So, it seems more likely that Quirrel was behind the plot.
The thing about there only being seven houses seems big, though, and as far I can tell isn’t from canon. (The list of purebloods, for example, doesn’t include Jugson, though 500 years old might not be enough to be Most Ancient. I think we have HPMOR confirmation of Malfoy, Potter, Greengrass, and Longbottom, and I think in canon the only ones that get that description are Malfoy, Black, and maybe Potter (really, Peverell).
The 1926 hint narrows it down to four canon characters (though, of course, Bones might be mistaken). Interestingly enough, all of them were sorted into Slytherin- Tom Riddle, Rosier, Avery, and Lestrange. All of them were Death Eaters, and so it seems most likely it’s Tom Riddle. (He would be the last of the female line of the Gaunt family, descended from Salazar Slytherin, which seems like it qualifies for Most Ancient. But I suspect the female line doesn’t count for things like the Wizengamot, in canon at least.)
(Interestingly, in canon, Morfin Gaunt was memory-charmed to believe that he was the murderer of Voldemort’s parents. Riddle did that to cover up a number of his murders. Even more pieces falling into place.)
Tom Riddle as hero seems… really bizarre, though. Who was Voldemort instead? (It seems implausible that Voldemort could have been an alterego; I suspect quite a bit of his pureblood support came from his lineage.)
Tom Riddle wasn’t a hero. He was a villain whose villainous plot was to create a fake villain named Voldemort for him to defeat. He arranged for there to be a kidnapping attempt on the daughter of the minister of magic so that he could save her and be propelled into herodom. But things did not go according to plan:
“Long ago, long before your time or Harry Potter’s, there was a man who was hailed as a savior. The destined scion, such a one as anyone would recognize from tales, wielding justice and vengeance like twin wands against his dreadful nemesis.” Professor Quirrell gave a soft, bitter laugh, looking up at the night sky. “Do you know, Miss Granger, at that time I thought myself already cynical, and yet… well.”
The silence stretched, in the cold and the night.
“In all honesty,” said Professor Quirrell, looking up at the stars, “I still don’t understand it. They should have known that their lives depended on that man’s success. And yet it was as if they tried to do everything they could to make his life unpleasant. To throw every possible obstacle into his way. I was not naive, Miss Granger, I did not expect the power-holders to align themselves with me so quickly—not without something in it for themselves. But their power, too, was threatened; and so I was shocked how they seemed content to step back, and leave to that man all burdens of responsibility. They sneered at his performance, remarking among themselves how they would do better in his place, though they did not condescend to step forward.” Professor Quirrell shook his head as though in bemusement. “And it was the strangest thing—the Dark Wizard, that man’s dread nemesis—why, those who served him leapt eagerly to their tasks. The Dark Wizard grew crueler toward his followers, and they followed him all the more. Men fought for the chance to serve him, even as those whose lives depended on that other man made free to render his life difficult… I could not understand it, Miss Granger.” Professor Quirrell’s face was in shadow, as he looked upward. “Perhaps, by taking on himself the curse of action, that man removed it from all others? Was that why others felt free to hinder his battle against the Dark Wizard who would have enslaved them all? I still do not understand even now. My cynicism fails me, and I am left silent. But there came a time when that man realized he might do better fighting the Dark Wizard alone, as with such followers at his back.”
“So—” Hermione’s voice sounded strange in the night. “You left your friends behind where they’d be safe, and tried to attack the Dark Wizard all by yourself?”
“Why, no,” said Professor Quirrell. “I stopped trying to be a hero, and went off to do something else I found more pleasant.”
At this point, he decided to go full-time as the fake villain persona, and did so for the next eight years, when he decided to abandon it.
He was a villain whose villainous plot was to create a fake villain named Voldemort for him to defeat.
The reason I think this is odd is because, in canon, Voldemort was a name change, not a new person. So instead of Tom Riddle getting together with his Slug Club friends and saying “hey, maybe we should run this country, and by the way I never liked my old name,” Voldemort is some external actor that managed to get the loyalty of a bunch of Britain’s nobility.
