Why the Potters?

[Ersatz Harry]

No: HPFGUIDX 57845

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "darrin_burnett" <bard7696 at a...>
wrote:
> 
> Idea 2: Hatfield and McCoys
> 
> Ok, we know that Riddle is the Heir of Slytherin. Speculation has 
> been the Harry is the Heir of Gryffindor.  Riddle, figuring out that 
> the Heir of Gryffindor would probably make trouble, he just goes and 
> tries to off them. Why kill James and Lily then? Could be he didn't 
> know which one of them was actually the heir or could have been just 
> good form to kill the entire family.

I think we need to be careful to distinguish between "heir" and
"descendant", and Darrin appears to have been careful about this here.
 Certainly for most of English royal history, primogeniture made the
heir the oldest son, but there were plenty of exceptions along the way
when there were no sons, when a son was for some reason incapable of
governing, etc.  But at any given moment, a ruler had at most one heir.

Of course, that heir might have been dispatched by some other
contender for the throne, which leads to the occasional discontinuity
in succession.  But putting those interruptions aside, the string of
heirs from, say, William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II contains a very
small number of people. The descendants of William the Conqueror, on
the other hand, could certainly run into the millions today, and it
would be pretty much impossible to create a situation where there was
a "last descendant" of William.

Now it's not clear what you get for being the "heir of Gryffindor"
(or, perhaps more accurately, the next heir in the string) -- maybe
you get the sword and all the every flavor beans you can eat -- but
let's assume that being the equivalent of the royal heir is of some
significance, and let's also assume that James qualified for the
position.  Then if primogeniture applied, Harry would of course be
next in line.  If Voldemort wanted to usurp the royal position, then
he would have to eliminate Harry as well, but he would not have needed
to kill Lily.

And usurpation is probably what we're talking about; I note that
Voldemort's wizard ancestry is through his mother while Harry's is
through his father, and a male ancestral line would probably be
preferred to a female (though there may have been some female steps
along the way since Harry's last name is not Gryffindor).

So I'm starting to wonder if Harry is a kind of hidden king, in many
ways similar to Aragorn in Lord of the Rings (who was also an only
child, IIRC, and who had both elven and human ancestry).  In LOTR, the
kingship had seemingly disappeared for generations, but there were
certain people who knew the true story and were merely waiting for the
right time to reveal the true king. The story of King Arthur goes
along a similar line, but only for one generation.

Perhaps the subject of wizarding's royal history will be covered by
Binns this year.  Perhaps it will turn out that Gryffindor and
Slytherin were themselves cousins, and their heirship lines will
eventually merge and thereby end all the disputes (this might require
Harry's marrying Voldemort's still-undisclosed daughter).  Perhaps
this will all be one big War of the Roses, though it's not quite clear
who represents Lancaster and who represents York.

Ersatz Harry, who thinks this sort of historical resolution would be
much more satisfying than all this other BALDERDASH