Courtly love in Potterverse WAS: What triggered ancient magic?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187129

 
 
> Pippin:
> Because for the pureblood families, not much has changed. Their marriages are still arranged, with the threat of being disinherited (or worse) if the prospective spouse isn't properly pedigreed.
> 
> Alla:
 But to me it is not arranged marriage necessarily, just limiting the marriage pool.

Pippin:
"If you're only going to let your sons and daughters marry purebloods your choice is very limited, there are hardly any of us left." --Sirius, OOP ch 6. 

If  choice is limited to the handful of people that the parents have already approved, that's arrangement, de facto if not de jure. There just isn't  a lot of room for considerations of compatibility or chemistry or love-matches. 

 
> Alla:
> 
> Well, again yes of course!  The violation of traditions of courtly love is being **selfish** about what lady wants as I perceive it, NOT loving somebody who is married to somebody else. 
> 
> The wishes of the lady are pretty much the laws in these stories of courtly love are they not?

Pippin:
Oh yes. But your thought seems to be that Snape should have assumed that Lily would wish to die than live on with her lovely family destroyed. And I'm saying, why would Snape think her family was lovely?

I'm not supposing Snape grew up reading The Boy's King Arthur, just that the purebloods must have had stories of love and courtship which were more satisfactory to them than ToBtB, which Lucius wanted banned. Those stories probably did not take it for granted that most marriages were happy.

It's easy for the fans to imagine that James and Lily must have had a fairytale marriage because to us they are fairytale characters. But that's not what they are to Snape, so why should *he* idealize their marriage? 

Lily did try to save herself and Harry after James was already doomed, so she was willing to live without her husband at least.

In any case, Snape did not know that Dumbledore was going to ask him to be a spy. He would have expected to die or be sent to prison after he had delivered his warning to Dumbledore, so he was not going to be in any condition to take Lily for himself. But he was at that point still in general sympathy with the DE cause. 

And being in sympathy with the DE cause, he would support Voldemort in  whatever was necessary to win, except that he could not bear to think of Lily dead. I mean, it was not a David and Uriah situation where Uriah was one of David's officers and the only reason David wanted him dead was to get Bathsheba for himself. James and Harry were a threat to Voldemort, and Snape would want them removed regardless. 

Pippin