Murphy in Peace Talks (WoJ spoilers)

[KurtinStGeorge]

I don't know how far she assumed she'd keep them; when it comes to the Swords, "the foreseeable future" is murky as hell. Most likely, she was waiting for some kind of sign. In the end, though, Amoracchius was exactly where it needed to be, and Fidelacchius ended up new and improved and in the hands of a new Knight.

Allow me to explain what I meant in more detail.  Murphy's attitude was rather inflexible.  She appeared to have no doubts.  She didn't say that she had concerns that needed to be assuaged or that the matter of the swords might be explored at a future time.  Murphy could have even told Harry that he had told her where the swords were hidden, she had taken possession of them when Harry disappeared, and until she received a sign someone else was meant to hold them, she would assume she was meant to.  Isn't this what you suggest she may have been thinking?  Also, it's not a question of how events eventually played out, it's how Murphy handled the situation.  A person can make the right move, but do so for the wrong reasons or perhaps I should say, do so in an offensive or capricious way.

[huangjimmy108]

I don't think that would work at all.  Mainly because Murphy has always been a front line type of fighter, prided herself on that fact.  That was a lot of her charm, not just steadying Harry, but pulling his cookies out of the fire on several occasions..  I doubt she'd ever be happy as a desk jockey...

She does take pride in it, but as long as you are a normal human you must retire eventually.

Any professional i.e: a cop, a soldier, an athelete etc, no matter how much they take pride in their profession and skills, they will have to stop in the end due to old age if not for anything else.

In other words, this pride issue Murphy is facing is an issue every single normal person will have to face. If everyone else has to face it, so does Murphy. It is only fair.

If she is crippled when she is 25, maybe it will be a hard blow. The flower will be wilted before it's even bloom, so to speak. But Murphy is in her mid fourties. Sure, the retirement was forced on to her a few years early, but considering the circumstances she couldn't continue as she had much longer anyway, or she'll likely be digging her own grave, and I strongly suspect Murphy herself realize it. With her injury, she can now retire with a clear conscience.

[Quantus]

She does take pride in it, but as long as you are a normal human you must retire eventually.

Any professional i.e: a cop, a soldier, an athelete etc, no matter how much they take pride in their profession and skills, they will have to stop in the end due to old age if not for anything else.

In other words, this pride issue Murphy is facing is an issue every single normal person will have to face. If everyone else has to face it, so does Murphy. It is only fair.

If she is crippled when she is 25, maybe it will be a hard blow. The flower will be wilted before it's even bloom, so to speak. But Murphy is in her mid fourties. Sure, the retirement was forced on to her a few years early, but considering the circumstances she couldn't continue as she had much longer anyway, or she'll likely be digging her own grave, and I strongly suspect Murphy herself realize it. With her injury, she can now retire with a clear conscience.

Ya, having come from such a saturated Cop family, I have to think she is well familiar with the eventual transition.  Whether she liked it or not, she knew it was coming and likely prepared herself at least to some degree. 

For that matter, I suspect she got out in the field a lot less than we might suspect, being in charge of SI. She was always there when /Harry/ got called in, and we know she was there for major operations without him.  But in the day-to-day and week-to-week of managing a department, she wouldnt have been needed to be behind a desk more days than not. 

[Mr. Death]

Allow me to explain what I meant in more detail.  Murphy's attitude was rather inflexible.  She appeared to have no doubts.  She didn't say that she had concerns that needed to be assuaged or that the matter of the swords might be explored at a future time.  Murphy could have even told Harry that he had told her where the swords were hidden, she had taken possession of them when Harry disappeared, and until she received a sign someone else was meant to hold them, she would assume she was meant to.  Isn't this what you suggest she may have been thinking?  Also, it's not a question of how events eventually played out, it's how Murphy handled the situation.  A person can make the right move, but do so for the wrong reasons or perhaps I should say, do so in an offensive or capricious way.

