The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
We gotta talk about Margaret LeFay
g33k:
--- Quote from: LordDresden2 on August 16, 2024, 06:24:19 AM ---True, but the powers of the Fallen in the Coins is limited, that's part of the point of the Coins. They have to work through human hosts, and that reduces their power substantially, and so yes, it matters that Nicodemus is human.
--- End quote ---
While in the coins, I think the Fallen cannot interact with the real world at all -- only with a mortal who touches one.
Once a mortal has taken up a coin, become a Knight, the Fallen get considerably more scope.
Certainly not the full capacity of their angel-caliber self; but each of the Fallen has various more-than-human powers they deploy.
Ursiel in "battle form" is probably capable of ripping-apart ordinary human beings largely without limit... 100, 1000, he's just a killing machine. Tessa's ability to transform into an insect-swarm, then re-form, is something I don't think even Listens to Wind could replicate. Anduriel can listen from any shadow, anywhere around the world; again, I think this is something beyond the ability of White Council magic to achieve.
I don't think we have any sort of sense of where the Denarian limitations are... in part because I think Jim is deliberately leaving many of them open for further storytelling use as-needed.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: Mira on August 16, 2024, 01:08:29 PM --- I doubt that Malcolm knew everything, however I don't think he was totally ignorant about Margaret's world either. However we still don't know what Malcolm
was told so he would go along with it. Then again, Margaret could have told Malcolm everything, but how much would he be able to understand or believe? You would think that Margaret would have run into the same problems that Harry did trying to explain his world to Susan and even Murphy.
--- End quote ---
Yeah. The more I think about, the more significant it gets. Morally, if Margaret really was trying to 'go straight', she had an obligation to make sure Malcolm understood what he was buying. He's getting a lot more than a sexy wife, after all.
Stop and think about it from Malcolm's POV: the biggest issue isn't necessarily Margaret being a Witch, though that's no small thing. There's also the fact that she's a century old. OK, maybe Malcolm was attracted to older women. But along with that, comes her own past crimes. Would you be casual about marrying a murderer? Or whatever else she had done?
Plus there's the fact that he's quite literally risking his life from her foes by getting entangled with Margaret.
Margaret was being hunted by the bad guys and the good guys. The (more or less) good guys wanted to disconnect her head from her shoulders, Lord Raith and who knows who else probably wanted to do substantially worse. A mortal caught in the line of fire is not safe. The Wardens probably would go out of their way to avoid harming Malcolm in getting at Margaret if they could. But if they couldn't...
The White Court and who knows who else was after her would at best be indifferent to Malcolm's survival, many would eat him or take pleasure in killing him along with getting her.
The more I think about the implications of the Margaret/Malcolm marriage, the more complicated and impressive they get.
Mira:
--- Quote ---The more I think about the implications of the Margaret/Malcolm marriage, the more complicated and impressive they get.
--- End quote ---
Nebulous and enigmatic as well.. Just reread the passages from Blood Rites and from Dead Beat, the first is Harry's soul gaze with Thomas resulting in the conversation with his mother. In it she takes full responsibility for Harry's birth and voices some regret that she placed such a burden on him. She says she was arrogant to have thought she could have pulled such a thing off. That suggests that it was all her, that Malcolm merely supplied the sperm. Then again, was she solely responsible? Or is she displaying a character trait that her younger son so often displays? A character flaw that is as dangerous as not ever taking responsibility for anything, something a fallen angel might take advantage of, " and it's all your fault!"
But then if you carefully read Harry's dream sequence of Malcolm in Dead Beat, it suggests something a bit more complicated, and yeah, in my opinion anyway, that Malcolm knew fully what he was getting into when he married Margaret, and even more so when they conceived Harry. When Harry wonders why he had hadn't dreamt of Malcolm before, Malcolm answers that he wasn't allowed to come in contact before. Who didn't allow him? Sounds like a bigger deal to me than just Mab for example. Malcolm says he was allowed because others crossed the line, then warns of the Jabberwock. Others? Who or what others? His last words to him was that he wishes he could have been there to help him prepare for what is to come. Maybe that is why Malcolm was murdered? Perhaps he was meant to help prepare young Harry, and someone or something took him out of the picture. Then muddied the waters so the likes of Morgan, and Eb is he was looking for him could find him, and Justin was able to step in.
To me at any rate this hints of a very complicated existential planning, I think Margaret told Malcolm, he understood as much as any mere vanilla mortal can understand, agreed and went along with the conception of Harry. Clearly he understands a hell of a lot more now.
g33k:
--- Quote from: Mira on August 18, 2024, 06:33:31 PM --- ... But then if you carefully read Harry's dream sequence of Malcolm in Dead Beat, it suggests something a bit more complicated, and yeah, in my opinion anyway, that Malcolm knew fully what he was getting into when he married Margaret, and even more so when they conceived Harry ...
--- End quote ---
I'll have to re-read it.
My memory is thinking that Jim had written it very carefully so that Malcolm was clearly clued-in (more even than Harry) during their chat, but that he never started outright whether he learned that stuff in life, or after death.
Remember Carmichael (the cop) & his relationship to the supernatural in life; and then how incredibly-much-more clued-in he was when Harry met him again in Ghost Story... I saw nothing in Malcolm's big "ghost/dream sequence" to make me think Malcolm's arc was all that different from Carmichael's.
Nor was there anything definitive to say that their "supernatural learning paths" were all that similar... I can only presume that Jim wrote the ambiguity deliberately.
Jim's a bastard that way. ;)
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: g33k on August 20, 2024, 03:50:08 AM ---I'll have to re-read it.
My memory is thinking that Jim had written it very carefully so that Malcolm was clearly clued-in (more even than Harry) during their chat, but that he never started outright whether he learned that stuff in life, or after death.
--- End quote ---
I lean toward 'after death'. I suspect Malcolm is a major figure in Heaven.
Remember Carmichael (the cop) & his relationship to the supernatural in life; and then how incredibly-much-more clued-in he was when Harry met him again in Ghost Story... I saw nothing in Malcolm's big "ghost/dream sequence" to make me think Malcolm's arc was all that different from Carmichael's.
Nor was there anything definitive to say that their "supernatural learning paths" were all that similar... I can only presume that Jim wrote the ambiguity deliberately.
Jim's a bastard that way. ;)
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