Riddle's motives (was LV's Mudblood Ancestry)

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 57277

Tom Wall reminds us;

<< "[Lord Voldemort] was a name that I was already using at Hogwarts, to my 
most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy 
Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar 
Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, 
common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found 
out my mother was a witch? No, Harry – I fashioned myself a new name, a name 
I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the 
greatest sorcerer in the world!" >>

Well, while it is unquestionable that some of his first followers knew his 
original name. But it is not *altogether* outside of possibility that they 
did not know -- even then -- that his father was actually a Muggle. The young 
Tom Riddle was well able to keep his own secrets.

They know he was raised in a Muggle orphanage, because he was born outside 
the wizarding world and his mother had died the day he was born, leaving him 
in the hands of the Muggle authorities. They probably know that he never knew 
his father, and may have known that that father had abandoned him and his 
mother.  But he could readily have let them all believe that his father was a 
wizard too and that his mother had gone off to live among the Muggles after 
her husband left her. 

On another issue, the form of the name that he adopted was tied very 
specifically to his original ambition of becoming immortal. This ambition is 
nothing to inspire widespread fear in and of itself. After all, it had 
actually been done before -- by Nicholas Flamel. And given Riddle's general 
slyness, there is nothing in that summay quoted above to indicate that he 
confided to those early followers any intention of making himself feared 
throughout the wizarding world. His followers may have innocently admired him 
as a properly ambitious Slytherin with a laudable goal and the brilliance to 
quite probably carry it off. Such a public facade would be very well in 
keeping with the face he presented to everyone while he was still in school. 
"Lord Voldemort" did not surface in the ww for over a quarter century and I 
rather suspect that some of those followers may have forgotten that that was 
the name their schoolmate Riddle used to grandeloquently call himself by.

And for that matter, I don't really think that LV cares squat about Muggles. 
His target is *wizards*. It was wizards who LEFT him to be raised in that 
orphanage. 

I've posted my own interpretation of a plausible Riddle backstory over at the 
Red Hen site, and it's a bit too long to repost here, although some of the 
early version of it was originally brought up in the Grindlewald discussion 
here, some months back (Tom Wall may know the post numbers, I only connect 
through the Digest which does not list them.) Acording to that 
interpretation, Grindlewald's geezers had known of the boy's existence for 
some years and waited for him to come to Hogwarts before they contacted him. 

Unfortunately for the geezers, Tom, unlike Harry had already learned not to 
trust *anyone* and to suspect ulterior motives on everyone's part. BY the 
time he reached his 5th year and found the Chamber he had seen through his 
mentors. 

What Tom Riddle ultimately intends is to wipe wizards off the face of the 
earth and rule alone, immortal, as a sort of vengeful god. 

He learned the of the loathing for mudbloods and Muggles that a certain type 
of pureblood harbors from his mentors. He also learned of the distrust and 
contempt that human wizards hold for other magical races. He is *using* them. 

Yes, he dispises Muggles and will do them a bad turn whenever the opportunity 
presents itself. But they are not his real target. There are too many of them 
for him to have much of an effect upon. 

But he traveled the world for 24 years after he killed his father and dropped 
out of sight. He has a very good idea of just how many wizards there are in 
that world and the numbers are low enough (something under a million, by my 
estimate) that one man with a mission and a group of willing and deluded 
followers can tackle with a good chance of being able to account for. 

So he went recruiting from among the sort of wizard with which he is most 
familiar (aand who frequently disgust him.). He is using their loathing of 
Muggles and mudbloods as a (on his part completely cynical) rallying cry, and 
has given them pretty much of a free pass to wreak as much havoc as they 
please, so long as they can keep from being caught and shut down. This has 
enabled him to widen his range of targets to any pureblood or halfblood -- 
and their families who oppose him. He also makes a point of having his 
followers target other wizarding families of apparant non-combatants as a way 
of raising terror. The more outrageous their behavior the better for his 
purposes.

The wizarding population of Great Britain is not much above 30,000. Even if 
Riddle's followers number no more than 1000, the odds are excellent of being 
able to produce a state of emergency which will bring the whole into an 
unworkable mess and make the MoM vulnerable to overthrow. Once Britain had 
Ireland are under his control, he will use this enlarged power base to carry 
his apparant adgenda to Europe. Internally various pogroms will continue to 
whittle away resistance and keep the rest of the population obedient. Many 
will leave the country. This will not matter. The worldwide population of 
wizards is thinly spread. He will get to them in good time. He *has* time. 

His European campaign will be assisted by sympathisers, and there may be 
areas with a large enough number of such sympathisers for him to leave them 
to it, so long as they accept his direction in certain key events. From 
Europe his campaign will spread to the Middle East, and North Africa, with 
various smaller campaigns in sub-saharan Africa. Particularly those areas 
with a large European component to their society. From there he will move on 
to Asia, Australia and the Americas. He will also be required to fend off 
various campaigns launched from the Americas and Australia spearheaded by 
exiles who fled his regime in the British Isles and Europe, but the thinness 
of the wizarding population will tend to make these attempts a strain for 
their organizers. 

This will probably take at least another 150-300 years. But he has time. Once 
he has the wizarding world under his control, the pogroms will continue until 
only those who fully support him remain.

And then he will give them to the Dementors.

Mission acomplished.

-JOdel