Harry's own behavior matters and influences how Murphy approaches things. She had to be inflexible there -- putting it as you say, Harry would've been able to argue. ("You told me where the swords were hidden and I took them when you disappeared," "Well, I'm back now, I say give them back.") She wasn't looking for an argument. She doesn't have to tell him everything she's thinking and feeling -- she has a goal in the conversation, and she's acting toward that goal.

There's a lot going on in that conversation beyond just the Swords and Bob. Murphy is, in her own way, testing Dresden. She's dealt with things that looked and sounded like Dresden before, and this could be even worse than an imposter -- the actual Dresden on Mab's leash. She knows Dresden about as well as anyone in Chicago can, so she pokes him and sees how he reacts.

By the end of the conversation, I think she's convinced that he is still Harry Dresden -- but she can also see that he's in a very dark, rough place at the moment. You can even see where the shift happens -- after he punches the wall then sags in disgust at himself, she's suddenly very understanding and tender. I think, in that moment, she realizes what Harry could have done, what he very nearly did -- but that he didn't.

When you think about it, confronting the Winter Knight alone, unarmed, when you're like half his size? That's either gutsy as hell or very trusting that he's not actually going to hurt you.

So I'll get to the big meaty response in 12-18 hours, but I just wanted to give a refutation and an observation.
Clearly, Sanya gets his divine instruction from bourbon , not vodka. :p

Hey, in God, all booze is equal.

Second,
I've thought so. And I also think it's telling that in the first time that Michael offers Dresden the sword in skin game, he doesn't offer it as a custodian - he offers Dresden to use it as a wielder, to save his daughter. And Harry says no. I think that it's in this moment that Harry really proves that he could, one day, be a wielder. It's not like he's faithless. Remember that he can burn red Court vampires with his amulet through the power of belief in magic. In this "God is Three Blind Men and an elephant" universe, I think that counts for something.

I imagine for Harry, it's also hard to remain truly faithless when he's literally spoken personally to an Angel on several occasions.

As for Harry as a wielder... in the right circumstances, maybe. I don't think he's cut out for a permanent position, though. I don't see him wanting to save the Denarians any more than Murphy is. Maybe even a little less willing.

Mira, do you intend to respond to my or KurtinStGeorge's posts? We both asked you some questions, and I think we'd both like them answered.

[Arjan]

When you think about it, confronting the Winter Knight alone, unarmed, when you're like half his size? That's either gutsy as hell or very trusting that he's not actually going to hurt you.

Yes, that. She took serious risks there for him.

[Quantus]

Yes, that. She took serious risks there for him.

Either took a serious and real risk with a potentially out of control monster, or took a big personal step forward confronting her own fears regarding the possibility of such.  Either way it was gutsy in my book. 

[DonBugen]

I just want to say, I love being part of a community that obsesses over all of the same sorts of stuff that I do.  It’s fantastic to be able to bounce thoughts and ideas and arguments against people and have them come back with reasoned, thoughtful discussion - so instead of thinking the same thoughts and coming to the same conclusions, I get new ideas that I had never come to.



I’m going to reply to things out of order, and probably pulling in different people’s responses, just ‘cause.

Harry received Power for the task in Changes, but he doesn't get the Mantle until after.

Yeah, my bad.  Harry being angry in Changes was pretty much situation-driven.  Doesn’t take much for a dad to be really angry when his little girl’s in danger.  I should know.

Father Douglas tried to take the Swords through murder, hostages, tazing and threatening to blow up an innocent teenage girl.

Michael referred to the actions of Father Douglas as evidence that Roarke was being deceived and was in the wrong; despite his anger, the main argument that Michael makes is that it is not up to mankind to second-guess the will of God.  Roarke makes great arguments; the knights have been short-staffed at this point for about a decade and the world DOES grow darker by the day.  Three knights would obviously be able to do a great amount of good.  But we have to take the long view on this, and as readers we know what the characters do not: the swords are being held in wait for their intended users to take up in a fight with a gigantic evil on the horizon, which we know because JB’s told us about the BAT.  But Michael don’t know that, and yet he trusts that they should wait with their ordained custodian, despite how the situation presented itself.