Really? In canon I thought Voldemort = Riddle was a pretty well-kept secret. But as per Eliezer’s comment elsewhere in the thread, it looks like Riddle’s hero persona wasn’t called “Tom Riddle,” he impersonated (possessed?) a descendent of some more respectable house to create that identity.
That could be- I haven’t read the books since the last one came out. This is what I’m seeing on the HPWiki:
Having embraced the Dark Arts he encountered in his travels, the former Tom Riddle, now known exclusively as Lord Voldemort, raised an enormous army comprised of followers he recruited both at school and afterwards,
That suggests to me that the early Death Eaters grew up with him as Tom Riddle, and it was just a name change. If the “Voldemort = Riddle” thing is poorly known, it’s probably because no one has reason to know that his name was Riddle (like, for example, most people have heard of Stalin but haven’t heard of Dzhugashvili).
It isn’t a very complex plan—it just required that he play two roles; this gave him two avenues of success (if resistance to Voldemort is strong, take over as the hero—if resistance to Voldemort is too weak take over as Voldemort). And it fits in perfectly with the plan that he has already suggested to Harry Potter (find an actor to play Voldemort, have him cast Avada Kedavra at you, block it with Patronus, be hero), so it’s perfectly consistent with Quirrel’s way of thinking.
When we talk about too complex plans, we talk about plans with multiple points of possible failure. You call this complicated because it had multiple points of possible success.
Remember that Quirrel is NOT Riddle. He’s Riddle in the body of someone else. It’s pretty damn voldemorty to come back in the body of one of your enemies, too.
I’ve been peddling the scheme of uploading into Harry when Harry supposedly defeats him.
It makes sense too that he has more power through Dark Rituals. He uses up the host body through the costs born by the host, and then moves on to another.
The only canon character that matches Bones’s description is Riddle (though he only does so partially, having murdered his family before his graduation in canon). So either EY stuck in a Mary Sue who just happens to have Tom Riddle’s biographical details, or Bones wants Tom Riddle to take up the Gaunt seat in the Wizengamot.
I thought of three other options, and dismissed all of them. Riddle gets over 98% of the ‘canon character born in 1926’ probability mass, and so I intend to spend a comparable amount discussing him over other options.
Okay. I still stand by my probability (after I revised it down from the Noble House conversation) but it’s irrelevant because the new birthdate suggests Quirrel is supposed to be a non-canon character.
It strikes me as simply bettter writing, or at least, better fanfiction writing, if this new, extremely skilled and competent and apparently original character, can be explained by the original divergence between HPMoR and canon, and the most obvious way for that to be the case is if Voldemort controlled or impersonated him in some way, making his competence a consequence of Voldemort’s competence.
I was going to say the Blacks are all (supposedly) dead in HPMOR at this point, but then I remembered that Sirius is (supposedly) just in Azkaban, not dead yet, and if he’s counting the female line (like he would have to for Riddle to count) then there’s also Bellatrix.
There’s also Draco, Tonks, and Andromeda. (Andromeda is Tonks’ mother, Bellatrix’s and Narcissa’s sister.) This is all assuming that the female line counts, which it more or less has to.
Can’t you? Multiple titles, and even personal union of crowns, are pretty common in RL nobility and royalty. It being allowed would be my default assumption, and I know of no Potterverse evidence to the contrary.
There’s a difference between dynasties and titles. Houses are dynasties- lots and lots of people were Habsburgs, even though only one person held a title at any particular time. For example, Philip I was, in 1505, King of Castile, Duke of Burgundy, Duke of Brabant, Duke of Limburg, Duke of Lothier, Duke of Luxemburg, Margrave of Namur, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Count of Artois, Count of Charolais, Count of Flanders, Count of Hainault, Count of Holland, and Count of Zeeland, but only a member of one House- the Habsburgs.
It doesn’t seem likely that wizards actually have hereditary titles that are linked to locations, since their power comes from magic, not farmland. Lord Malfoy is probably only a Lord because he’s on the Wizengamot- Draco doesn’t seem to have a courtesy title, as would befit the son of an important position in Muggle Britain.
