Royal!Harry with an acronym

[Ersatz Harry]

No: HPFGUIDX 57978

As I've mentioned previously, I've been meaning to start canon combing
to see if I could find support for this notion of Harry being some
kind of hidden king within the wizarding world, analogous to Aragorn
in LOTR.  I'm being a bit loose when I say "king"; maybe "chief
wizard" would be closer to it, perhaps the rightful heir of Merlin
himself.

Last night I got to spend a little while hunting through CoS for some
clues, though I haven't yet done this with the other books.  Before I
mention what I found, I have to note that no good (or bad) theory is
complete without an acronym.  So I offer up HIS SWORD (Harry Is Some
Secret Wizard Of "Royal" Descent).  Feel free to just use Royal!Harry
if that's easier to remember, or maybe MerlinHeir!Harry.

Now let me go to the bits and pieces I found.  They're mildly -- but
only very mildly -- intriguing.

1. Harry pulls the sword from the Sorting Hat.  Very Arthurian.  Of
course, Harry needs it to kill the basilisk rather than to give it to
his foster brother Sir Kay (that's what happened with the Sword in the
Stone), but it's not a big metaphorical jump to go from "a true
Gryffindor" to "the rightful king of England" or whatever the
operative phrase was in the Arthur story.

Incidentally, King Arthur's parents also died when he was very young,
though he was, as far as I recall, not raised by a near relative. 
Merlin deposited Arthur with his foster parents, though I suspect that
they were at least friends of Arthur's father Uther.  Note also that
the Sword in the Stone was not Arthur's only sword; he obtained
Excalibur from a mysterious woman's hand in a lake, and it was
Excalibur that he used for fighting.  I suggest we keep an eye on the
lake at Hogwarts to see if it coughs up something similar.

Oh, yes, why did Griffindor need a sword anyway?  His wand might have
been more appropriate.  And why are there suits of armor in the castle
(unless I'm contaminated)?  Hard to imagine that a suit of armor would
do much good against most spells, though perhaps against some.

2. We know that wizard knights and nobles have existed in the past. 
Specifically, Nick is Sir Nicholas, and I'm assuming that the Bloody
Baron was a real baron.

3. Voldemort uses the appellation of "Lord".  Yes, it's convenient in
terms of the anagram of his true name, but LV seems to have a bit more
knowledge of his own background than I would expect for someone who
grew up in a Muggle orphanage.  Riddle states plainly enough that the
blood of Slytherin runs in his veins through his mother's side.  So
given that Riddle seems to have traced his ancestry back far enough,
perhaps he knows that he is a (bastard?) descendant of some long ago
wizard king or king-like person.  Offhand, I don't recall anyone else
in canon being referred to with any sort of royal/noble term, except
Nick (only a knight) and the Baron.  I also can't help but note that
Voldemort is a bastard in at least one other sense.

4. When Binns discusses the historical background to the legend of the
CoS, he notes that wizards and witches at the time of the Hogwarts
founding were often persecuted and "feared by the common people".  He
does not say "feared by the Muggles", which leads me to think that the
ancient royals and nobles were quite familiar with and comfortable wit
the wizarding world.  It is, of course, unclear whether Nick was a
victim of the persecution refers to, and Nick's back story might
eventually be useful to know.

5. Though Dumbledore theorizes that Harry's ability to speak
Parseltongue comes from the first encounter with Voldemort, he does
hedge a bit by saying something like "unless I am very much mistaken".
 Canon does make it plain that Riddle/LV and Harry are both
Parseltongues -- we actually see them speak to snakes -- and Slytherin
is reported to have been one too.  But we do not really yet know why
Harry is a Parseltongue, and we cannot rule out a genetic component to
Parselmouthiness.

I think that's it for significant items.  More to come as I get
through the other books.

Ersatz Harry, who has some doubts about this notion but nonethelss
thinks it worth some exploration