As Bob tells it, they were messengers of the Native American gods, but some decided to stay behind, and through time went dark.  I don't know if maybe they were nemfected and able to deny the call to go, or if they had a measure of free-will and just decided.

I'd find it really kind of disappointing if they were, tbh.

Why not? The angels are extremely secretive about what comes next so we have a lot of room for speculation. They are soul based and very interested in souls. Humans have souls so they are most related to angels. Angels are extremely interested in the development of these souls, we are free to speculate about the reason for that.

The DV having einherjar and valkyries is pretty solid evidence for not all dead souls being sorted in the angels' cosmology.

Odin, Mab, Lea, The knights of the cross, an archangel, ....

Mab is lending her approval to the Council's legitimate counterstrike against an Accords violator.  The Knights move in mysterious ways, and Uriel's involvement is by no means visible, nor are there witnesses around to proclaim Odin's involvement to the world.

Even if nobody except Eb on the Grey Council is White Council, to the rest of the world it is a White Council attack.

And arguably Harry was there for Winter and not for the white council. His extra power surely came from there.

Which proves his allegiance as much as the tengu showing up proves Eb's.  Getting power from other sources by being clever is what wizards do. Doesn't make them not Council members.

He is as clueless as ever, I do not think he is in the grey council.

Assertion is not argument.  Do you have any logical reason for discounting the notion that Harry taking him as clueless is 75% Harry being prejudiced and 25% Langtry being skilled enough a politician to give a misleading impression when it serves his purposes?  Or for discounting his surety at the beginning of Changes?

Their Fomor allies coordinating their attack with the red court is clearly visible.

For values of "ally" who do nothing to help.  The Fomor taking advantage of the chaos when the Reds go down does not look like an alliance to me.  if anything, it looks like them planning on the Reds going down.

Their warlock allies were simply not invited in what clearly was a huge party for vampires.

"simply" and "clearly" read as assumptions to me.  Their warlock "allies" are intentionally abandoning them to my mind.

Especially because they were all more concerned with their internal struggle for dominance than their white council enemies which shows how seriously they took the danger.

I have not, that I recall, argued that the Red Court were not complete idiots to underestimate the Council.

Without Winter Chichen Itza was not even possible.

Which requires casually ignoring that the second youngest of the Senior Council, all by himself, can pull satellites from the sky and trigger massive volcanoes.  The Senior Council's ability to nuke Chichen Itza from orbit at any time seems pretty well established to me.

Not even in a loose remark or observation, nowhere. Not from anyone in the white council. They have a clear idea about who is human and who is not.
For them the single killing of a human with magic is a greater crime than the killing of a complete vampire court.

After four hundred years of peaceful co-existence, and willingness to abide by two separate attempts to end the war peacefully and legally?

They offer very little protection. They offer structure if the parties want to use it.

I believe we have WoJ that Mab did not give people a choice about signing on to the Accords.

Sure and we see in Changes that the war was merely a tool in their internal conflicts. Just like roman generals attacked barbarians to increase their personal  power in the roman empire.

Half the red Court seem to be persuaded the war can be won, by and with the aid of their warlock "allies".  The other half, rightly realise not.  Harry in changes thinking they have an insane leadership is oversimplifying what is clearly a power struggle.

That was just to see how far they could push the white council and to keep the pretense of being the aggrieved party under the accords.

Why do you keep calling it a pretence? 

trusting Ortega's words is foolish.Besides the offers were designed to be rejected.

The Council was quite ready to accept the one in SK.  And I am trusting Susan's assessment of Ortega in DM at least as much as Ortega himself.

It's not the name "Ivy" he finds creepy, it's her seeing Mister, shouting "KITTY!" and petting him. There is zero indication that this has anything to do with Harry calling her "Ivy," but everything to do with her thinking cats are fun to pet, which, considering that Ivy can easily control freaking Mordite, seems wrong. It's the idea that someone who might be able to stand up to Ebenezer "Facesmasher" McCoy in open combat is still a child with childish traits that creeps him out, which has nothing to do with her being called "Ivy."

I read that as something she never did before that point.  Kincaid isn't the sort of taciturn badass to let a reaction like that slip unless it was a surprise, IMO.  And to my mind the thing wrong there is that Harry has just opened Ivy up to all sorts of vulnerabilities and Kincaid realises it instantly.

I don't think there's anything significant about Harry giving her a name except that it makes Harry one of two people who treats her like a person.

Names have power in the DV.  We are told that all over the place, and shown it repeatedly.  And Harry is really kind of prone to slinging them around, and we are told that it can have major consequences (cf, Lash).

Actually, I am introverted but I am also a romantic. One person in my life is all I need.