Lord Malfoy is probably only a Lord because he’s on the Wizengamot
In MoR, Malfoy is a Noble and Most Ancient House, which presumably comes with a title. In canon, Lucius is neither a Lord, nor on the Wizengamot.
Also, in MoR we have
Though she was not addressed as Lady, Madam Longbottom would exercise the full rights of the Longbottom family for so long as their last scion had yet to attain his majority, and she was considered a prominent figure in a minority faction of the Wizengamot.
In MoR, Malfoy is a Noble and Most Ancient House, which presumably comes with a title. In canon, Lucius is neither a Lord, nor on the Wizengamot.
My presumption is that title comes from being on the Wizengamot, not that he’s on the Wizengamot because he has a title. That’s mostly because I don’t quite see what they would use the titles for, except as a medieval version of “Senator.”
Except we have an example in MoR of a prominent member of the Wizengamot not having a title, and one- Lord Greengrass- of someone having a title without being on the Wizengamot.
Chapter 78 suggests that Lady Greengrass has a vote on the Wizengamot, and referring to consorts as Lord or Lady is standard. Not referring to Mrs. Longbottom as Lady seems odd, but I don’t know how significant it is. (If EY has done extensive worldbuilding about the politics and courtesies of Wizarding Britain, it is opaque and appears to be a significant departure from canon.)
Yes, since he married a Lady of a Noble House it would make sense for him to become a Lord. It doesn’t make sense for him to become a Senator because he married a Senator, though.
It seems to me that the face value of
On the right of Mrs. Davis, one would find the comely Lady and yet handsomer Lord of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Greengrass
is that the titles come from the family.
Edit: Not to mention Amelia Bones is on the Wizengamot, and she’s not Lady Bones.
If EY has done extensive worldbuilding about the politics and courtesies of Wizarding Britain, it is opaque and appears to be a significant departure from canon.
Yes. We know this to be the case because people are being addressed by “Lord” and “Lady”, which no one ever was in canon. (Except Voldemort.)
Mr. Greengrass wasn’t born to a House- and even if he were married to her matrilineally, I believe he’d remain houseless (under European rules).
My guess is that the system is not internally consistent, or at least not internally consistent enough to use formal logic instead of fuzzy logic. Bones is the head of a department of the Ministry, and may have been seated with Fudge and Umbridge instead of with the voting members.
Mr. Greengrass wasn’t born to a House- and even if he were married to her matrilineally, I believe he’d remain houseless (under European rules).
So, wait, is this the case or is it true that “referring to consorts as Lord or Lady is standard.”? Or both, somehow? I’m confused.
Bones is the head of a department of the Ministry, and may have been seated with Fudge and Umbridge instead of with the voting members.
I looked back through, and it seems you’re right that her location wasn’t mentioned. I guess the fact that she was on the Wizengamot in canon isn’t much evidence in this case.
So, wait, is this the case or is it true that “referring to consorts as Lord or Lady is standard.”? I’m confused.
Again, titles and dynasties (houses) are different things.
If the appellation accompanies the dynasty, then I’m pretty sure Lady Greengrass’s husband would neither use her name or have a Lord title. For example, Prince Philip is a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, not the House of Windsor, the house of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. A patrilineal marriage is one in which the children are of the husband’s house, and a matrilineal marriage is one in which the children are of the wife’s house. (The practice of forming a new line with each new pairing, like with ‘Potter-Evans-Verres’, is incredibly short-sighted and is very uncommon. I know of no society where that was the norm for an extended period of time.)
If appellations follow the title, like in the UK, you get things like John Morrison, lowborn but raised to the peerage. His appellation is now Lord because of the barony he holds, and his wife’s appellation is now Lady because her husband holds a barony. Similarly, Lady Greengrass would be married to Lord Greengrass under this system. (The Morrison dynasty would be everyone who can trace their lineage back to him and has the surname of Morrison- which comes with no legal benefits.)
