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DF Spoilers / Luccio's perspective compared to Harry's
« on: July 20, 2017, 12:15:59 AM »
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.
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.