Well the Sidhe were created specifically to watch the Outer Gates. We also know they weren't the first to guard it. I don't know if TWG was involved in their creation, or not.
I believe that Jim used the Diablo creation myth as inspiration. That being that there was a single Being that has always existed. To achieve perfection he removed all negative qualities, but those negative qualities created it's own Being. So there is TWG and his Angles vs , the Darkness which is made of the Old Ones, and Outsiders. TWG created reality, and life within it. He locked out the Outsiders (per words of Jim).
My theory: There were the mortals who interacted with both Angles, and demons, creating beings like vampires, naalagoshi (spelling?), and others. Combining the power of belief, worship, and these interactions with Angles, and demons has resulted in supernatural beings, gods, sidhe, mantles, and wizards.
Are the Fae Queens still mortal? Yes. Strip away their mantles and they are flesh and blood that can be killed. The Mantle will live on, but the person who had it will not. Is the Mantle itself immortal? I suspect not. I believe it is a great deal of power that has been constructed, and can be potentially deconstructed by someone with enough power.
I might have missed it, but when did Jim say he was using the Diablo creation myth? Or are you saying that's just your guess that he did?
At any rate, as intriguing as it is he has said a few things that might throw a spanner in that WAG. For instance, the Gods like Ethniu and Vadderung existed before time was invented, before the Universe was made (just like the Angels). They all seem to be peers or even relations. They all seem to know each other. So I don't see how the mortal interaction created them since they are FAR older than mortals. It appears to me more that mortals have merely renamed and therefore reshaped them a bit, which defines a bit of how they interact with the mortal world. Some gods like Vadderung choose to lessen themselves so that mortals can understand them better. But by and large it seems belief merely shapes the existing being, not that the being is created by mortals themselves.
I am pretty sure mortals in Diablo were also a creation of Lilith, the daughter of Mephisto (Lord of Hatred) and one of the Prime Evils. So even if Jim were using Diablo as his basis, it wouldn't really work to have mortals doing all the creating. I guess that's why there is a Creator in the first place.
I don't agree that the Fae Queens are mortal. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the difference between immortals and mortals is, not helped by the fact Jim has muddied the waters about it and not been clear on his definitions about them.
If you strip an immortal like a Fae Queen of immortality, they would no longer be the Fae Queen either. So the sentence becomes redundant. Mab is still Mab, but she would no longer be the Queen of Winter. She has be stripped of the Office. Think of it like a uniform. You are still you when you wear it, but when you wear a uniform you also become whatever that uniform represents - a solider, a medic, a police officer, a fireman etc. But the uniform is an idea. So even if it is destroyed, unless the entire institution that powers it is also destroyed then the holder of that uniform does not lose their position.
A mantle is energy. According to Einstein, energy cannot be created nor destroyed. While this position is hard to wrap your head around, it's actually quite self-evident. Everything that happens to energy is change. We know the energy of mantles can be stolen, as per Summer Knight. We know both from Summer Knight and from Cold Days that immortals actually often discard and re-acquire and steal energy. So in that sense, the mantle can be destroyed. But really what would happen is the energy of the mantle would be changed into something that the thief would use. What would be left is hard to say, but there is an interesting WOJ that hints at it.
Quote from: ballplayer72 on February 24, 2007, 01:42:52 PM
i am fairly certain, but not positive, that it is not possible to hold both Mantles at once. Also i do not think that holding both was what Slade was planning. Slade and the Summer Lady were planning on taking the Summer Knight out of the equation, and thus causing a war. During this war, the Summer Lady would be able to take Lily, the follower of Summer that she put the Mantle on, along with the Unraveling, and sacrifice her for Winter on the Stone Table, thus giving Winter the Energy that went along with the Knight’s Mantle, not the Mantle itself. At least that was how i interpreted it. The Stone Table doesnt transfer the actual thing that is Sacrificed on the Table from Summer to Winter and vice versa, but the energy and power that it holds.
JIM: Finger. Nose.
Jim 
So the mantle would still exist, but it would be a changed mantle. A mantle without the energy and the power, and likely without the knowledge that it once had. Just a strange shell perhaps. Like a coffee cup with the coffee taken out. A used thing. No longer what it was, but hints at it's origins.
I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier. The tell to the truth that fae queens are mortals still is in Peace Talks.
Molly says she could cross the circle. But she'd leave the fae mantle behind. Since it's much more invasive than Harry's mantle, what came out on the other side wouldn't be 'right'. This makes sense since her mantle conveys immortality, and Harry's doesn't.
In Cold Days, Maeve was killed on Halloween, despite being an 'immortal'. Kringle comments later that Halloween is a day when mantles can be put on or discarded. It's the day when Vaddrung dons his Kringle mantle. That means on at least two days of the year, there's a width between the mortals wearing them and the mantles. Why two days you ask? Because Mab gave Harry a conditional suggestion in Battle Ground that if she should die that night, then Harry should kill Molly. It was the Summer Solstice, a cosmologically important day of the year. A day when 'the stars were aligned'.