I guess the fact that she was on the Wizengamot in canon isn’t much evidence in this case.
This is modern UK politics, so I’m not clear on it, but I think ministers get votes in parliament? But that adds another wrinkle- I guess it would be a temporary vote, where Malfoy may have a life vote, and so he gets a title and she doesn’t.
Edit again: I should mention that kinship, and the etiquette surrounding it, can get really thorny. So far I’ve been assuming patrilineal dynasties, which fits with canon Harry Potter and most of European history, but might not fit with MoR (as Greengrass and her husband are clearly a matrilineal couple). Sophia Dorothea was born into the House of Welf but became a member of the House of Hanover after marrying George I. So if both patrilineal and matrilineal marriage are common, then it could be that the Lord and Lady follow dynasties rather than titles.
It’s worth noting for the patrilineal / matrilineal thing that MoR!Wizarding Britain claims to have gender equality for quite a while (in matters other than heroism).
And the Wizengamot vastly predates the Ministry; it may be the case in canon, but I would be very surprised if the WizengaMoR gave department heads a voice in the body. Unless they had the right lineage, anyway.
Long-form noble titles are used very rarely, because they’re so unwieldy, and we’ve only seen a couple of folks who would be in a position to have multiple titles at all in the sort of detail where the long form would be used. Dumbledore is the only example I know of where they actually used anything longer than a few words. You’re right that we might have seen one, but Rowling would likely have found it a bit too complex, and they’re not so common that the lack is significant.
I thought this contradicted at least some of what JKR said about the later (post-Hogwarts) reformation of the wizarding world accomplished by Hermione Granger, but it seems JKR just mentioned laws favoring pure-bloods, not laws favoring an aristocracy/nobility. The relevant passage is this:
After the final battle at Hogwarts, Hermione Granger attained a high position in the Ministry of Magic, first through the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. There, she continued her work with SPEW, working for the rights of underprivileged non-humans such as house-elves.
She then went on to attain a high position in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, eradicating the old laws biased in favour of pure-bloods. Along with Harry and Ron, she helped to revolutionize the Ministry and reform the wizarding world. At some point, Hermione, Harry and Ron were all featured on Chocolate Frog Cards for their accomplishments.
I’m pretty sure that Lucius Malfoy was Lord Malfoy in canon.
The canon Potterverse showed no signs of being semi-feudal though. I imagine that he was a lord in much the same way that present day Lords of the Commonwealth are, ie. upper class but without meaningful rights over the rest of the population.
Edit: a google search for Lord Malfoy doesn’t appear to bring up any text results from canon, but the potter wiki describes him as “aristocratic”.
I’m pretty sure that Lucius Malfoy was Lord Malfoy in canon.
You would be wrong.
Edit in response to your edit: He is “aristocratic”. He’s rich, he lives in a manor, he carries a cane, and he’s a pureblood. He’s just not a lord, or any other sort of noble.
You’re right, actually, it isn’t. The Black family is just called “the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black”, it doesn’t actually have any members with any sort of title. So there isn’t any nobility.
Hm. It looks like EY just took any pure-blood family and decided to make it a Noble House- that suggests Crouch is one too, and possibly Lestrange. (But there are way more than seven of those.)
Thank Donny for noticing this, but apparently there’s a distinction being drawn between ‘Noble’ Houses like Potter and ‘Noble and Most Ancient’ Houses like Malfoy, Longbottom, Greengrass and Black.
Indeed. I count 18 families ‘related to’ the House of Black, and if all of those are Noble or Noble and Most Ancient we could quickly round out the list.
Both Rosier and Lestrange show up on that list, so that raises my estimate that Bones thinks Quirrel is one of those classmates instead, but both of them were Death Eaters. Since so much is diverging from canon here, I suspect I should stop trying to predict based on canon and just wait to see what’s changed.
(I couldn’t resist, some more research: the Peverell family is extinct in the male line, suggesting that they might have been Noble and Most Ancient and the Potters, descended from them in the female line, are just Noble. That would mean that Riddle is just Noble, rather than Noble and Most Ancient, though, but who knows.)
