The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
[Spolers Through GS] Maggie LeFay and the Outsiders
AcornArmy:
--- Quote from: LordDresden on August 29, 2011, 04:47:18 AM ---All right, now we've got various points of view on her, all of which more-or-less match up. The versions from Chaunzoggoroth, Nicodemus, Thomas, the Margaret-simulation, and Ebenezar all line up with each other. They contradict Luccio's comments in Turn Coat in several basic ways. Further, that whole conversation with Luccio was weird, weird, weird. Harry's reactions to what she was saying made no sense, either.
So I strongly distrust the idea that Margaret was just a misguided but well-intentioned idealist. Maybe it started out that way...
--- End quote ---
This doesn't seem like a matter of contradiction, it seems like a matter of reading a lot of information into some very brief mentions of Maggie LeFay. That Maggie LeFay made contact with demons? Harry was doing that very thing while having that conversation. That Nicodemus respected her? Even if he's not blurring the lines of the truth, Nicodemus can probably be said to respect Harry, or Shiro, or any number of enemies. Saying he respected Maggie isn't the same thing as saying she had a coin herself. And concluding that Maggie learned how to make the simulacrum from studying a Fallen's mind-shadow is rather weak, since the only kind of support for the idea is that both of them are recordings of a personality. Simply hearing about a shadow construct could be enough to make a smart wizard start to consider how such a thing might be made with magic.
Most of all, though, Nicodemus is about as far from a reliable source as it's possible for one to get. Nick was in the middle of trying to convince Harry to take up one of the coins. Insinuating that Harry's mother had been friendly with the Denarians is an obvious move in that direction.
That she was dangerous is obvious, and I think I was pretty clear about some of the bad company she kept in my post. And I actually suggested that she repeatedly broke the Seventh Law myself; I know she broke some of the Laws, or I wouldn't have suggested that she'd started a club based on repeatedly breaking one of them.
The most important thing, though, is that Luccio's depiction of Maggie doesn't contradict any of that, it simply adds to it. The combination of being passionate, committed, incautious, arrogant, and short-sighted is one that could easily explain all of the dark insinuations by Chauncy, Nick, and Ebenezer. Maggie was a woman who believed what she believed, and was willing to go to extremes in order to make the world fit what she thought it should be.
Ebenezer himself told Harry that Maggie called him to Lord Raith's place for dinner and suggested an idea to him, an idea that he didn't want any part of, and that he thought she shouldn't want any part of, either. He said that this occurred shortly after Maggie had taken up with "that Raith bastard." So whenever Maggie's Lawbreaking occurred, it was after the scheme had been thought of and begun. Ebenezer was almost certainly not under orders to kill her at that time, or it seems doubtful that Maggie would have invited him to dinner with Lord Raith and Duchess Arianna.
And as I suggested in the OP-- well, if the group found themselves with access to a Gate to the Outside, what would they have done about it? Research on Outsiders was a beheading offense, so it's not like they could ask around within the White Council. They couldn't just start trying to summon Outsiders without any clue as to how to do it, because they weren't stupid, or at least Maggie wasn't, and such a thing was bound to be incredibly dangerous. So where would Maggie go for information on Outsiders, and how to safely summon them? She'd go to the underworld. Maybe she'd even go to Nicodemus, a 2,000 year old Denarian with demonic connections. She'd go to the darker, more ancient fae, who might have such knowledge.
It seems to me that Luccio's description gives us insight into why Maggie did the things she did and where she came from, while the others give us insight into the kinds of things she was eventually willing to do to achieve her goals. I was never suggesting that Maggie was pure as the driven snow, or even that she was just misunderstood. I'm sure she did some ugly things, once she came up with her plan and started putting it in motion. But from the example of the dinner Ebenezer had with her, the darker period of her life probably took place near the end, after she hooked up with Raith.
But even if she did do some unpleasant things in service to her goals, that doesn't mean that Luccio's description wasn't accurate. In fact, it seems to me to be the only explanation anyone has given us for why Ebenezer's daughter would do the kinds of things that she apparently did. She was driven, she thought way, way outside the box, and she was willing to do what she felt she had to in order to succeed in her plans.
All the sources agree, though, that she eventually turned away from her allies and left them. She eventually came to her senses, and realized that what she had intended to achieve was not what was actually happening. That's pretty much what it sounds like from all of the various sources. She may have been misguided and short-sighted, but she wasn't evil. Which fits perfectly with how Luccio described her.
AcornArmy:
--- Quote from: TheWinterEmissary on August 29, 2011, 06:16:09 AM ---Very interesting speculation AcornArmy! I can definitely believe that you're right about at least some of your theory, maybe quite a bit of it.
I'm also reminded of this WoJ which could be applicable:
Harry hasn't had a chance to meet, or speak with, some of the "bad guys", and it could be that there are more like Kumori who aren't as bad as we might have assumed absent Harry's dialogue with her. Unfortunately Harry won't know until he gets the chance to speak with them, as he did her. I can definitely see that there might have been some idealistic people who fell in with Maggie's group, but got labeled "bad" and have had to stay on that "side" ever since.
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Thanks! That WoJ could be important, if something like this theory turns out to be true. It could imply that some of the people, like maybe DuMorne, weren't quite as horrible as they've seemed so far. I know Ebenezer called him "that bastard DuMorne," but now that we know Maggie was Eb's daughter, it could be that Eb wasn't being entirely objective in his opinion. Eb might place a lot of the blame for what eventually happened to Maggie on DuMorne and Lord Raith. Though, to be fair, it seems like a safe bet that Raith really is as big a bastard as Eb thinks he is.
