The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

The White Council is kind of a Joke.

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Cthoniq:
After a readthrough or two, either I'm missing something or the White Council is kind of a joke. If there is any in-setting reason why they've survived this long, it must be because they have benefactors helping them behind the scenes. I'm more of the Opinion that Jim just didn't really think things through, although I don't really blame him. There's that old thing about "write what you know". If you aren't a lawyer, don't try to write a detailed court procedure. If you don't have martial arts experience, don't try to write a detailed blow-by-blow of a clinch for a grapple, etc. Obviously good authors get around this by reading the writings of subject experts or directly consulting them, or they use abstraction to avoid the issue entirely. Robert Jordan wasn't an expert swordsman, but he has some of the best sword fighting sequences in fiction because he uses evocative but largely unexplained sword-fighting forms to describe actions. "Arc of the Moon countered Parting the Silk, which flashed into Heron in the Weeds," etc. Jim's problem comes from the fact that he isn't a .01%er, and there's (supposedly) no 300 year old illuminati guys to talk to in real life so he didn't think through how a group of hyper-rich information brokers would actually go about business.

Jim calls attention to the idea of how conservative long-lived organizations would work, but what exposition says and what the books actually show are very different. The Black Court is a perfect example of about how failure to adapt is absolutely fatal to long-lived beings. The black court have all the tools to be discrete manipulators on par with the white court, but they didn't use those tools wisely, so they were almost wiped out. They have infinite time, infinite money, can control the minds of mortals, have immense leverage when dealing with supernatural beings, and are massively dangerous if ever confronted directly, a lot like wizards actually. Predictably, the only ones that survived the stokerclipse were the ones who used those advantages, kept their head down, and mostly kept out of direct confrontations. Just like wizards. The problem is that how the wizards are described (how the mechanics of the setting established they SHOULD work) and how they act in the books are radically different.

They have wizards answering the phones? THEY HAVE WIZARDS ANSWERING THE PHONES??? It's an organization of 200 year old millionaires lead by a group of 300 year old billionaires, and they don't hire personal staff? Rich people don't do anything themselves. Once you get above a certain income bracket, you start hiring assistants, both because it's convenient, and because your time is way too valuable to be spent doing your own taxes, answering your business phone, or wiping your own butt. Yet you have wizards doing drudge work administrative tasks? Personally doing ground-level assessments of warlocks? Wizards aren't *just* hyper-rich elites, they're technical specialists whose talents require centuries of dedicated full-time practice to develop. It would absolutely be worth spending 100 grand a year or whatever to hire clued-in staff members to take care of all the little details. Peabody being a dedicated beurocromancer for the senior council doesn't bother me. Wizard Macfee(?) answering phones in Changes does. Morgan, head ass-kicker and #1 field guy of the council personally following around wardens for YEARS does. Captain Luccio, commander of the wardens, sitting in front of a phone on desk-duty in the middle of a crisis point during a war does. The White Council should have dozens of hundreds of staff members for every actual wizard, including a ton of mercenaries, allied spirits, and personal retainers to help in the war, yet when we see crisis points it's never a wizard and all their assets, it's two wardens and three noobies responding to a council-ending crisis, or six dudes on a boat coming to throw down with two of the most dangerous people alive. You'd think there would be dozens of wizards who made their fortune by building businesses based around providing confidential, clued in help for other council members, but the only person we ever see doing that is One-Eye.

By contrast, Harry is what, late thirties, early forties by the later books? And he has like a dozen people he can call on for help in a crisis, or even everyday tasks. Dude's got half a dozen warriors on hand, a pack of werewolves, several fae allies, multiple vampires, and a gang of favors he can call in. I get that he's a protagonist, punching above his age and means, but if he can get that in like 15 years as an active wizard, why don't the senior wizards have PILES of resources to call on? Even in emergency "the red court is actively kicking our asses" situations, why on earth wouldn't Luccio have hired some Einherjaren or whatever for the Darkhallow? Why are senior council members personally risking their lives to bring in a prisoner when they could whistle up a gang of spirits to go poke that beehive first? Personnel restrictions can be explained by the war, but not the bizarre risks taken by council members, or the sheer bizarre internal structure of the council. Why are wizards answering the phones? WHY ARE WIZARDS ANSWERING THE PHONES? I know this is an odd thing to fixate on, but imagine Elon Musk or Bill Gates or whatever sitting at a secretary's desk going down a call list verbally giving out an employee newsletter. Then remember that maintaining your talent as a wizard is a full time job on top of whatever other responsibilities you have. So Elon Musk is running his companies, personally doing secretarial work, and holding down a full time job as an engineering supervisor. What?

