Half-Blood Prince

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 183777

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> 
wrote:
 
> Mystified!Potioncat:
> We don't know that Severus chose the nickname. Maybe it was 
Lucius's 
> name for him. Certainly it wasn't widely used, because Lupin 
didn't 
> recognise it. Remus might have been pretending, but I don't see 
that 
> was any reason in this case.

Leah: Someone else's name for him is an interesting idea, and Lucius 
does sound like a possibility.  If so, it seems to have been 
confined to Slytherin, or perhaps not even as widely known as that.  
I can't see any reason for Lupin to lie either. 

> We also don't know when or why Snape wrote the name. A somewhat 
> bitter young man, taking potions with his one true love, may have 
> written it as a bit of sarcasm towards himself. As Jen was 
> suggesting, was he regretting choosing his friends over Lily?
> 
> That horrible bit of diaglogue, "It was I, the Half Blood Prince!" 
> (or something close to that, I really don't want to look it up.) 
> could have been simply Snape's taunting of Harry at that last 
moment 
> before Snape left Hogwarts. This name for himself, just as much as 
> SWM, may have reminded him of what he gave up.
> 
> The thing is, I can't see Severus enjoying the name or its 
meanings. 
> For example I could imagine Sirius calling himself the "Black 
sheep 
> of the family" and making that word play. I really can't see 
Severus 
> doing it. (Sirius never did that in canon, I'm just making an 
example)

Leah: No, I think that Severus would have enjoyed the name (and why 
write it in his book of spells and curses if he didn't?). It's a 
nice Gothic, r(R)omantic name, which fits with his drama queen side, 
all billowing cloaks and poetic speeches. I do think there's a bit 
of sarcasm there as well; he has a tendency to pontificate and then 
deflate (eg early in HBP when he's taking 70 points from Gryffindor 
for Harry's late arrival and 'Muggle attire' quite aggressively and 
then says something like "And we haven't even started pudding".)

Of course, like Severus, it's nicely double-edged and ambiguous.  Is 
it saying, "My dad may be a Muggle, but I'm still half a pureblood", 
or is it putting up two fingers at his mother's pureblood 
family, "You've got a half-blood in the family whether you like it 
or not"; certainly, if the Princes were still around, they don't 
seem to have been any help to Severus or to Eileen.  It might very 
well be both things at once, of course.

I think also there's an element of pride in it, certainly in its use 
in 'Advanced Potions'.  It's saying "I,Severus, part Muggle, part 
Prince, invented these spells. What I can do is more important than 
what I am". 


> 
> OTOH, I think JKR had lots of fun with "the Half-Blood Prince." It 
> drove us crazy before the book came out. It can be taken so many 
> ways, even after we know who it is.
> 
Leah: Yes, very much so, and of course it had to remain ambiguous 
until 'The Prince's Tale'.

bboyminn:

>Notice that Severus is the Half-Blood PRINCE, not the half-
>blood Snape. I think this was Snape's way of acknowledging
>that his father had contaminated his pureblood stream.

Leah: No reason to call himself the 'Half Blood Snape'. Everyone 
knows he's a Snape, it's what he calls himself all his life.  And 
anyone who is interested in who's included in 'Nature's Nobility' 
will know that's not a wizarding name. More importantly, there's no 
amusement in being 'The Half-Blood Snape'; it's partly the play 
on 'Prince' that's important and that can be self-aggrandising and 
self-deprecating at one and the same time.

(snip)

>I've always thought that Voldemort took a similar approach.
>Not so much denying his heritage, as holding it up as a
>criminal perversion and contamination of the pure blood of
>Salazar Slytherin. A crime of which he personally had no
>control.


Leah: But Voldemort did deny his heritage. Bellatrix screams in 
anger when Harry tells her at the MoM that Voldemort is a half-
blood. Like Severus, Tom Riddle gives himself a noble nickname at 
school.  The difference  is that he stops being Tom Riddle at all 
and becomes His Lordship.  As pointed out above, Severus is only 
ever Snape.   

Leah