A crescendo of deliberate continuity errors

[Nooneofconsequence]

Ruthless? absolutely
Sadist?  maybe, but if so it's combined with a strong " pain is an excellent motivator / pain is the best teacher " position.  I don't think she's taking pleasure in inflicting the pain, but in the end result.

[Dina]

The statement that none of us are really free, makes me think of a t-shirt I saw once.
It read " I'd be Unstoppable if not for Law Enforcement & Physics."

Ruthless? absolutely
Sadist?  maybe, but if so it's combined with a strong " pain is an excellent motivator / pain is the best teacher " position.  I don't think she's taking pleasure in inflicting the pain, but in the end result.

Perhaps, but I believe Jim did a little retcon with Mab. In Changes I believe she explicitly says she is not cruel, but in the first books that is not the case.

[Nooneofconsequence]

Doesn't need to be retcon, could just be Harry getting a better understanding of Mab.
For that matter, how much does her mantle dictate her actions. The Winter Queen Mantle may react to disobedience in a way similar to the Winter Lady Mantle reacts to intimacy.   And I wonder how the incident with Carlos looked from his perspective.  Did Molly suddenly go silent and violent, or did she still seem to be herself?

[Mira]

Doesn't need to be retcon, could just be Harry getting a better understanding of Mab.
For that matter, how much does her mantle dictate her actions. The Winter Queen Mantle may react to disobedience in a way similar to the Winter Lady Mantle reacts to intimacy.   And I wonder how the incident with Carlos looked from his perspective.  Did Molly suddenly go silent and violent, or did she still seem to be herself?

I think Harry is getting a better understanding of Mab.  That little journey to the Outer Gates and conversation with Rashid in Cold Days, helped him to understand what is at stake.  I believe there is also I think a conversation he has with Mab in Battleground, where Harry finally gets it.  Mab is what she is because of the battle she had to fight, has fought for a millennia, a misstep on her part, and humanity loses.  And yes, she has sold bits of her soul over that time, just to be cursed as a cold cruel queen by the likes of Harry who now understands, and the likes of those who will never understand.

[g33k]

I really like this idea. I feel like Jim usually has the next couple of books in his head at any time so he could definitely had started this multiverse idea back in Cold Days with the Molly car scene. Based on it and the continuity errors we've seen, I suspect that there will only be a few timelines that are dealt with or that interact with other. It'll be more like Fringe than Rick and Morty in that respect.

Jim has said that, from the beginning, he had envisioned 20 novels + BAT.
The PT/BG split pushed it up to 21, and the next book "Twelve Months" is new (not in the original plan), so he's now calling it 22 +BAT.

That's not to say he had every detail of every book solidly planned out.

For example:  Butters was originally planned as a strictly comic-relief minor character; his whole "magic Batman" personna, all the "spotlight time" as a big piece of Harry's "Scooby-Gang," becoming a KotC, and the male-fantasy-throuple with hot-werewolf-babes, that was all unplanned.

For example:  Jim didn't know, as he started Changes, which "power-up" Harry would choose when he needed it.  It was only after writing some, that he realized the WK was the one to pick; but before that Jim had considered both Lasciel's Coin & Kemmler's Dark hallow to be possible ways to write it.

[Mira]

For example:  Jim didn't know, as he started Changes, which "power-up" Harry would choose when he needed it.  It was only after writing some, that he realized the WK was the one to pick; but before that Jim had considered both Lasciel's Coin & Kemmler's Dark hallow to be possible ways to write it.

WOJ on that?  I mean after writing the way he did about both Denarians and Dark Hallow, it is pretty obvious that they weren't the way for Harry to go, as Jim had written him up to that point.. Neither simply fit him, end of story.

For example:  Butters was originally planned as a strictly comic-relief minor character; his whole "magic Batman" personna, all the "spotlight time" as a big piece of Harry's "Scooby-Gang," becoming a KotC, and the male-fantasy-throuple with hot-werewolf-babes, that was all unplanned.

