"Terrible pride in that creature. She'll never bend it."

Mab won't permit herself to appear weak to anyone, because her Ego is roughly the size of her Army.

So, I have enjoyed the many thoughtful posts in this thread.  It has led me to another question.  I don't have a theory yet, but wanted to post it to allow others to add it to the questions here.

If the WoJ is that Mab is as powerful as stated, then why did she the attack on Arctus Tor to continue?  It seems to me that given the location that she could have shown up and pretty much crushed any attacking force.  Which leads me to ask, why do we think Winter was defending?  If Mab was distracted, Maeve could have been in control of Arctus Tor and that the battle was an attempt to retake it.

There was definitely something else going on there, Harry himself notes it in the Book:

"That's the part I can't figure," I said. "I think someone set Molly up to be a beacon for the fetches. And I'm damned sure that it was no accident that those fetches took Molly to Arctis Tor when it was so lightly defended. Someone wanted me there at Arctis Tor."

It could be that Mab just took the losses despite not having to because she wanted Harry to rescue Molly. There's also the fact that it was the attack on Arctis Tor that triggered Harry's realisation about the 'Black Council' moving behind events.

My own prejudices are against Mab being behind it because I don't like Mab being behind everything, and "The same words were used to describe this" ignores the very real issue that it's secretly the same person writing everything in the series, so he's going to use the same phrasing more than once.  Like the "Ice pick headache" thing.

That said, didn't Harry need a chunk of the car to track down people using LC before?  And he lacked that thaumaturgical connection with Thomas, yes?

He had his own blood, and he had the twin of Thomas's amulet.

My admittedly fairly wild preferred theory there is that Maggie's death at the time of childbirth is part of the Starborn recipe and a willing sacrifice on her part.  I don't believe that she was naive enough about magic to leave anything he could target an Entropy Curse on if she had to escape his thrall, or that if he just wanted her dead it would hit her at that precisely calibrated a moment and not before.

As for keeping her six years, I propose that he is working with her, in helping identify and bring about the conditions needed for a Starborn.

He had Thomas. That's already enough. And besides, IIRC the Ritual he used in BR didn't actually require anything tied to the victim to target them.

Consider that Lord Raith painted a portrait of every woman who ever gave him a child, male or female. Doesn't that imply a sense of pride or possession, of having chosen the best women to give him children?  I don't see him doing it if his children were all accidents and the mothers just random women.

To me it implied him showing off his ability to "Get so many of dem Beeyachez Knocked up, yoh!".

Sort of like having a dick-measuring contest with the other White Court Vamps "Oh, look how much more Impotent then me you are, what a loser " So yeah, I'd say it was a matter of Pride/Ego. But it's about showing off how awesome he is. The Women are just Symbols of his 'Greatness'.

Lord Raith produces a child once every 20-30 years. He chooses the mothers carefully, for reasons of his own. Feeding and having sex, yes, he does or did that like an alcoholic downing the contents of a liquor store. But that is not the case for reproduction. LR doesn't have accidents, if he did Thomas would have far more half-sibilings than he does.

Unless there is some Biological Limitation on the White courts reproduction. Which is my personal theory, because otherwise there would be a lot more of them.

   It was said in the context of her grief, "human" grief over having killed her daughter... It was in a very human context.

I agree, but generally speaking trusting context in a discussion with one of the fey is kinda capital S Stupid