Then how could the destruction of one cause their numbers to fall from eight to seven? If it’s just a matter of who can trace their roots back the farthest, surely the next-oldest would be bumped up.
Possibly there’s some cutoff point, with only houses founded before that point given the Most Ancient label; whether this comes with any official privileges beyond just being old and respected remains to be seen.
So, it seems more likely that Quirrel was behind the plot.
The thing about there only being seven houses seems big, though, and as far I can tell isn’t from canon. (The list of purebloods, for example, doesn’t include Jugson, though 500 years old might not be enough to be Most Ancient. I think we have HPMOR confirmation of Malfoy, Potter, Greengrass, and Longbottom, and I think in canon the only ones that get that description are Malfoy, Black, and maybe Potter (really, Peverell).
The 1926 hint narrows it down to four canon characters (though, of course, Bones might be mistaken). Interestingly enough, all of them were sorted into Slytherin- Tom Riddle, Rosier, Avery, and Lestrange. All of them were Death Eaters, and so it seems most likely it’s Tom Riddle. (He would be the last of the female line of the Gaunt family, descended from Salazar Slytherin, which seems like it qualifies for Most Ancient. But I suspect the female line doesn’t count for things like the Wizengamot, in canon at least.)
(Interestingly, in canon, Morfin Gaunt was memory-charmed to believe that he was the murderer of Voldemort’s parents. Riddle did that to cover up a number of his murders. Even more pieces falling into place.)
Tom Riddle as hero seems… really bizarre, though. Who was Voldemort instead? (It seems implausible that Voldemort could have been an alterego; I suspect quite a bit of his pureblood support came from his lineage.)
We know Dumbledore thinks Tom Riddle was Voldemort, because when he’s looking for Voldemort within Hogwarts he tells the map to find Tom Riddle.
And all the other occasions Phoenix members speak of Tom Riddle or poison his father’s grave.
Tom Riddle wasn’t a hero. He was a villain whose villainous plot was to create a fake villain named Voldemort for him to defeat. He arranged for there to be a kidnapping attempt on the daughter of the minister of magic so that he could save her and be propelled into herodom. But things did not go according to plan:
At this point, he decided to go full-time as the fake villain persona, and did so for the next eight years, when he decided to abandon it.
The reason I think this is odd is because, in canon, Voldemort was a name change, not a new person. So instead of Tom Riddle getting together with his Slug Club friends and saying “hey, maybe we should run this country, and by the way I never liked my old name,” Voldemort is some external actor that managed to get the loyalty of a bunch of Britain’s nobility.
Really? In canon I thought Voldemort = Riddle was a pretty well-kept secret. But as per Eliezer’s comment elsewhere in the thread, it looks like Riddle’s hero persona wasn’t called “Tom Riddle,” he impersonated (possessed?) a descendent of some more respectable house to create that identity.
That could be- I haven’t read the books since the last one came out. This is what I’m seeing on the HPWiki:
That suggests to me that the early Death Eaters grew up with him as Tom Riddle, and it was just a name change. If the “Voldemort = Riddle” thing is poorly known, it’s probably because no one has reason to know that his name was Riddle (like, for example, most people have heard of Stalin but haven’t heard of Dzhugashvili).
That seems spectacularly stupid for someone as smart as we’ve observed him to be.
You should say what part is stupid.
Creating a plan that complex and prone to failure?
It isn’t a very complex plan—it just required that he play two roles; this gave him two avenues of success (if resistance to Voldemort is strong, take over as the hero—if resistance to Voldemort is too weak take over as Voldemort). And it fits in perfectly with the plan that he has already suggested to Harry Potter (find an actor to play Voldemort, have him cast Avada Kedavra at you, block it with Patronus, be hero), so it’s perfectly consistent with Quirrel’s way of thinking.
When we talk about too complex plans, we talk about plans with multiple points of possible failure. You call this complicated because it had multiple points of possible success.
Remember that Quirrel is NOT Riddle. He’s Riddle in the body of someone else. It’s pretty damn voldemorty to come back in the body of one of your enemies, too.
