I have had that thought about Ivy's mom as well. Was Nico that knowledgeable about Harry's and Ivy's connection?

He just needs to know Harry will treat someone who looks like a kid as a kid, I think.  To my mind Ivy having been Archive from birth is already in a unique situation, and I can quite by the vulnerabilities that come with that situation being part of Nicodemus' plan.

If things turn out better in Mirror Mirror world for everybody but Harry that would kill Harry's drive to do his best in bad situations.

Or maybe make him do some much-needed re-examining of what doing his best actually means; trying his hardest in the wrong direction is less use than it could be.

Now wouldn't him getting past that be a whole different scale of interesting and challenging from yet another long-drawn-out brawl ?

I would say. Prior archives had a life before duty as a buffer to mantle. What would happen if buffer was gone?

I suspect if that were a problem Nicodemus and company would have gone for her before, rather than after, Harry Named her.

I strongly suspect Ivy's grandmother's death was not an accident.

Why sacrificing your main pawn which was nicely on track weakening tne white council? Why not make it stronger so it could weaken the Sidhe courts as well? For example by providing it with a better ally by removing the current white court leadership and if that fails making room for the Fomor to take their place?

I don't see Cowl's main objective as weakening the White Council.  I see it as weakening all the supernatural powers, Red Court, White Council, Faerie, everyone.  The Red King and the LoONs don't exactly look like pushovers (unless like Harry you actually take the Red King's crazy act in Changes, which conveniently goes away the instant it is no longer useful, at face value.)   Making the White Council too weak relative to the Red Court just leaves the Reds free to disengage much of their force; the situation where the White Council and the Reds both get beaten down but are still engaged works better.

I also see no reason to think Cowl's long-term goal is to obliterate the leadership of the White Court, rather than that being a fallback; without Harry interfering, a White Court shift of policy towards drawing them into war with the White Council looks much more likely to come of that meeting in the Raith Deeps.

In this context it is easy to see why Mab and Odin wanted the red court gone.

That is providing a answer for a non-existent question, IMO.  The Reds made a peace offer, under the terms of the Accords, at the start of Changes, without the intent to keep it.  That is grounds enough for Mab to want them exterminated; they are her Accords, and the Reds had PG as a warning already.

I know that Luccio suggested that it was bad to humanize the Archive. But, Ivy never got the chance for a life before her call to duty.

Is her getting the chance for a life necessarily a net win ?

I just figure if Big Daddy is losing his stuff then maybe Lara would want little brother to step up as pseudo-boss.

Considering that Lord R is not always in Chicago and seems to be doing perfectly fine at passing for head of the White Court without needing Lara to stand beside him with her hand up the back of his shirt, I suspect that rumours of his incapacity are non-trivially exaggerated.

I am not bothered by someone who would do whatever they deem necessary for family. No idea, belief, or thought has that value as far as I am concern, But my family over the rest of humanity is a non-decision.

Do you see how as a member of the rest of humanity I might find that less than entirely positive ?

If I went to the lengths of collateral damage to other people Harry has to protect his family, the least my family would do in reaction is disown me, because causing collateral damage to other people is evil.

I wonder what about Harry caught Uriel's attention. His starborn status, connection to Michael, ties to Colin Murphy's daughter.

I wrote up a detailed analysis of this some time ago, which might be worth your attention: it's at http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,40670.0.html if you are interested.  In summary, I think the logic there is the other way around from what you are suggesting.

I really want it to be something about Harry's dad.

I very much want Harry's dad to be just an ordinary decent guy with a good heart.  Because that way the series makes a point about the capacity of basic human goodness to help people out of bad straits and help them in positive directions, whereas if he had any sort of supernatural powers or qualities it would undercut that.  I really do not want him to turn out to have been a Knight of the Cross, frex, which some people seem to really like as a notion.