The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Luccio's perspective compared to Harry's
KurtinStGeorge:
After reading the latest short story featuring Luccio in Dodge City (A Fistful of Warlocks), I started thinking about Anastasia Luccio and other White Council members personal perspectives versus that of Harry's. So Anastasia was born in the late 18th or early 19th Century. Let's say she joins the White Council around 1830 or a little before that. After a few years she is introduced to older members of Council, perhaps even a Senior Council member or two. Consider that with the possible exception of Ancient Mai, every other SC member is from an older generation than the members we see today.
Now stop and think about your own life and stories you heard as a child from either your grandparents or other relatives who where older than your mother or father or maybe even from a next door neighbor who was around the same age as your grandparents. Think particularly about those stories about what life was like when they were children. So the living memory of other people you have been exposed to may go back sixty or seventy years before you were born, occasionally more if you had any particularly long lived family members who told you a story or two that really impressed you. I'll give you an example from my life. When I was a child; maybe eight or nine, my family went to a wedding in New Mexico, I think near Silver City. I grew up near Los Angeles, CA so this was something unusual. Before the wedding my mother met with some of her cousins. One of them showed my mother an photo album with pictures of people, none of whom I knew, though my mom recognized several. There was one very old picture; think Teddy Roosevelt era, of a young man that my mom asked about. I think the only reason she asked was because the photo was so old. Her cousin identified this man as a great uncle on her father's side, someone she had never met, but a person her grandfather had talked about a great deal. He had been a soldier during the First World War and had died in his mid to late 20's, during the 1920's, but it had been the war that had killed him. She told us that he had been a victim of a poison gas attack and he never really recovered from it, it slowly destroyed his lungs over time. It was a horrifying story and the person who told it hadn't actually witnessed it, but the story her grandfather told her made an impression on her and later on me. That's one small example of living memory being passed down from one generation to another, actually several generations.
Think about the people Anastasia met when she became a Warden or even earlier than that. Some of the older European Council members she met not only had lived during the time of witch burnings in Europe, they may have witnessed someone being burned at the stake. (The Witchcraft Act of 1735 in Great Britain made in illegal to claim someone had magical powers or was a witch. Though witch hunts continued sporadically for sometime after that in other places.) It's one thing to read about something like this in a book, now imagine having a friend, colleague or family member who could describe to you the crowd of onlookers, the executioner and the victim or victims. Then imagine this living witness telling you about the sound of the crowd made and the crackling of the fire, the screams of the victim(s), the smell of burning flesh and the feeling of pure fear that you could be next.
Harry has an academic appreciation that wizards were once burned as witches. Luccio, Ebenezer, Arthur Langtry and other older members of the White Council didn't experience this directly, but they knew people who did. I think this explains; at least partially, why Council members are disturbed by Harry's openness to openly proclaim himself a wizard; and some of his other more flippant behavior, even if most of society thinks that he is a crackpot.
Snark Knight:
I doubt very many Council members were victims of burning at the stake, given the difficulty a mob would have catching someone who can ward their home, veil, and retreat to the Nevernever if cornered. The mobs probably mostly got random wrongfully accused vanillas or innocent small-timers, with a scattering of genuinely malignant sorcerers and warlocks.
But yeah, a lot of their defense probably also did rely on concealing what they were (and, as Harry mentioned at one point, propagating myths that magicians needed elaborate props like crystal balls, so, hey, obviously we aren't magicians, right?) rather than, say, advertising in the Yellow Pages. And if, as several of us were discussing recently on another thread, some of the unsolved assassination attempts on him have been the Librarians probing how hard it would be to kill a wizard after Harry outed himself as a testable specimen, the orthodox Council view on discretion might still have its merits.
groinkick:
--- Quote from: Snark Knight on July 20, 2017, 01:20:38 AM ---I doubt very many Council members were victims of burning at the stake, given the difficulty a mob would have catching someone who can ward their home, veil, and retreat to the Nevernever if cornered. The mobs probably mostly got random wrongfully accused vanillas or innocent small-timers, with a scattering of genuinely malignant sorcerers and warlocks.
--- End quote ---
Unless a member, or members of the vampire courts (or anyone in the supernatural community), or warlocks aided, and tricked vanilla mortals in taking down White Council members. I find that kind of scenario very likely. Using mortal pawns as weapons against the White Council.
Zaphodess:
Yeah, wasn't it said in the books somewhere that the wizard who enchanted Bob's skull in the Middle Ages was burned at the stake. So they did get a real wizard occasionally.
I suppose plenty of below WC level practitioners were also caught. As magic is supposed to be passed down family lines, most often through the mother's side, there could still be wizards on the Council who might have witnessed their mother being burned as a child. The last witch burnings in Europe happened in the 18th century.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: Snark Knight on July 20, 2017, 01:20:38 AM ---I doubt very many Council members were victims of burning at the stake, given the difficulty a mob would have catching someone who can ward their home, veil, and retreat to the Nevernever if cornered. The mobs probably mostly got random wrongfully accused vanillas or innocent small-timers, with a scattering of genuinely malignant sorcerers and warlocks.
But yeah, a lot of their defense probably also did rely on concealing what they were (and, as Harry mentioned at one point, propagating myths that magicians needed elaborate props like crystal balls, so, hey, obviously we aren't magicians, right?) rather than, say, advertising in the Yellow Pages. And if, as several of us were discussing recently on another thread, some of the unsolved assassination attempts on him have been the Librarians probing how hard it would be to kill a wizard after Harry outed himself as a testable specimen, the orthodox Council view on discretion might still have its merits.
--- End quote ---
It's Long, but here is the WOJ that directly addresses the question of the Council v. the Inquisition.
Please read it for yourself rather than taking my summaries/interpretations, but I think it's more or less saying that the Inquisition was to the Council what the Stokerocalype was to the Black Court: it made the Massive vanilla population both aware of and afraid of any sort of Magic, and Wizards of that day were insanely outnumbered...
Granted I dont see it often playing out with an arrest, a trial, followed by a bonfire in the Town Square, as that should certainly give the Wizard time to escape or at least call for help (unless somebody new enough to chain them up in the river or something). But getting ambushed and beaten, then burned for good measure before they wake up? Certainly. It's going to take a much smaller mob to take down your average Wizard than it would to take down a BC Elder, and that happened a great deal.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version