We don't know but I suspect three apocalypses somewhat connected and all leading to the final one with the outsiders.
Nah, I think the outsiders will be the first one, the Fallen the second smaller one, and the third one will be Scouring of the Shire-scale White Court stuff.
You only do that when you are living close to each other and are locked in an a fight for survival.
Harry seems an easy sell on believing this is the case with the Red Court between GP and Changes, though.
For the red court this was not, until the final act of changes, an existential fight for survival. The real Mayan have not even been into the picture before Changes.
Harry not seeing them does not mean they weren't involved.
Do you think that if a minor Red Court functionary tried starting a war with the White Council without approval from the higher levels, the Red Court would hesitate to disown and sacrifice them ?
In that context the most logical thing for the red court to do when beaten significantly is to go back to their liars, lick their wounds and wait for better times. Both sides will somewhat recover and Winter can in the meantime concentrate on its real problems, the outsiders do not win in that scenario.
Your notion of Winter as more significant than anyone else in keeping the Outsiders out is not something I agree with; iirc one of the Mothers says that is only at this point in time and has not always been the case, which strongly suggests they are not the only entities capable of fulfilling that role.
That only changes if the outsiders have a really big influence on the reds, not just a little push in a direction compatible with their nature.
How big a push do you think pushing them into a war they can't possibly win is ?
Hades, Mab, the mothers. They have not been really touched by the outsiders schemes yet and that should happen in or just before the bat.
Have you some reason of ruling out us finding out that they have actually been seriously touched by those schemes ?
Think of how much Harry knows about now that was ongoing at the time of SF but that he had no idea about then. Are we really in a position to rule out there being as much or more currently going on that he is still blithely unaware of ? This is a person who has been deliberately avoiding the White Council as much as he possibly can, so is set up to be
less informed about the supernatural world than most of his peers. (Which makes sense at a meta-level for JB to pace us learning about stuff along with Harry.)
It seems that way. He is full of shit and when he loses the duel he cheats again. Ortega is a lying manipulator on the level with Nicodemus in some respects.
When you say "again" there, what are you referring to as him having cheated before ?
I see no reason to think Ortega lies. I think that when he is put on the hot seat, he is willing to go a very long way to stop this pointless war. Including cheating in a duel, which he knows full well will bring the full weight of the Accords down on him and probably get him killed. The guy is willing to sacrifice his own life that way in order to kill Harry and stop the war. That does not look like a liar to me, it looks like someone dedicated and self-sacrificing for the interests of his people.
Harry has the possibility to become that unique person but he was not the only one. But he becomes more and more important in every book.
I'll say. he has soulfire (which Nicodemus very nicely set up by exposing him to hellfire, which is probably why the guy thinks he has a chance of ending up a saint), he has the Winter mantle, he is a well-trained wizard, he's been exposed to non-negative uses of necromancy. Harry was not the only potential starborn at the beginning, but he is a major useful piece now.
I do not think that all those powers would have encouraged Harry in his course to Chichen Itza if the reds were a useful or necessery part of the current structure. They all wanted the red court gone every one including Uriel.
You give the Reds far more importance here than I do.