The parallel universes that Jim has described and that we will explore (or at least get a taste of) in Mirror Mirror - THAT is the Outside.

I think that could be it, too. It makes a kind of sense to me.

But then, one day, you happen to discuss her with the FBI director, who was also in charge of the FBI back in the day, and his account is totally different, instead of a murderess and a criminal he talks about her being a war protester who hung out with a bad bunch for while, but mentions absolutely nothing about murder, slave trading, or anthing else of the sort...and the time-line of his account conflicts with the other versions.

Don't you think that under those conditions, you'd at least note that discrepency to yourself?!  That's the equivalent of where Harry was at the time of the conversation in TC, yet he doesn't even seem to blink at it.

Weird.

I refer you to the end of this post, and all of this post.

There is a little problem of biology, though I guess that goes out the window because we are talking fantasy verses reality, but still there is a problem older female verses older male.
....
Back to fantasy, I can see the period of fertility being extended for wizard women to the point where their peak child baring years might be from forty to sixty or even seventy years of age.  I think what threw Luccio off was not just being in an immature [for a female wizard] female body, and having to deal with fertility issues again, but libido, she now had the sex drive of a young woman and not of a middle aged woman who had gone through menopause.

You just have to assume that part of the changes the "essence of creation" makes in a female wizard is that her body produces new eggs. Or that the original eggs duplicate themselves, or something. Or even that they simply go into a holding pattern, remaining viable and inside the woman until they get fertilized. We're talking about the force that supposedly created the universe from nothing here; surely it can allow a woman to maintain a constant state of health and fertility, if put to that use.

To me, this period with Raith before Thomas was born seems to be the key to understanding Maggie, so it's too bad we can't do any more than speculate about what was going on at the time.   

Well, we know that Raith had some control over her, even though he never managed to control her completely. He may have had a detrimental effect on her judgement. Or, just as likely, something involving messing around with Outsiders caused her to become more reckless and violent. Of course, that last one is contingent upon whether or not you think Maggie was part of the group that originally started summoning Outsiders back onto the Earthly plane, or into the Nevernever near Earth.

Some people have mentioned that they can see Maggie being a part of the group, but not founding it. To that, I would ask how they think Outsiders started coming back into the universe, if the Gatekeeper is Gatekeeping properly. Neither the White Council nor the Senior Council have made any accusations toward Rashid that we've heard about, and yet, Outsiders have fought beside Red Court vampires multiple times. They've been getting in somehow, but the Gatekeeper remains at his post as usual. So, it seems to me that the Senior Council must think the Outsiders are somehow getting around the Gatekeeper, rather than coming in with his help.

And if you accept that the Outer Gates are probably thin points between Earth's universe and the Outside, or the Nevernever and the Outside, then someone must have found a thin spot that the Gatekeeper wasn't guarding. Enter Maggie LeFay, who could apparently hunt down a path from almost anywhere to almost anywhere else. She just seems like the most obvious candidate for that type of thing.

When you add in the fact that she was attached to Lord Raith, that she was friends with Justin DuMorne, and that both Raith and DuMorne called on He Who Walks Behind-- it seems like an obvious next step that Maggie must have been the one to find an undiscovered Outer Gate. And if her personality was anything like Harry's or Ebenezer's, then she was probably one of the more powerful personalities in the group, even if she was somewhat under Lord Raith's control.

The descriptions of Maggie make her seem more formidable than DuMorne, and she would obviously know more about magic than Raith. Formidable + knowledgeable + a powerful personality = someone likely in charge, or near the top of the hierarchy, imho.

According to the DF timeline thread, Maggie is over 100 years old when she becomes involved with Lord Raith.  Thus, as Thomas was born 34-35 years pre-SF and she was presumably involved with Lord Raith at least a couple of years before his birth, let's say that she hooked up with Raith 37-40 years pre-SF, as, if Raith is a WC vampire, then I would assume that they were having a lot of sex.  So, as a ballpark figure, let's say that she was born around 150 years pre-SF (I know that you said it should be more like 180-200 years per-SF AA, but I'm not familiar with the WoJ you are citing).

I got it from here:

Q: "Are we ever going to meet Margaret LeFey's Mother?"
A: "She was a mortal, and died somewhere around 1810. We'd only meet her if we go back to the French and Indian War [referencing his earlier statement that he has considered writing books from back during the French and Indian War"

After which I said:

So, if we assume 1810 as the last year Maggie LeFay could have been born, and sometime around 1970 or so as the year she died, then Maggie LeFay was, at minimum, 160 years old at the time of her death. She could've been as much as 80 or 90 years older than that, but she couldn't have been any younger.

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.
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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.

I think you're taking much too strict a view of the mentions of Maggie's life, and saying, "Here she was evil, here she was good." It was probably never that cut and dried. Maggie lived for at least 160 years, according to WoJ about the time of her mother's death.  Early on she lived with Ebenezer. Was she evil then? She ran off and started learning things on her own, doing things on her own, and earned the name of "LeFay." Clearly, other wizards had contact with her during that period, because they knew who she was and what she could do well enough to give her a nickname. Was she evil then?

