[the_old_crowd] Thoughts on HBP
elfundeb
elfundeb at elfundeb2.yahoo.invalid
Mon Aug 30 16:59:07 UTC 2004
Welcome to all the newcomers!
There are many other things I *should* be doing, but this is a topic I have not yet weighed in on in any forum.
Steve wrote:
<<If you are like me, you're probably already sick of discussions about who
the infamous Half-Blood Prince is.>>
I know what you mean, Steve! It was getting monotonous even before I posted the poll on HPFGU (which I have never voted in, for reasons I discuss below).
<<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?>>
Even while I was fiddling with the HBP poll options, I had the nagging feeling that the HBP was not a person, but rather a myth or idea going back to the earliest days of wizarding history, that (like the Basilisk rumors) is in modern wizarding times generally believed to be a bunch of nonsense. Or, as someone posted recently to HPFGU, a legend.
I've never had time to think through exactly what the HBP idea was, though if pressed I'd say either that it was a messianic prediction or an Arthurian-type legend. Either way, my assumption was that it dated back to the earliest days of wizarding history, well before the split between the WW and the muggle world. Since concepts of royalty have been around for millenia, and at least in England wizards would likely have considered themselves crown subjects prior to the split, the WW would have a full understanding of royalty. Thus, the concept of the half-blood prince would be perfectly logical to the WW, even though they had adopted a non-monarchical form of government for wizarding matters. (In fact they may have deliberately created a non-monarchical internal government because they considered themselves subjects of the crown.)
<<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.>>
Setting aside momentarily whether either Nearly Headless Nick or the Bloody Baron could be the HBP, I don't think it's surprising that there are witches and wizards with noble blood. My assumption has always been that the Bloody Baron was a muggle baron (not a muggle, of course; I mean that his family was a wizarding family living in the muggle world before the split which, according to the Lexicon, did not take place until 1692, 200 years *after* Nick was nearly beheaded). Undoubtedly there are other such noble wizarding families, including "the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black."
But I don't think any known wizard with noble blood is the HBP. I think the point is that nobody in the WW really knows if the HBP really exists, or who it is (or was).
Debbie
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