I’ve been peddling the scheme of uploading into Harry when Harry supposedly defeats him.
It makes sense too that he has more power through Dark Rituals. He uses up the host body through the costs born by the host, and then moves on to another.
Upload Vohaul to the computer, then beam him back into your son’s body. (BEAM UPLOAD, BEAM DOWNLOAD)
Well, that’s just great! Now Vohaul’s on the loose again, disguised as your SON! You lose 3 out of 2.
The only canon character that matches Bones’s description is Riddle (though he only does so partially, having murdered his family before his graduation in canon). So either EY stuck in a Mary Sue who just happens to have Tom Riddle’s biographical details, or Bones wants Tom Riddle to take up the Gaunt seat in the Wizengamot.
Or maybe there’s a third option you haven’t thought of. How confident are you?
I thought of three other options, and dismissed all of them. Riddle gets over 98% of the ‘canon character born in 1926’ probability mass, and so I intend to spend a comparable amount discussing him over other options.
Hmm. It seems it was supposed to be obvious it wasn’t Riddle. How odd.
Why does it seem that way?
Word of God.
Okay. I still stand by my probability (after I revised it down from the Noble House conversation) but it’s irrelevant because the new birthdate suggests Quirrel is supposed to be a non-canon character.
You sure? The graduation date didn’t change, so it’s still one of Riddle’s classmates. How many boys were sorted into Slytherin in 1938?
Edit: I just realized class sizes in 1991 have been more than doubled from canon, so you may have a point.
It strikes me as simply bettter writing, or at least, better fanfiction writing, if this new, extremely skilled and competent and apparently original character, can be explained by the original divergence between HPMoR and canon, and the most obvious way for that to be the case is if Voldemort controlled or impersonated him in some way, making his competence a consequence of Voldemort’s competence.
Way back in chapter 7, Draco refers to “the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black”. That’s a fifth noble house.
JKR said Nott was ranked as highly as Malfoy. Doesn’t necessarily apply in MOR.
I was going to say the Blacks are all (supposedly) dead in HPMOR at this point, but then I remembered that Sirius is (supposedly) just in Azkaban, not dead yet, and if he’s counting the female line (like he would have to for Riddle to count) then there’s also Bellatrix.
There’s also Draco, Tonks, and Andromeda. (Andromeda is Tonks’ mother, Bellatrix’s and Narcissa’s sister.) This is all assuming that the female line counts, which it more or less has to.
Yes, I’d assume one of Draco’s children would take up the mantle of Black if it came to that.
Or Draco himself.
I assume Draco will remain a Malfoy and that you can’t have both.
Can’t you? Multiple titles, and even personal union of crowns, are pretty common in RL nobility and royalty. It being allowed would be my default assumption, and I know of no Potterverse evidence to the contrary.
There’s a difference between dynasties and titles. Houses are dynasties- lots and lots of people were Habsburgs, even though only one person held a title at any particular time. For example, Philip I was, in 1505, King of Castile, Duke of Burgundy, Duke of Brabant, Duke of Limburg, Duke of Lothier, Duke of Luxemburg, Margrave of Namur, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Count of Artois, Count of Charolais, Count of Flanders, Count of Hainault, Count of Holland, and Count of Zeeland, but only a member of one House- the Habsburgs.
Also, take a look at cadet branches.
It doesn’t seem likely that wizards actually have hereditary titles that are linked to locations, since their power comes from magic, not farmland. Lord Malfoy is probably only a Lord because he’s on the Wizengamot- Draco doesn’t seem to have a courtesy title, as would befit the son of an important position in Muggle Britain.
In MoR, Malfoy is a Noble and Most Ancient House, which presumably comes with a title. In canon, Lucius is neither a Lord, nor on the Wizengamot.
Also, in MoR we have
My presumption is that title comes from being on the Wizengamot, not that he’s on the Wizengamot because he has a title. That’s mostly because I don’t quite see what they would use the titles for, except as a medieval version of “Senator.”