No, the mistake, if it were a mistake was how Jim introduced Butters in the first place.  Sorry, but introducing Butters a meek little guy that loved the polka didn't make him comical, because at the same time Jim opened with how Butters was willing to sacrifice his career and spend time in an asylum rather than lie about his findings that a body brought to him just wasn't human..  So Butters became this quirky little guy of great intelligence, integrity, and yes, courage, so why not make him a Holy Knight with a hot werewolf babe for a girlfriend?  Nerds do get rewarded once in a while.

[Dina]

Doesn't need to be retcon, could just be Harry getting a better understanding of Mab.
For that matter, how much does her mantle dictate her actions. The Winter Queen Mantle may react to disobedience in a way similar to the Winter Lady Mantle reacts to intimacy.   And I wonder how the incident with Carlos looked from his perspective.  Did Molly suddenly go silent and violent, or did she still seem to be herself?

I agree about Harry changed the way he sees Mab and that affects his narration, but I still think there is some retcon involved.

[g33k]

... Perhaps, but I believe Jim did a little retcon with Mab. In Changes I believe she explicitly says she is not cruel, but in the first books that is not the case.

Cruelty, of course, is relative.
The old joke goes "How do you punish a masochist?  You don't spank them."
The idea of "tough love" usually involves a cruel-seeming behavior.
etc.

And then, of course... we're talking MAB, the Queen of Winter.
And, infamously, "winter is cruel" (it's a stock phrase).
Except it's not -- winter is impersonal; it just is what it is.

Mab can be absolutely horrific to somebody, without it being "cruel" on her part.  Mab stands largely outside those human perspectives and moral judgements.  "Simple human kindness" is another stock phrase; but it has nothing to do with Mab!

So, as awful as early-book Mab was to Harry, she wasn't necessarily being "cruel" to him.

I'll also bring up my WAG that this is part of a multi-generational long-game plan of Mab's.  Old as she is and Guardian of the Outer Gates, she knows about Starborn, and that the cycle has come round again.  So, my WAG is that Mab laid plans -- likely beginning about a century ago -- to gain a Starborn as her Winter Knight, to combine the inherent Starborn Outsider-resistance to the Knight she has during this most-dangerous of times.  She didn't just "stumble upon" Harry as a good candidate Knight -- she arranged for Margaret to learn about Starborn phenomenon, and to become "LaFey."  She arranged for the Black Council to target Margaret as a Starbabe mother.  She arranged for Malcolm's death, and Harry's vanishing into the orphanage system, and Justin to adopt him.  Some (perhaps most or all) of this may have been executed by her Handmaiden, but the intent behind it all was Mab's.

So early-book Mab was very much in the late-stage part of her plan.  And at that point, she was all about shaping Harry; at that point she needed (or at least thought she needed) Harry to see her entirely as the Evil Queen^(tm), in fulfillment of his expectations.  What she was actually doing was crafting her new Knight.

If she had thought it would work better for Harry to think she was "kind," Mab would have acted in a kindly way, without feeling any kindness towards Harry.

[Dina]

I agree with the first part of your WAG, I am not sure if she is involved in Malcolm's death.

And I was not talking about Mab being cruel with Harry but with her own people.

[LordDresden2]

I agree about Harry changed the way he sees Mab and that affects his narration, but I still think there is some retcon involved.

I completely agree.

For that matter, we already know Mab is sometimes cruel for its own sake.  In her first meeting with Harry in his PI office, after they strike an agreement Harry thinks will protect him, she inflicts agony on his wounded hand again, and says point blank that it wasn't in response to anything Harry did or didn't do, thus their agreement didn't kick in.

"I did that for spite."

IIRC, that was pretty close to her precise words.  Mab cannot lie.  If she says she inflicted agony on Harry out of spite, then she inflicted agony on Harry out of spite.

No question that Harry is discovering sides to Mab that were always there, but there's no doubt in my mind that JB has changed Mab, too.

I actually think JB has quietly retconned several things and people over the course of the series, esp. Maggie Sr.'s role in things.  I am quite sure he has somewhat retconned both Mab herself and the nature of the Faerie Courts as well.