So, at least to my reckoning, Harry having the Swords in Cold Days into Skin Game tends to end worse for everyone involved. Murphy, consciously or not, ended up putting the Swords where they needed to be to do the greatest good.

Dear God, you’re right.  Why did I not see this earlier?  I mean, look at this:

I grunted.  “That smells an awful lot like predestination to me.  What if those people choose something different?”

“It’s a complex issue,” Jake admitted.  “But think of the course of the future as, oh, flowing water.  If you know the lay of the land you can make a good guess where it’s going.  Now, someone can always come along and dig a ditch and change that flow of water, but honestly, you’d be shocked how seldom people truly choose to exercise their will within their lives.”

We keep talking about whether the swords would or would not be in danger if kept in Harry’s possession, and the kinds of harm he could get into if he went bad.  But looking at it retrospectively, we see that this argument is moot when compared to what actually transpired:  Harry would not have abused the swords during the events of Cold Days, and would have no opportunity to in the period of time between CD and SG.  Therefore, the only immediate consequence of Karrin not returning the swords when Dresden reappears is that the swords are in Chicago, and not locked away on Demonreach.



This makes perfect sense.  Karrin has her own personal, human reasons for keeping the Swords away, due to mistrust and fear and concern for the future.  But Uriel and company know the lay of the land; they know the kind of man Harry is and the kind of woman Murphy is, and can estimate that when Mab inserts Harry into the Denarians’ plan that the swords need to be present.



To return to the original argument:  Was it right for Murphy to take the swords from Harry?  In this case it seems so on both the mortal and immortal levels.  I agree that it was right on the immortal level because the Archangels needed the swords in Chicago for Skin Game.  And I echo the Gatekeeper’s words to LaFortier to satisfy the mortal justification:  “You question Dresden’s loyalty and his ability.  You imply that only a bad seed can grow from bad soil.  Your concerns are understandable, and if correct, then Dresden poses a major threat to the council.”



One area in which Murph does go wrong, though, is that she then assumes that she has the right to dole them out to people who she thinks could use them best.  I stand by what Michael says at the end of Skin Game:  Despite Harry’s clear inclination he thought Murphy could wield a sword, he never actually did call her to be a knight, and she appointed herself despite the fact that she knew that she wasn’t in the right place and mindset to wield one.

Heaven didn't chose her for the job, and she was a bit less than truthful with Harry about that.  Again in her arrogance as Nic put it she had more faith in her own judgement than that of Heaven... Which did lead to a Sword being broken.. She knew why she shouldn't bring or wield a Holy Sword, but she trusted more in her own judgement..

Agreed.  One thing that is in character for TWG (assuming that these attributes parallel the attributes of the Christian/Hebrew God of the real world) is that the choices of the people in rebellion with God are often used to fulfill the will of God for good.  See the destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the Jews during the Babylonian Exile, or the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.  Just because the heavenly host turns the results of a person’s actions for good does not retroactively make that person’s actions good.



(BTW - I don’t bring this in to be preachy about Christian faith or anything, but to clearly refer to it as texts which describe this deity as is portrayed by the believers.  I’d do the same if I was referencing Homer’s Odyssey to draw a conclusion about Hades.)

So breaking and entering would have been ok without a werewolf? What about ringing a bell?

…..

Murphy would not have been in his position because she would never have broken in in the first place, she would have used the bell.

Harry breaking into Butters’ presumed-empty apartment is not out of character for Private Investigator Harry.  Heck, he commits breaking-and-entering several times in Dead Beat – first to the Radio Shack, and second to the Field Museum.  Sorry Arian, but I have to agree with Mira’s statement, at least in reference to Andi.



