Lords and princes (was Why Tom Riddle isn't the "Prince")

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 103873

pandrea wrote:

> If it's the latter, then we have Tom being known first as a 
prince, 
> then changing his name to Voldemort, but demoting himself by 
asking 
> his followers to call him LORD Voldemort, Lord being lower than a 
> prince.  That seems really unlikely.  

I take JKR's words at face value, that Voldemort (even as Riddle) is 
not the HBP.  However...

It's not sensible to speak of 'demotion' in the context of lords and 
princes.  Voldemort is not laying claim to a seat in the British 
House of Lords, as if there was a vacancy for a Marquess of 
Voldemort. (Nice little manor at the village of Voldemort Parva, 
just down the road from the town of Thingy and Lake You-Know-Where.)

Lord is a relative term, it means 'master' or 'ruler'. As others 
have pointed out, it's often applied to God (I've never heard the 
suggestion that in, say, Christian theology, Satan outranks Jesus 
because he's the Prince of Darkness while Jesus is only Lord of 
Lords, though I would not put anything past the HPFGU membership).  
Prince, too, though often specifically referring to a son or other 
relative of royalty, can be used more vaguely, as in the Prince of 
Darkness case above, just to mean 'leader' or 'primary person'.  
After all, it's related to the Latin for 'first'.

So IMO it's entirely reasonable to suppose that Voldemort could be 
styled a 'prince' because he's Heir of Slytherin, even if there has 
never been a formal Slytherin title; he would then go on to call 
himself 'Lord' Voldemort because it's a claim to supremacy - it's 
clear from the rebirthing scene that he wants his followers to 
regard him as their God.

Reasonable, but almost certainly not what JKR is going to show us.

David, chuckling over the thought of Theoden and Aragorn turning up 
at Mordor and telling Sauron "You have to give in because we are 
*kings* and you are only *Lord* Sauron the Great"