The mechanics of the setting have absolutely hammered home the idea that an organization that works as inefficiently as the council does should have been destroyed decades ago. For the last couple decades they've had Harry there personally pulling their bacon out of the fire, but what about the 100 years before that? It just really seems like the council should be gone by now. Lara Raith even calls them out for this in Turn Coat, but the text acknowledges the idea without actually implementing it. I really hope I'm just missing something, because it seems like a pretty big error.

g33k:
A few points worth noting...

In RE the Black Court:  in addition to their various strengths, they have some absolutely-fatal weaknesses.  And Stoker's novel, Blampire-Killing for Dummies, was an unexpected and devastating blow.  What's more, they didn't want to be "discrete manipulators."   They are, basically, bloodthirsty monsters; people exist for you to eat them, not for you to spend your life "manipulating" your food.

I think the issue with "wizards answering phones" is that you're into the security apparatus, there.  Mostly, you can't call the White Council.  But individual Wardens can call Warden-HQ... and reasonably expect to get a Warden to pick up the phone.  In the normal course of affairs, I expect it's trainees and newbies on the phones.  We mostly see this when the WC & Wardens are already in extremis from war-casualties (one thing I think the WC could/should do is recruit a bunch of noncombat wizards to fill those noncombat roles; conventional wisdom says that a combat-organization's logistics&support staff outnumber combat staff by between  5:1 - 10:1; see "T3R" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio).

It might be worth setting-up a separate phone-bank for non-Warden business... but the "masquerade" is deeply-entrenched enough that putting muggles into that loop, cluing them in "needlessly" and exposing private Wizard business, would I think be a non-starter with the WC.  Remember, each of those mortals would represent a huge privacy & security risk, given how many mindbenders there are on the Spookyside.  Resources spent on protecting their "service staff" would be vast... and in the end, never as secure as relying upon wizards in the first place.

Fundamentally, I think, there's an issue with "300 Year Old Billionaires" -- they are folk of their time.  They still train students in the Master/Prentice model, then make (so far as I know) zero effort to find proto-wizards and implement "mandatory public eductation" before the proto-wizards become actual warlocks; the Code Duello / Unseelie Accords are normative; etc.

This is the core of the "old organization conservatism" of the Dresdenverse, and it applies even more to the monsters (many of whom are actually immortal) than it does to the White Council... and there, perhaps, is the key to WC survival:  they're working on centuries-old organizational & military doctrines, where most of the monsters use principles outdated a millenia ago.

Conspiracy Theorist:
I wonder did the Drakul do a reverse Stoker and get Sir Terry Pratchett to write about Wizards?

Cthoniq:
@g33k
I'm not saying their awful antiquated ways aren't justified in the text, I'm saying that their survival doesn't seem justified. Jim specifically points out several times that the supernatural world is a cut-throat place wherein weakness is quickly pounced on, then shows several giant weaknesses in the council. Harry covers them in the vampire war, but what about before that? Is the vampire war seriously the first time the council has ever been in conflict with a major power? How have they survived this long?

Melriken:

--- Quote from: Cthoniq on April 25, 2023, 03:11:00 AM ---@g33k
I'm not saying their awful antiquated ways aren't justified in the text, I'm saying that their survival doesn't seem justified. Jim specifically points out several times that the supernatural world is a cut-throat place wherein weakness is quickly pounced on, then shows several giant weaknesses in the council. Harry covers them in the vampire war, but what about before that? Is the vampire war seriously the first time the council has ever been in conflict with a major power? How have they survived this long?
--- End quote ---
Most of the Major Powers aren't stupid enough to get into a war with the White Council.  The question isn't can the Black Court beat the White Council or can the White Court beat the White Council... the question whenever one supernatural faction gets into war with another is how much damage will the winning side take in the winning?

Your arguments are valid against factions like The Archive or Ferrovax that if you can take them out you can do it in one hit or against factions like Ghouls that are of a fairly uniform power level.  The problem with the White Council is that every faction knows that if they attack the White Council they won't get them all in one stroke.  And while they could do enough damage to eliminate the council as a faction they all know that Eb or someone like him (or 3 someones like him... or more) will be left nursing a vengence and someone is going to come for you (the leader making the choice) and they WILL take you out, the BEST you can hope for is to kill them too.  There are individual exception to this, but they generally lack a motivation to fight the council (they don't gain anything by removing the council) and even those powers (Ferrovax for example) can't be sure they will survive a suicidal Eb and if they do can't be sure to survive the sharks attracted by the blood in the water.

300 year old Billionaires don't just have a LOT of resources they have a LOT to lose.

If a 70 year old Billionaire dies they lose 10-20 years... they still lived a full and rewarding life and can die happy.

If a 700 year old Black Court Vampire dies... they lose eternity, they squandered what they had and threw away everything. Everything.

My question is why did it take so long for the white court to go after the minor talents in an effort to eliminate Wizards from the world. That is the kind of plan that might actually work without unacceptable fallout.

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