I have several wonderful people I love, I just work much better with most of them seeing them for brief intense bursts between large spans of more alone time.

That was for those people who don't believe anything before it is explicitly written down.

And I suppose it's not as if I don't bump into those people a fair bit.

The Council was not the main force that attacked in Chicen Itza so that did not tell anything about the strength of the white council.

Sure they were.  The Grey Council are visibly wizards.  Harry is a White Council member.  To anyone who doesn't have the inside information we do from Harry's viewpoint, that's clearly a White Council operation.

It is also clear from the book that nobody, except probably Odin, Mab and Uriel, anticipated this ending.

Seems clear to me Arthur Langtry knows it's coming.

Hidden strength does not prevent a war, it was not taken into consideration by the red court when deciding about the war.

I'd argue that an accurate assessment of the Council's strength is why the Red Court have not been at war for them for centuries, and waited until they could put the Council legally in the wrong to do so.

They really thought they had enough strength to stop enything the white council could bring against them in Chichen Itza otherwise they would have brought their warlock and outsider allies but this was a private party.

Their supposed allies hanging them out to dry is pretty visible there, yes.

the white council depends on the support of Winter that is not really dependable or predictable.

My previous post should show why I do not agree with that take on things.

Except that this motivation is nowhere mentioned in the text.

It's there if you can see through Haryr's prejudices.

And we are talking about the red courts motivation and how the white council appeared to be. I think the white council is part of the structure against the outsiders and is as such protected by the elders if the situation really gets critical but few know about that and it was certainly not in the red courts mind when deciding about war.

The Accords, sfaict, protects all its signatories, Council or Red Court.  Hence, for example, Marcone being keen to sign up.  I can totally buy tha structure having an anti-Outsider purpose.

Because who was technical the agressor according to the accords if of tactical importance but it was always the red court who really decided about war or peace. It was always the red court who started the attacks.

Since when does the person who starts the attacks make the decision about war or peace ?  It's the choice of how to respond that determines whether that is a war.

It was their perception of the situation that decided about war and peace. Not even the real strength of the council but the perceived strength. For preventing war it is better to look strong and be weak than vice versa.and the white council looked weak and acted weak before the war started

Disagreed entirely.  The Red Court is deeply divided.  There would not have been a peace offer after Archangel if the Reds thought the Council was a pushover, and Ortega would not have been working so hard to stop the war in DM if he thought the war was winnable.

Two major things had already happened to upset the old balance of power before the story even opens.  One was the rising influence of Nemesis, the other the technological revolution.

Assuming for a moment that Nemesis is some sort of behind-everything boogeyman rather than a Fae-specific infection (which I do not actually believe, because there is no need for it, it does not explain anything not already solidly explained), it's still a specific individual disrupting influence.  So that's an argument for attacking Nemesis, not for attacking the Red Court.  If anything, it's an argument for allying with the Red Court against Nemesis; they are visibly not benefiting from its actions either.

In recent decades, it's become possible to travel, communicate, and otherwise operate around the world in a way that the Wizards have great difficulty coping with.

The ability of wizards to mess with technology does go a fair ways to counter that, and Harry has been able to contain that to some extent when he has tried, so I have a reasonable amount of faith that more skilled and experienced wizards would be able to do better.

This made the White Council vulnerable, but the Senior Council and the rest of the older Wizards were not fully aware of how much that changed everything.

You buy into Harry's prejudices on this front, then ?

They had not waited centuries for the right moment, they waited at most a few years, 20 tops.  Harry was a handy pretext, but absent him something else would have worked.

We see what happens when the Red Court trespass on Winter in DB (they must have, to attack the Council in the Ways, because the Council only ave access to Ways in Winter); they get a through hammering in PG as a direct result of Faerie actions.

We also see what happens in Changes when they make a false peace offer; they get exterminated.

We see, in SG, Mab acting to punish Nicodemus for his violation of truce with the Archive in SmF.

The evidence does not come down in favour of Accords violations being trivial things to get away with.  Therfore the Red Court absolutely need that casus belli.

And as for being the aggrieved party, all they have to do is set up some situation where a Council member faces an intolerable choice, it's not that hard to do.  Harry was just convenient.

I'm inclined to think any loyal member of the White Council would be expected to have sacrificed one life to prevent a war.  It very much seems to me that that is what Bianca expects; she does not read as suicidal.

How does that save Susan?

It doesn't.  Why is Susan's life worth more than the tens of thousands the war has taken, and why should anyone other than Harry find his choice there acceptable?

Ortega had already set things up in such a way (or been manipulated to set things up in such a way, the difference is moot) that there was no way to achieve such an alliance.  It wasn't one of the options available.

Believing that requires disregarding Susan's take on Ortega's motivations at the start of DM, yes ?