Where is our Prince? (And Where Did Those Wizards Get Their Titles?)

[elfundeb2]

No: HPFGUIDX 111776

Packaging my responses in a single post . . .

Elaine Adamski wrote:

> Forgive me, but you have contradicted the string in
> the last sentence.  If your belief is that the wizards
> were titled via a muggle interbreeding, then how could
> the House of Black - a pureblood house - be noble?

No, I don't think it is.  In CoS, Ernie MacMillan establishes his 
pureblood credentials by citing his ancestry back through nine 
generations.  Assuming an average of 3 generations per century, he's 
only tracing his ancestry back three centuries, which is after the 
split with the Muggle world.  *Pureblood* status doesn't preclude 
the existence of a muggle ancestor embedded somewhere in the family 
tree.  

Also, that's only an example of what might have happened.  Another 
possibility in the back of my mind was that in some cases a wizard 
might have been raised to the nobility -- perhaps for some deed or 
accomplishment that, unknown to the king, had been accomplished 
through magic.  

Ffred wrote:

> I've always assumed that the foundation of the Ministry and the 
Statute of
> Secrecy came about at the same time, the MoM supplanted the 
Council to
> ensure that secrecy was enforced.
 
> I would surmise (on very little canon evidence) that the Council 
was a loose
> body of wizards, mostly from the Houses with a few eminent 
scholars, who
> kept a fairly loose hand on things, whereas the changeover the the 
Ministry
> was the defining political moment in the WW, the change from an 
oligarchy to
> a bureaucracy. In turn, the new Ministry enforced the Statute of 
Secrecy in
> draconian terms and needed a large staff to do this: 

I think we're on the same page here.  While I think it occurred 
after the Statute of Secrecy (they needed time to implement the 
Statute and go into hiding, after all), it had to have been 
relatively soon afterwards, since QTTA states that the Department of 
Magical Games and Sports was founded in 1750, and that was surely 
not the first department to be created.  (Though I can't find the 
reference, I believe it states somewhere that the DMLE is the oldest 
Ministry department.)


Magda Grantwich wrote:

The HBP is a
> legend, not a person.  Voldemort thinks (THINKS) the legend applies
> to GG's descendents, just like the whole Heir of Slytherin riff
> applied to the last descendent of Salazar Slytherin.  
 
OK, I just wanted to clarify whether you intended that the legend be 
true. 

Debbie