Mira – I used Andi mostly because she’s been mentioned earlier, but you could easily substitute Harry hitting the wall next to Murph’s head for that same scene.  In either case, I don’t think that Harry’s acting in a way that Uriel wouldn’t expect.

Nicodemus is allowed to have one of them too.

Agreed.  Having the artifacts isn’t any sort of badge of moral clarity; only that a person was clever and skilled enough to get it.

Again after cold days. Cold days is not really about the big battle scenes, it is about Harry's internal struggle and to ignore that is to rob the book of its meaning.

Completely, absolutely yes.  I mean, it IS also about the battle scenes; leading the Wild Hunt across open water to wage a naval battle is kinda epic.  But the underlying struggle in the entire book is Harry trying to get control of this new influencing factor and trying to figure out how to stay himself.



The mantle doesn’t directly influence a person to change their nature.  Human nature itself does that.  It’s natural for a human to make the choice that seems easiest and most profitable for the person, and the mantle makes one’s impulses seem extremely pleasurable and good.  It’s why people procrastinate so much, for example.



I don’t see the mantle as being more dangerous to Harry than having Lash’s coin.  Both were immensely tempting magical forces, for which there just weren’t many examples of people withstanding the temptation of it.  Both influenced Harry to act uncharacteristically angry and violent.  There are some differences, of course – the mantle makes Harry more of a testosterone junkie than Lash did, but I think that Lash’s ability to reason with Harry and argue her point makes the danger of Dresden falling about equal in both.  The difference between the two is that Harry keeps the coin hidden from almost everybody; Michael is the only one of his close friends who knows that he has it.  And Michael is OK with Harry holding a sword.  Everyone, though, knows that Harry is Winter Knight, and now suddenly people don’t trust him and Karrin feels she has to strip Harry of the sword.



If Karrin knew in Proven Guilty that Harry had a fallen angel in his head, tempting him to give in to her and causing him to act differently, in which at least once an innocent person died because he was indulging his rage, do you think that she would feel similar to how she felt in Skin Game?  And does this mean that Karrin would be right when Michael was wrong?

As for Harry as a wielder... in the right circumstances, maybe. I don't think he's cut out for a permanent position, though. I don't see him wanting to save the Denarians any more than Murphy is. Maybe even a little less willing.

I don't know.  That's where he is right now, sure. But I can't help thinking that he's being prepared in much the same way that Butters was. I've re-read Dresden's fight with Hannah several times, and it's impossible not to notice that Harry does exactly the role of a Knight here: he confronts her, offers her a choice, tries as hard as he can to help her step away -all to GREAT personal risk- and then defeats her when he had no other choice. That empathy could, over time, become a seed that brings him to recognize and want to help others trapped.

My personal WAG is that such a thing would only happen near the BAT, and probably would be part of Harry's leaving the service of Winter - exchanging one mantle for another. We have, what, five books to go until the BAT? Plenty of time for character growth.

[Arjan]

Harry breaking into Butters’ presumed-empty apartment is not out of character for Private Investigator Harry.  Heck, he commits breaking-and-entering several times in Dead Beat – first to the Radio Shack, and second to the Field Museum.  Sorry Arian, but I have to agree with Mira’s statement, at least in reference to Andi.

Butters was his friend. If Harry had behaved as a friend a lot of things would have been different.

He should have warned them for the danger that was comming. The resulting kidnappings could have been prevented. Bob was quite right about it.

Besides using the bell for the field museum or radio shack would have been totally useless. Using the bell for Waldo would have been smart even if only to check if someone was home.

[Arjan]

Or in Bobs words:

Bob snorted. “Which is why the first thing you did, when you got back to town, was call all of your friends and immediately tell them you needed their help, and trust them to help you.”