The mantles are immortal. They convey that immortality to the mortals wearing them. But there are days when that protection is not absolute.
The fae queens are mortal.
The idea that immortals are beings that can never be killed under any circumstances is an outdated definition, and one that isn't relevant in the context of the series.
Mab says she IS immortal, not eternal. That's a quote from Battle Ground. You couldn't get any more canon than that.
I understand the confusion as the old definition is quite absolute. But it's an archaic definition, and not how Jim uses it in this series.
Also, Maeve was killed on Halloween because it was Halloween. Any other day she could have been killed and unless it was in a similar conjunction or with ancient and incredible power like the Eye of Balor, she would have returned.
Bob explains all this in Cold Days. As Harry muses, this is why the immortals make a big deal out of being essentially unkillable AND shut down anything that says otherwise. This is the big secret that only other immortals (by and large) seem to know. I can see how you got to the idea that the Summer Solstice is a similar conjunction to Halloween, but wouldn't the Winter Solstice also be one too? As far as we know, the only conjunction that allows immortals to be mortal is on Halloween. I don't think Mab was hinting that it needed to be done that night, I think she knows if Dresden wanted to do it he would find a way to do it. He did it to Maeve after all.
See my previous response above to groinkick about what happens to Fae Queens.
Couple of items on this.
1) None of the three Ladies we've seen get a mantle were Fey. Two were changelings (mortal+potential) one pure mortal. So full Fae being around may not "count" as far as the mantle is concerned- much like the Knights.
2) You are confusing/equating "choice" and "informed choice"- even so far as "fully informed choice." When a child doesn't eat peas, it doesn't mean they are rejecting their health benefits- it's a choice, not a fully informed one.
As I noted in my previous, this would explain the Sidhe requirement to tell the truth and their instinct to deceive anyway. If you ask the right question, they will clearly lay out the bargain. It is up to you to make good choices.
Not the modern European idea of selling, but the ancient Middle Eastern- if you unwind your silk and find that a yard in it was cotton, that's on you for paying for it, not the seller for deceiving you. Let the buyer beware and be wary. It's a more ancient idea of how selling and trading was done.
Agreed. Also, 'buyer beware' is very much still a legal principle today.
I also agree with your previous post - it's the chain of choices that Molly made that made her Winter Lady. It's not just one. The Angel of Death makes a big point about how it works in Ghost Story.
Choice plays such a big part in mortal affairs, that stripping someone of their free will by saddling them with a mantle seems sure to draw down the response of The White God.
Especially if we find out at the end that it was Hecate evading TWG's edict to give up their immortality or withdraw from the mortal world. My theory is that she did both, and didn't. We'll find out when Mother Winter (Hecate?) spills the beans.
The assumption you are making is that Molly was stripped of her Free Will. But she was not. She made all her choices uncompromised. She chose to train to be a wizard with Harry Dresden no less, she chose to be involved in his world, and to help him fight, and carry on his work, and train with his former teacher (Lea). No one made her go to Demonreach. No one made her choose all those previous choices that lead her there - the evidence of that is if that were the case Uriel and Co. would have intervened. Molly made herself a possible vessel of Winter, she changed herself through her own choices. And she never lost the choice to give up all her power either.
It's hard to assign blame in terms of Molly's early choices. She didn't make them in a vacuum, she was pushed by someone. Sandra Marling in point of fact. Later in Skin Games Uriel will say this about Nic's henchmen, they didn't fall, they were pushed. Molly was caught up in a plot to kill Harry, that landed her at Arctis Tor.
We are all pushed around by others choices. No one lives in a vacuum. So each choice is influenced by the multitude of factors, including other people's choices, around us. Everyone makes their choices in those same conditions.
This is the "Sins of the Father" argument. The children bear the weight of everything their parents do. There's no way to make a fresh start and vendettas never end.
As I said to Morris, that's just the way it is. If you are struck by lightning whose fault is it? Generally it's your own fault for being outside where lightning might strike you. If you get injured, it's again your fault for not wearing the right equipment. If you take issue with that, you might want to take issue with Creation itself for having a world that has pain, evil, loss, death and taxes in it. But I disagree entirely with your conclusion. It is not impossible to make a fresh start. It requires enormous will and growth and energy. But people do it all the time anyway. Doesn't mean it always works out of course. Take Jesus for example. It doesn't read, as I understand it, that Jesus spent his life planning to be crucified. But he ended up there anyway due to the choices of others around him, and due to his own choices. But he accepted the consequences and bore it all the same. We cannot choose whether we are born or not, but we can choose what to do after that.