Except we have an example in MoR of a prominent member of the Wizengamot not having a title, and one- Lord Greengrass- of someone having a title without being on the Wizengamot.
Chapter 78 suggests that Lady Greengrass has a vote on the Wizengamot, and referring to consorts as Lord or Lady is standard. Not referring to Mrs. Longbottom as Lady seems odd, but I don’t know how significant it is. (If EY has done extensive worldbuilding about the politics and courtesies of Wizarding Britain, it is opaque and appears to be a significant departure from canon.)
Yes, since he married a Lady of a Noble House it would make sense for him to become a Lord. It doesn’t make sense for him to become a Senator because he married a Senator, though.
It seems to me that the face value of
is that the titles come from the family.
Edit: Not to mention Amelia Bones is on the Wizengamot, and she’s not Lady Bones.
Yes. We know this to be the case because people are being addressed by “Lord” and “Lady”, which no one ever was in canon. (Except Voldemort.)
Mr. Greengrass wasn’t born to a House- and even if he were married to her matrilineally, I believe he’d remain houseless (under European rules).
My guess is that the system is not internally consistent, or at least not internally consistent enough to use formal logic instead of fuzzy logic. Bones is the head of a department of the Ministry, and may have been seated with Fudge and Umbridge instead of with the voting members.
So, wait, is this the case or is it true that “referring to consorts as Lord or Lady is standard.”? Or both, somehow? I’m confused.
I looked back through, and it seems you’re right that her location wasn’t mentioned. I guess the fact that she was on the Wizengamot in canon isn’t much evidence in this case.
Again, titles and dynasties (houses) are different things.
If the appellation accompanies the dynasty, then I’m pretty sure Lady Greengrass’s husband would neither use her name or have a Lord title. For example, Prince Philip is a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, not the House of Windsor, the house of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. A patrilineal marriage is one in which the children are of the husband’s house, and a matrilineal marriage is one in which the children are of the wife’s house. (The practice of forming a new line with each new pairing, like with ‘Potter-Evans-Verres’, is incredibly short-sighted and is very uncommon. I know of no society where that was the norm for an extended period of time.)
If appellations follow the title, like in the UK, you get things like John Morrison, lowborn but raised to the peerage. His appellation is now Lord because of the barony he holds, and his wife’s appellation is now Lady because her husband holds a barony. Similarly, Lady Greengrass would be married to Lord Greengrass under this system. (The Morrison dynasty would be everyone who can trace their lineage back to him and has the surname of Morrison- which comes with no legal benefits.)
This is modern UK politics, so I’m not clear on it, but I think ministers get votes in parliament? But that adds another wrinkle- I guess it would be a temporary vote, where Malfoy may have a life vote, and so he gets a title and she doesn’t.
Edit again: I should mention that kinship, and the etiquette surrounding it, can get really thorny. So far I’ve been assuming patrilineal dynasties, which fits with canon Harry Potter and most of European history, but might not fit with MoR (as Greengrass and her husband are clearly a matrilineal couple). Sophia Dorothea was born into the House of Welf but became a member of the House of Hanover after marrying George I. So if both patrilineal and matrilineal marriage are common, then it could be that the Lord and Lady follow dynasties rather than titles.
It’s worth noting for the patrilineal / matrilineal thing that MoR!Wizarding Britain claims to have gender equality for quite a while (in matters other than heroism).
And the Wizengamot vastly predates the Ministry; it may be the case in canon, but I would be very surprised if the WizengaMoR gave department heads a voice in the body. Unless they had the right lineage, anyway.
In that case I’d expect in that case there to be more people whose title is something like “Lord of Malfoy, Black, Longbottom, and Potter”.
Oh god, bad fanfiction flashbacks...
I wasn’t sure whether it was relevant to include a note about those there.
If only Harry realized earlier that he was a descendant of all four Hogwarts founders, Merlin, Amaterasu, and Voltron.
Don’t forget Naruto!
Or better yet, do forget Naruto.
Not to mention the Sage of the Six Paths!
Not to mention...