“It wasn’t like the first thing you did was abuse one of your friends and inflict property damage on his house and steal a powerful magical counselor whose loyalties are transferrable to whoever happens to be holding an old skull—presumably so that you’d have a lackey who would agree with whatever you said instead of give you a hard time about it. And the only beings you’re allowing to help you are a bunch of tiny faeries who worship the ground you walk on because you buy them pizza.” Bob made a skeptical sound. “I can see how important trust is to you, boss.”

[Mira]

     Harry received Power for the task in Changes, but he doesn't get the Mantle until after.


Yeah, my bad.  Harry being angry in Changes was pretty much situation-driven.  Doesn’t take much for a dad to be really angry when his little girl’s in danger.  I should know.

No, Harry did have the mantle as of Changes, the deal with Mab was she didn't have control of Harry until little Maggie was safe..  Which is why we have Eb telling Harry not to believe her, she cannot mess with his free will, which was echoed by Uriel's seven words in  Ghost story.

     So, at least to my reckoning, Harry having the Swords in Cold Days into Skin Game tends to end worse for everyone involved. Murphy, consciously or not, ended up putting the Swords where they needed to be to do the greatest good.



Dear God, you’re right.  Why did I not see this earlier?  I mean, look at this:

No,  she sent them to Michael's house but not to be dispensed... 

We keep talking about whether the swords would or would not be in danger if kept in Harry’s possession, and the kinds of harm he could get into if he went bad.  But looking at it retrospectively, we see that this argument is moot when compared to what actually transpired:  Harry would not have abused the swords during the events of Cold Days, and would have no opportunity to in the period of time between CD and SG.  Therefore, the only immediate consequence of Karrin not returning the swords when Dresden reappears is that the swords are in Chicago, and not locked away on Demonreach.

True, but then was Murphy wrong not to return them to the rightful custodian? 

To return to the original argument:  Was it right for Murphy to take the swords from Harry?  In this case it seems so on both the mortal and immortal levels.  I agree that it was right on the immortal level because the Archangels needed the swords in Chicago for Skin Game.  And I echo the Gatekeeper’s words to LaFortier to satisfy the mortal justification:  “You question Dresden’s loyalty and his ability.  You imply that only a bad seed can grow from bad soil.  Your concerns are understandable, and if correct, then Dresden poses a major threat to the council.”

  He did say that, but with Murphy it is still a matter of her trusting her judgement over that of Heaven, and what bothers me she knows that Harry doesn't have faith in a formal religious sense, by implying that she did, so she knew better than him.. He didn't question her logic...  But not only did she brow beat him a bit on this point, she was lying to him about that.

[Mr. Death]

DonBugen, I think we're just about at a point where there's not much left to argue over. Just a couple points I want to address:

One area in which Murph does go wrong, though, is that she then assumes that she has the right to dole them out to people who she thinks could use them best.  I stand by what Michael says at the end of Skin Game:  Despite Harry’s clear inclination he thought Murphy could wield a sword, he never actually did call her to be a knight, and she appointed herself despite the fact that she knew that she wasn’t in the right place and mindset to wield one.

I would say it's not so much she thinks she has the right as she feels she has the responsibility to look after and hand out the Swords. Someone needs to look after them until the time is right; Harry was that person, then he got killed and implicitly entrusted them to Murphy. She probably didn't want them any more than Harry did, but now that she has them, she's going to do the job to the best of her ability and guided by her own judgment -- just like Harry did.

And I'd say the right mindset to be custodian and to wield one don't necessarily need to be the same. Harry self-admitted for years that he's the wrong person to wield a Sword, but was apparently the best choice to be custodian.

I don’t see the mantle as being more dangerous to Harry than having Lash’s coin.  Both were immensely tempting magical forces, for which there just weren’t many examples of people withstanding the temptation of it.  Both influenced Harry to act uncharacteristically angry and violent.  There are some differences, of course – the mantle makes Harry more of a testosterone junkie than Lash did, but I think that Lash’s ability to reason with Harry and argue her point makes the danger of Dresden falling about equal in both.  The difference between the two is that Harry keeps the coin hidden from almost everybody; Michael is the only one of his close friends who knows that he has it.  And Michael is OK with Harry holding a sword.  Everyone, though, knows that Harry is Winter Knight, and now suddenly people don’t trust him and Karrin feels she has to strip Harry of the sword.