Of course, the WoJ could also imply that there are factions within the Outsider-summoning group, and that some of them suck and some don't, and we may not be clear on which is which.
The Mighty Buzzard:
--- Quote from: LordDresden on August 29, 2011, 04:47:18 AM ---So I strongly distrust the idea that Margaret was just a misguided but well-intentioned idealist. Maybe it started out that way...
--- End quote ---
Misguided but Well-Intentioned Idealist (n) - see villain. see also hero.
We'll be entering an election year here in the US soon and I fully expect that both parties will paint the other as villains. And they're both right. And they're both wrong. Good and evil are opinions.
Mira:
--- Quote ---So I strongly distrust the idea that Margaret was just a misguided but well-intentioned idealist. Maybe it started out that way...
--- End quote ---
In the history of the world you will find that most of the murderous dictators and religious fanatics who are responsible for the death of millions started out as well-intentioned idealists. Now you can argue about what exactly their ideals were, but there it is.
In the Sixties, the anti-war movement was filled with well-intentioned idealists, most of them remained that way, others got splintered off into violent groups such as the Weathermen, while most took drugs, some got into the business of dealing drugs big time.
The point I am getting to, is we know Margaret LeFay daughter of Eb, had a bit of a strict upbringing and apprenticeship, Eb admits to pushing her too far and hints at inflexibility on his part, and his daughter ran away. Luccio hints and even the WC has dropped some hints that Margaret didn't care for the White Council system, too many constraints in her opinion, her youngest son shared some of those beliefs. It is easy for someone angry, young, idealistic, full of herself [arrogant as only the young can be] like Margaret LeFay was,to get led astray or corrupted by someone older more powerful, like Nick would be perfect to take up her mentorship, then someone like the handsome urbane Lord Raith.. She'd even have a child by him, but in the end, Maggie LeFay found that she valued her own free will more, and Lord Raith found that he could never fully enthrall her to his will. She escaped, eventually hooked up with Malcom a truly good vanilla human, from his example, realized with horror what she had helped in her angry idealism to unleash, so she devised a plan to counter it, that plan was to conceive a child under a special alinement of the stars with a truly good man, that child was Harry.
It could be that she did help to found the Black Council, but I suspect they have been around as long as the White Council.
I think that I may also have come up with a motive for why Malcom Dresden was murdered. He was the only one who knew the full story of the how and the why of Margaret LeFay's redemption. Only Malcom had the first hand knowledge, others had first hand knowledge only of her rebellion and her evil period, this is most of what has been passed on to Harry. Even his grandfather, who wouldn't even tell Harry he was his grandfather, could have told him a heck of a lot about his mother, but didn't. Out of fear of what the knowledge might do to Harry maybe, or because nobody but Malcom knew the full story.
That full story would help erase doubt in Harry about his mother, make him less easy to lead astray by others, so Malcom had to die. What is interesting, is Harry himself doesn't quite get the importance of knowing that part of the story, otherwise he would have asked Lea more about it, instead he pressed her to tell him who murdered him. Something he knew she really wasn't going to be allowed to tell him.
--- Quote ---OK, Chaunzoggoroth is a demonic entity, and as such by definition untrustworthy. Still, the only sucker bait it has to offer practitioners to summon it is useful truthful information. So lying is highly risky, it needs a reputation for truthfulness to do its damage. I suspect the only lie it told Harry was about St. Patrick being the source of the loup-garou curse. For that, it suddenly switched from direct declarative statements to second-hand comments, "It is said..." etc.
--- End quote ---
I doubt he was telling a lie about any of it, what he was doing was putting bait on a hook to try and catch Harry. What better bait than to tempt Harry with the full story of what happened to his mother and father? Harry almost was willing to give up his full name for that, but not quite.
Just as a side note, old Chez didn't have Harry's full name, wouldn't, unless Harry gave it to him, in contrast both Uriel and the Angel of Death had not only Harry's full name, but all the inflections needed to hold power over him.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
This is very nice indeed. There's only one part of it that does not quite work for me.
--- Quote from: AcornArmy on August 29, 2011, 02:47:37 AM ---Maggie, being brilliant, probably had a better grasp on Outsider lore than most of the rest of them. When things eventually turned bad, which they obviously did, she knew enough to recognize it and formulate a plan to fix the problem she had created. I don't have much of an idea how they turned bad, except to guess that the Outsiders may not have been quite as easy to use without repercussions as the group had believed they would be. Maybe the Outsiders began to exert an unhealthy influence over the group, bending it toward a new, less pleasant direction.
So Maggie left, hooked up with Malcolm Dresden, and gave birth to an Outsiderbane, who was meant to correct all the problems his mother had caused.
--- End quote ---
I am not seeing the degree of effort Justin puts into training Harry, and that various forces have put into co-opting or corrupting Harry over the course of the series, as compatible with Harry being solely a solution to Maggie's former misdeeds; it seems to me to fit better with Harry's existence being part of the same plan, which Maggie tries to hack for the purposes of good. The timing of Maggie's death also makes more sense to me if Lord R and possibly his remaining allies want the Outsiderbane child around and mouldable to their ends, but don't want Maggie there as a potential influence. The utility of a child with special power over Outsiders to a group interested in using Outsiders (for whatever end) seems fairly straightforward to me.
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