According to Ebenezer's own words, he had dinner with Maggie, Lord Raith, and Duchess Arianna, shortly after Maggie started seeing Lord Raith. Was she being hunted by the White Council then?

You are not taking everything into account. You're saying that Maggie may have been decent at the end of her life, but before then, she must have been evil, or at least worthy of being classified as a warlock. This just doesn't make sense. Maggie lived a long time, and for most of that time, she was probably a pain in Council's ass, but not actually considered a warlock. This fits with both Ebenezer's story and what Luccio said. She then took up with Raith, began taking a darker path, and things came to a head with the White Council. We don't know how long she was with Lord Raith, but we do know that that period took up the end of her life, except for a couple of years at the very end. And those last couple of years she changed her mind and tried to correct some of her mistakes, as she told Harry in his soulgaze with Thomas.

It seems to me that the simplest and most correct way to look at Maggie's life, given that she was a human being and not a piece of litmus paper, is to think of her as being somewhat wild and gray-tinged for most of her life, then hooking up with Raith and turning darker, and finally coming to her senses at the very end and trying to correct her earlier mistakes.

Luccio seems to be talking about only a part of Maggie Sr.'s life, the part when Luccio knew her. The stories seem completely compatible.

This is exactly what I was saying.

I don't think Luccio had any reason in the context of that particular conversation to mention "Oh by the way, after your Mom discovered she couldn't change the WC, she went psycho and we had to put a death sentence on her." In fact, I think it would have been rather insulting to Harry, because it would have been suggesting he was headed down the same path.

Exactly, I agree entirely. They were seeing each other romantically. Why bother bringing up the fact that his mother was considered a warlock whom the Council wanted dead? Luccio was answering his question in the way that he really meant, which was a request for information about who his mother was, not about the information on her Most Wanted poster. Despite whatever else Maggie may have been, she was his mother, and he never had the chance to know her. Luccio was trying to help fill in that gap.

Very interesting speculation AcornArmy!  I can definitely believe that you're right about at least some of your theory, maybe quite a bit of it. 

I'm also reminded of this WoJ which could be applicable:
Harry hasn't had a chance to meet, or speak with, some of the "bad guys", and it could be that there are more like Kumori who aren't as bad as we might have assumed absent Harry's dialogue with her.  Unfortunately Harry won't know until he gets the chance to speak with them, as he did her.  I can definitely see that there might have been some idealistic people who fell in with Maggie's group, but got labeled "bad" and have had to stay on that "side" ever since.

Thanks! That WoJ could be important, if something like this theory turns out to be true. It could imply that some of the people, like maybe DuMorne, weren't quite as horrible as they've seemed so far. I know Ebenezer called him "that bastard DuMorne," but now that we know Maggie was Eb's daughter, it could be that Eb wasn't being entirely objective in his opinion. Eb might place a lot of the blame for what eventually happened to Maggie on DuMorne and Lord Raith. Though, to be fair, it seems like a safe bet that Raith really is as big a bastard as Eb thinks he is.

Of course, the WoJ could also imply that there are factions within the Outsider-summoning group, and that some of them suck and some don't, and we may not be clear on which is which.

So... I don't think is nuts at all, I think it's brilliant. Really. It's very well put and explained. I really need to reread to make some contributions here to your idea, I haven't paid that much attention to all the details in the books. But what you expose here is a sound theory in my opinion and thematically very interesting.

Thanks.

We've been told that Maggie LeFay was, "Brilliant, erratic, passionate, committed, idealistic, talented, charming, insulting, bold, incautious, arrogant-- and short-sighted, yes. Among a great many other qualities." We've also been told that she knew more of the Ways than any other wizard alive, and knew them well enough that she could predict where they would go and when they would change-- something which apparently even very few fae are capable of doing.

Maggie apparently hated the way that humans could be preyed upon by wizards and other supernatural types without it being considered a breach of the Laws of Magic. Like Harry, she probably had the reasons for this stance explained to her, and like Harry, she probably understood it, even if she hated the results of the argument. But suppose that, unlike Harry, Maggie did not decide to drop the subject, or give up on changing things.

Maggie apparently explored the Nevernever in far greater detail than most wizards, and she quite likely went places that few wizards ever go. Suppose that one day she went exploring in some backwater of the Nevernever, someplace no sane wizard would ever go on their own, and she came across a place where passage to the Outside was possible.

We don't really know what the Outer Gates are, except that they open onto the Outside. And we don't really know what the Outside is, except that it's not part of Earth's normal reality. Outside may be one of the far reaches of the Nevernever-- in which case, blocking off access to it seems like it would be next to impossible-- or maybe it's another plane of existence, sort of like the Earthly plane, but quite separate. The latter seems like it would be easier to block off, since it seems like there would be fewer routes between such a realm and Earth. In either case, we know that access to the Outside is rare enough that it can be blocked off, because that is what has happened.