There's one fundamental difference between Lash and the Mantle. Lash is there because Harry did not accept the coin's bargain; the Mantle is there because he did accept Mab's. There's a level of acceptance in the Mantle that wasn't present for Lash -- he's already said the big Yes, which I'd say makes him more vulnerable to it.

I don't know.  That's where he is right now, sure. But I can't help thinking that he's being prepared in much the same way that Butters was. I've re-read Dresden's fight with Hannah several times, and it's impossible not to notice that Harry does exactly the role of a Knight here: he confronts her, offers her a choice, tries as hard as he can to help her step away -all to GREAT personal risk- and then defeats her when he had no other choice. That empathy could, over time, become a seed that brings him to recognize and want to help others trapped.

Fair, I hadn't thought of it in that terms. But Hannah appealed to Harry personally in ways that, say, Nicodemus did not. Harry might be willing to save a "new" Denarian that he thinks was tricked, but Michael is willing to save Nicodemus.

Mira -- you're not saying anything new. In fact, you're still saying things that are clearly factually false from the citations that I and others have made to the text of the books.

Again: Do you intend to address those posts by myself and KurtinStGeorge, or do you intend to keep making unfounded assertions that have been shown to be false?

[huangjimmy108]

Harry's own behavior matters and influences how Murphy approaches things. She had to be inflexible there -- putting it as you say, Harry would've been able to argue. ("You told me where the swords were hidden and I took them when you disappeared," "Well, I'm back now, I say give them back.") She wasn't looking for an argument. She doesn't have to tell him everything she's thinking and feeling -- she has a goal in the conversation, and she's acting toward that goal.

There's a lot going on in that conversation beyond just the Swords and Bob. Murphy is, in her own way, testing Dresden. She's dealt with things that looked and sounded like Dresden before, and this could be even worse than an imposter -- the actual Dresden on Mab's leash. She knows Dresden about as well as anyone in Chicago can, so she pokes him and sees how he reacts.

By the end of the conversation, I think she's convinced that he is still Harry Dresden -- but she can also see that he's in a very dark, rough place at the moment. You can even see where the shift happens -- after he punches the wall then sags in disgust at himself, she's suddenly very understanding and tender. I think, in that moment, she realizes what Harry could have done, what he very nearly did -- but that he didn't.

When you think about it, confronting the Winter Knight alone, unarmed, when you're like half his size? That's either gutsy as hell or very trusting that he's not actually going to hurt you.
Hey, in God, all booze is equal.
I imagine for Harry, it's also hard to remain truly faithless when he's literally spoken personally to an Angel on several occasions.

As for Harry as a wielder... in the right circumstances, maybe. I don't think he's cut out for a permanent position, though. I don't see him wanting to save the Denarians any more than Murphy is. Maybe even a little less willing.

Mira, do you intend to respond to my or KurtinStGeorge's posts? We both asked you some questions, and I think we'd both like them answered.

I won't say whether or not Murphy is wrong in the way she handle the holy swords during CD and SG, but I do want to say that Murphy is acting completely herself.

Like it or not, Murphy is trained as a cop. Though she is no longer one, the training certainly sticks.

Here is Harry, or at least someone like him, who proclaims he just come back from the dead, if you can believed such a thing.

The guy just burgled Butters's home. Taken away Bob and hurting Andy in the process. The guy has been acting abnormally all over the place i.e: excessive violence and looking at girls as if they were prey.

Sure, let's just return the holy artifacts to him. Are you kidding me!?

Michael or Forthill, had one of them been the custodian, may decide to do just that, though I doubt it. But Murphy with her cop training definitely wouldn't. If she ddid that, I'll start looking for alien pods.

