Is there, or was there a relationship between Monero and Vertcoin?
I think othe worked on Vertcoin? But no there is no official relationship that I know about. 
Personally, I've never even looked at Vertcoin, and couldn't tell you anything about it.
Nothing illustrates the doomed Monero Echo Chamber better than this.
VTC has been a Top 10-20 coin for many months now...
And they've done some things very well like build a classy, mature community (unlike XMR)...
And a very reliable, fast network that's fun to use (unlike XMR)...
But they've also done things very badly like their idiotic, losing war on multipools and botnets.
So you learn nothing from the "Evil Competition"...
And are stuck in 2013 talking about "revolutionary wallets" in the age if NXT.