The Outer Gates seem like they must be points either on Earth or in the Nevernever where someone can open a gate and enter the Outside. Even the name implies this: Outer/Outside + Gate/portal. There must be a finite number of them known to the White Council in order for them to be blocked off. But the Nevernever is a big place; it's the biggest place, according to Harry. If the Outer Gates exist there, then it's almost inevitable that there are Outer Gates which have never been found and documented by wizards of the White Council.

So, suppose Maggie LeFay went exploring and found one. She wouldn't step through, of course, because she'd be instantly annihilated by the substance of that plane. But, being who she was, she wouldn't really need to step through to make an excellent guess about what was on the other side. And now Maggie has access to the Outsiders, something no one ever achieves, because the Council is so strict about killing anyone who even looks like they might be curious in that direction.

Maggie goes back to some of her friends, and they sit around, have some drinks, and start talking about how they want to foment political change for the poor vanilla mortals. Maggie brings up her new discovery, and they start pooling their knowledge of Outsiders and what they're capable of. Maybe they go to the Gate Maggie's discovered, and begin experimenting with summoning Outsiders in an attempt to learn more about them. The group eventually reaches a point where they realize that Outsiders can possess people and grant a dramatic boost to the host's natural power. (I'm extrapolating here, based on what we saw of Vitto's amped-up White Court psychic attack. This may not be something that all Outsiders can do, but it may not be limited to a single Outsider, either. There could be a whole class of Outsiders like that, for all we know.)

I have no idea what the group could have learned from the Outsiders to make them think they would be useful in changing the world for the better, but I suspect that that's what happened. I think maybe Maggie had never given up on the idea of leveling the playing field between vanilla mortals and wizards, which would in turn level the field between mortals and most supernaturals. Only, maybe Maggie had given up on the idea of doing it using White Council politics. Maybe she had decided to start cooking up ways to replicate a wizard's abilities in the wider vanilla mortal population. And maybe, somehow, Outsiders seemed like they would be especially useful in doing this.

Way back in Storm Front, we had the Three-Eye drug, which turned out to be a potion that really did grant the Sight to vanilla mortals. Victor Sells supposedly created it, but he was an untrained hack. What are the odds that he could have developed something that no White Council wizard had ever heard of before? Or at least, something that was not common knowledge among wizards. I think Victor Sells probably got the recipe, or the beginnings of it, from someone else. Probably someone in Maggie's original group.

And then we have Kumori, in Dead Beat, talking about eliminating death forever through necromancy. Harry himself thinks that this would do more to level the playing field between vanilla mortals and wizards than practically anything else, making their lifespans equal to a wizard's for the first time in history. If she and Cowl were successful, then combining that with a safer version of the Three-Eye drug, that would eliminate the Sight and the longevity from the list of disparities between vanillas and wizards.

After that, there is the power of magic itself. I have only the vaguest suspicions about how this one might be solved, mostly involving Outsider possession of the entire race of vanilla mortals-- but, honestly, that idea seems way too crazy for anyone to actually want to implement. I doubt that Maggie would've been that far gone. I mean, there's a reason that Outsiders are a banned subject, and summoning roughly 6 billion Outsiders into the Earthly plane would surely seem like a bad idea to anyone with half a functioning brain cell. But, whatever Maggie planned, my guess is that it did involve Outsiders in some way. Not one-by-one possession, but something else. I just have no clue what that something else might be.

Anyway, Maggie gets her group together, which probably included Justin DuMorne, and maybe later Lord Raith, and they begin this grand plan to change the world for the better. I'd imagine Lord Raith's excuse for being part of things was that anything that helped humans stay alive was beneficial to his kind in the long run. If vanilla mortals were strong enough to survive regular feeding by Whampires, everyone would win, from his perspective. Or, at least, that's probably something like what he told Maggie. After all, Raiths feed through superhumanly awesome sex, so if everyone could do that without any ill effects, why not?

Maggie, being brilliant, probably had a better grasp on Outsider lore than most of the rest of them. When things eventually turned bad, which they obviously did, she knew enough to recognize it and formulate a plan to fix the problem she had created. I don't have much of an idea how they turned bad, except to guess that the Outsiders may not have been quite as easy to use without repercussions as the group had believed they would be. Maybe the Outsiders began to exert an unhealthy influence over the group, bending it toward a new, less pleasant direction.

So Maggie left, hooked up with Malcolm Dresden, and gave birth to an Outsiderbane, who was meant to correct all the problems his mother had caused.

I know this seems like a weird and twisted plan, but think again about how Maggie was described: brilliant, passionate, committed, idealistic, talented, bold, incautious, arrogant-- and short-sighted. Maggie could have come up with a plan like this. She could have found an unknown Outer Gate, she could have figured out how to summon Outsiders through it, and she could have decided they'd make a great tool to change the world for the better. And she could have been arrogant enough to think she could use them that way successfully. And maybe she was short-sighted enough not to realize that it would take a dark turn, at least not until the end.

PS: I wrote this post while listening to Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" on a continuous loop. So if it seems way more nuts than my usual posts, I blame them.