Right or wrong, at least Murphy is honest and sincere. When it is about the holy swords, there isn't really much a mortal can do aside from doing your best in both judgement and intent, and allow TWG to handle the rest.

In Murphy's case, she done just that. She makes the best judgement she could and acted true to herself. And TWG does not let her down. Despite her mistakes, ammoracchius is there when Michael needs it and fid is broken and remade into something more suited for the newly minted Sir. Butters.

If you ask me, Murphy is definitely a failure as a KoTC. When she try to wield fid as a knight, she bungles it up spectacularly. However, as a sword custodian, which by the way is what Harry ask her to become,  she performs admirably, even her failure by breaking fid turns out as a blessing in the end. She was not meant to wield the holy sword. She was meant to become the medium to pass on the sword to the right person just by being true to herself.

The most important part is this. Is there actually another option for a custodian aside for Murphy during Harry's abcense?

Michael definitely don't want it, and I assume forthill don't want it either. Thomas? a whampire? Or are we going to let Molly the rag lady held on to the swords?

Like it or not, Murphy is the custodian when Harry come back in CD. As the custodian it is her decision when and where and to whom the swords are to be deployed. Her decisions can be wrong, trying to chop off Nick's head for example, but it is still her right to decide.

[raidem]

I do think Murphy was a correct, active, and true knight during changes in showdowns at chichen itza.  She only wanted it for temporary time though.  And she did screw up in skin knight but it was out of love for Harry and fear for his life that she was pushed into making a compromising choice.

[Mira]

Allow me to explain what I meant in more detail.  Murphy's attitude was rather inflexible.  She appeared to have no doubts.  She didn't say that she had concerns that needed to be assuaged or that the matter of the swords might be explored at a future time.  Murphy could have even told Harry that he had told her where the swords were hidden, she had taken possession of them when Harry disappeared, and until she received a sign someone else was meant to hold them, she would assume she was meant to.  Isn't this what you suggest she may have been thinking?  Also, it's not a question of how events eventually played out, it's how Murphy handled the situation.  A person can make the right move, but do so for the wrong reasons or perhaps I should say, do so in an offensive or capricious way.

There is also no evidence that the Swords wouldn't have been fine where they were at, unless Thomas sold the boat or something, but I think he also knew where the Swords were..  After all Fid stayed in Harry's umbrella stand in plain sight for a number of years before he found a wielder.. It was untouched even when a horde of zombies trooped though his apartment in Dead Beat...  Murphy didn't get a message from on high to retrieve the Swords, as said a couple of times, she took it upon herself to get them...  I am sure she meant well.. But..

I do think Murphy was a correct, active, and true knight during changes in showdowns at chichen itza.  She only wanted it for temporary time though.  And she did screw up in skin knight but it was out of love for Harry and fear for his life that she was pushed into making a compromising choice.

Yes, on C.I...  Point though her motives were sound in Skin Game, even understandable, they are not an excuse because she knew the rules governing the use of the Swords, made a big deal out of it to Harry, and then violated them..

[huangjimmy108]

I do think Murphy was a correct, active, and true knight during changes in showdowns at chichen itza.  She only wanted it for temporary time though.  And she did screw up in skin knight but it was out of love for Harry and fear for his life that she was pushed into making a compromising choice.

I thought about that as well. But considering further, I discount her performance during book 12. Chopping up vampires is not a KoTC's main job, saving mortals from fallen is. Which is probably why Murphy held out from wielding fid for so long. She knew she is not cut out for it, and when she was finally cornered to wield the holy sword for it's main purpose, she fails.

Wielding a sword is one thing, becoming a KotC is another thing entirely. I strongly suspect Harry refuse to become a KoTC for the same reason. There just isn't much mercy in Harry and Murphy for the likes of Nicodemous, which for me is a completely understandable point of view, but sadly such a way of thinking does not agree with the crede of the KoTC.