Thoughts on HBP

[Steve Vander Ark]

If you are like me, you're probably already sick of discussions about who
the infamous Half-Blood Prince is. I happen to think that there's really no
way we can actually figure out who it is. I mean, would any of us have been
able to guess that the Prisoner of Azkaban was Sirius Black? No, not really.

So here's a more general question that I've wondered about. What's up with
the "Prince" thing? So far there has been no royalty of any kind mentioned
in the books. We've heard of the Muggle Prime Minister, but we haven't heard
mention of the Queen (or, I suppose, the king, depending on whether
Rowling's world matches our own exactly). Now suddenly we have a prince.
This implies a whole structure of royalty of which we've heard nothing. Is
there Wizarding royalty? Are some of the existing royals actually wizards
and witches? Is there a parallel line of magical royals, perhaps an unknown
branch of the royal family? Is there a completely separate wizarding royal
family? Or is this line of royalty non-British?

Someone recently sent me an email with a theory that the Half-Blood Prince
is Nearly Headless Nick. Their reasoning is based the fact that he refers to
himself as having "noble blood." I suppose that's pretty thin (the theory,
not the blood) but it's interesting. Mention of Nick made me think of the
Bloody Baron, which is another reference to--well, not royalty, but the
whole feudal system or whatever it's properly called. So what do you all
think about this? I asked this person to write up their ideas as a short
essay and I think I'll put it on the Lexicon. I'd love to include a few
comments from all you experts on this list. 

There you go. Tuck in.

Steve