandfather loved nature. The others agreed that a church would provide a more suitable setting, as he was such a devout member there.
Eventually, as they always were, swords were drawn. This time, however, they were fighting for the chance to show their strength to honor their patriarch. It may have been possible to have patched up this issue if the love of their leader had not been so dominating and strong. The family may not have had to divide.
The minority was cast away; as they did not have enough fighters to actually take on the rest, they were forced to move out of the castle. The only real decision that they two sides agreed upon was that they could never live in harmony without their patriarch to make all the conflicts right again. The smaller group was not allowed to ever set foot on the grounds of the other again. The Montagues, as they then christened themselves, had more power, and gave the minority the end of the name that they had rejected. They derived the beginning of the new name from the prefix "kapu", meaning "forbidden" and made the smaller group be called "Capulet". This derogatory name would forever be a reminder to the Capulets of the Montague's stubbornness; they vowed that they would never forget the humiliation of being betrayed this way by their own family members.
The grandfather was not present to fix the final and most important conflict in the family, as he always had been before. The most ironic part is that, through his patience and problem solving, he became the only one capable of tearing the family apart.