I’d throw in son of Mr. Fantastic for good measure. (nobody says Lilly was faithful)
Long-form noble titles are used very rarely, because they’re so unwieldy, and we’ve only seen a couple of folks who would be in a position to have multiple titles at all in the sort of detail where the long form would be used. Dumbledore is the only example I know of where they actually used anything longer than a few words. You’re right that we might have seen one, but Rowling would likely have found it a bit too complex, and they’re not so common that the lack is significant.
Rowling wouldn’t have done it because the only nobility in canon Harry Potter is the Black family.
I thought this contradicted at least some of what JKR said about the later (post-Hogwarts) reformation of the wizarding world accomplished by Hermione Granger, but it seems JKR just mentioned laws favoring pure-bloods, not laws favoring an aristocracy/nobility. The relevant passage is this:
I’m pretty sure that Lucius Malfoy was Lord Malfoy in canon.
The canon Potterverse showed no signs of being semi-feudal though. I imagine that he was a lord in much the same way that present day Lords of the Commonwealth are, ie. upper class but without meaningful rights over the rest of the population.
Edit: a google search for Lord Malfoy doesn’t appear to bring up any text results from canon, but the potter wiki describes him as “aristocratic”.
You would be wrong.
Edit in response to your edit: He is “aristocratic”. He’s rich, he lives in a manor, he carries a cane, and he’s a pureblood. He’s just not a lord, or any other sort of noble.
Really? That doesn’t seem right.
You’re right, actually, it isn’t. The Black family is just called “the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black”, it doesn’t actually have any members with any sort of title. So there isn’t any nobility.
Sources: NaMAH search, nobility in Harry Potter
Maybe Andromeda Black-Tonks can to revive the house even though she was disowned if all the other members are dead or Azkabaned.
My hypothesis is stated here, by the way- the thread goes on to include discussion of Noble Houses.
None of the canon classmates are noble, though.
The only canon Noble and Most Ancient House is Black, though.
Hm. It looks like EY just took any pure-blood family and decided to make it a Noble House- that suggests Crouch is one too, and possibly Lestrange. (But there are way more than seven of those.)
Thank Donny for noticing this, but apparently there’s a distinction being drawn between ‘Noble’ Houses like Potter and ‘Noble and Most Ancient’ Houses like Malfoy, Longbottom, Greengrass and Black.
Indeed. I count 18 families ‘related to’ the House of Black, and if all of those are Noble or Noble and Most Ancient we could quickly round out the list.
Both Rosier and Lestrange show up on that list, so that raises my estimate that Bones thinks Quirrel is one of those classmates instead, but both of them were Death Eaters. Since so much is diverging from canon here, I suspect I should stop trying to predict based on canon and just wait to see what’s changed.
(I couldn’t resist, some more research: the Peverell family is extinct in the male line, suggesting that they might have been Noble and Most Ancient and the Potters, descended from them in the female line, are just Noble. That would mean that Riddle is just Noble, rather than Noble and Most Ancient, though, but who knows.)
Presumably they’re… well, at the risk of being obvious, the Most Ancient Houses?
Then how could the destruction of one cause their numbers to fall from eight to seven? If it’s just a matter of who can trace their roots back the farthest, surely the next-oldest would be bumped up.
Possibly there’s some cutoff point, with only houses founded before that point given the Most Ancient label; whether this comes with any official privileges beyond just being old and respected remains to be seen.
It seems like the obvious cut-off point would be the original houses founded when Merlin created the Wizengamot.
By now the Most Ancient label has shifted from being descriptive, to just part of the name
This is lazy of you, downvoted.
The Crabbes and Goyles have not been declared noble. The Parkinsons and Montagues and Boles have not been declared noble.
Eliezer has jossed this. Page 118 or so of the TVTropes discussion.
A link would be very helpful.
It’s elsewhere in the thread, now. But here it is, anyway.
House Potter is not “Most Ancient”.
In HPMor, we have Malfoy, Black, Greengrass and Longbottom declared explicitly as “Noble and Most Ancient”.