[Mira]

For that matter, we already know Mab is sometimes cruel for its own sake.  In her first meeting with Harry in his PI office, after they strike an agreement Harry thinks will protect him, she inflicts agony on his wounded hand again, and says point blank that it wasn't in response to anything Harry did or didn't do, thus their agreement didn't kick in.

As I remember it, Mab was teaching Harry a lesson, when she decides to teach a lesson, she teaches it well.  The lesson was that she can force Harry to obey her orders.  One that Harry learned to well that he was willing to kill himself because he didn't want Mab to force him into doing things that made him a monster.  It wasn't until Uriel's "yes, but," seven words that Harry realized that while Mab could force him to impale his hand on the letter spike, she couldn't change who he is, he is still Harry.

[Dina]

I actually think JB has quietly retconned several things and people over the course of the series, esp. Maggie Sr.'s role in things.  I am quite sure he has somewhat retconned both Mab herself and the nature of the Faerie Courts as well.

I agree in general, not so sure about Maggie Sr. but there is something about that. In one of the first books (the first two, I do not remember which one) Harry has a moment when he was about to do something wrong and he is stopped for what he feels is woman hand, a woman's presence. We readers got the idea that it is his mom. But it has never been addressed again and the feel we have of her is different to the one we had with the soulgaze, when we really met Maggie. So I may buy that Jim was going to do something with that Maggie protecting Harry and then he changed his mind.

[LordDresden2]

As I remember it, Mab was teaching Harry a lesson, when she decides to teach a lesson, she teaches it well.  The lesson was that she can force Harry to obey her orders. 

That's the first part of it, yeah.  She forced Harry to stab himself in the hand with a letter opener.  She was illustrating that she now had power over him, because she had 'bought' his obligation to Lea from Lea.  A normal mortal, with no ties to the Fae, she couldn't have done that to.  She was illustrating her power over him, in order to get him to make that '3 favors' deal.

But then, after the deal was made, she inflicted another dose of agony on him, and she said point blank that the second dose was out of spite.  Mab cannot lie.  If she said she hurt him out of spite, that means she hurt him out of spite.

Mab is far more than just a vicious monster...but the Queen of Winter is a vicious monster herself.  It probably comes with the Winter Queen mantle.

[Mira]

Mab is far more than just a vicious monster...but the Queen of Winter is a vicious monster herself.  It probably comes with the Winter Queen mantle.

  Or she has to appear that way to be successful in the fight at the Outer Gates? No, Mab isn't totally a vicious monster, at the end of Cold Days when her daughter was killed, it had to be done, she knew it and ordered it.. Cold vicious monster stuff, yet Harry managed to tease out a smidge of vulnerability in her about it, which she and the Enemy might see as weakness.  Kringle saw apparently that something had gone down between Harry and Mab and warned Harry never to expose this aspect of Mab to anyone if he values his life.  Kringle calls Mab a "proud creature," she prides herself on her image as a vicious monster.. So yeah, she might have hurt Harry out of spite, that's what vicious monsters do, but also to teach him and keep her image.  Mab's image is one of the things that keep the world safe from Outsiders.

[Snark Knight]

If we've got to do the alternity story (I've commented before that I tend to dread those, though I've seen exceptional good ones), what I would want to see is that EvilHarry's other choices led to both good and evil outcomes that didn't happen here, and some good and evil outcomes that happened here didn't there.

I expect that.  Superficially, it would seem good to have avoided provoking the Red Court war.  But Shiro figured otherwise, that Harry provoked them into starting it when the forces were relatively evenly matched, rather than building up enough ramp numbers to hit the Council with overwhelming force after greater prep.  Shiro is pretty much as close as anyone other than Mr Sunshine gets to relaying Word of God in the series.

A decade and a bit more buildup would pretty much line up with MM.  We might see a mirror timeline with a shattered Council where isolated wizards are on the run as lone agents.  Morgan and his apprentice Molly, for example?