The most important thing, though, is that Luccio's depiction of Maggie doesn't contradict any of that, it simply adds to it.
No, it blatantly contradicts it.
According to Ebenezar, Margaret was a warlock on the run from the Council, and under a literal death sentence.
According to Luccio, Margaret was a misguided idealist who the Wardens had been assigned to
watch, and nothing more. No mention of her being a warlock, no mention of a death sentence from Luccio.
Further, Luccio comments that Margaret simply disappeared for 5 years or so with no explanation, and presumably was with LR and had Thomas in that time. Nothing about her being hunted afterward by the WCouncil and the WCourt at the same time. None.
And Harry, in that same conversation,
doesn't even notice the contradiction. That's part of why I say that whole conversation is so weird. It portrays Margaret as being something totally different than
every other reference we've seen. Either Luccio or Eb is lying, or else one of them is remembering events 100% out of synch with reality. Yet Harry doesn't even react to the contradiction in his own mind.
That's why I call that conversation 'weird'.
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.
No, but Luccio didn't mention her becoming a warlock or under death sentence
at all. She made Margaret sound like a misguided idealist, not evil. Every other account, every single other account, implies evil.
Not that Chaunzoggorth said that Hell expected to get her soul, but she found redemption just before the end. I didn't remember this last night, but that version also tallies with what Lea told Harry in
Grave Peril. Lea said that Harry's self-sacrficing, noble choices reminded him of his mother...
at the end of her life. After she changed paths.
The problem is not just that we have conflicting versions. It's that we have a fairly consistant set of versions, set against one strange and conflicting one from Luccio.
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
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.
You can't just do 'ugly things' with magic and not have it change you. That's why using black magic for good purposes doesn't work, or not for long, you lose the good purposes and it rarely takes very long.
Further, the accounts other than Luccio's say that the dark period of her life came first, then, at the very end, came something better.
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.
Yeah, but
every version other than Luccio's
does suggest evil. You have to take a really improbable interpretation of the others to make them even half-fit with Luccio's account, and Eb's account is
totally incompatiable with Luccio's.