Cool concepts!  I don't know what will happen with the Swords.  I suspect that either Excalibur was destroyed at Bianca's ball, or it was saved somehow, and another is wielding it, Michael's eldest son for example, or heck maybe Molly.

A lot of the potential divergence points come after Thomas returned the sword. I think the only big choice earlier was to leave the ball and take either Michael or Susan safely. It was consequential, but not really "near the end" of PG.

The big ones seem to be failing to tell Susan "I love you" or agreeing to let Bianca keep her.

Personally, I think the most interesting narrative potential would be with failing to stop Michael from killing Thomas on the assumption he's just another treacherous vampire, before finding out he'd returned the sword. If you re-read that scene in GP, he was actually pretty close. What a wedge Nicodemus could have driven by dropping that revelation, huh?

The only reason I kind of doubt Denarian mirror-Harry is that Hannah Ascher was already a very Harry-like foil who explored the alternative of what embracing Lasciel would have looked like. Mirror Harry and Lasciel is just kind of repetitive at this point. Although if the differences grew Harry into a better fit for one of the others ... say, Namshiel? That's more interesting.

That is what he says. That probably means he is working for them all the time. And that means he will betray them.

Really what Nicodemus says is no evidence for anything except what he wants you to believe.

Hearing that Hellfire was used in the attack on Arctic Tor was the only scene in the entire series where he broke composure. At a time when Dresden was years away from finding out about Nemesis, and Nic had every reason to think he was on the verge of tipping over onto his team.

Faking that reaction is a pretty screwball manipulation. The scene works a lot better if he's genuinely pissed and scared that Nemesis has corrupted one of his.

Harry was using a pretty strong shield, but with one flaw, he didn't take into account the effect of heat.  So yeah, I believe she was trying to kill him and would have, had it not been for his shield bracelet.

The best chance to kill him wasn't in the basement. It was when they were occupied with the Renfield, and Mavra or one of her minions took a blackmail photo instead of striking when he never even would have seen it coming.

Probably not yet. I think Namshiel is still in the passenger seat, not calling the shots.

Besides, I'm not yet convinced he was really the Black Council Denarian, vs framed by Tessa and/or Rosanna to take the heat off them.

I'll tell you one person who I wouldn't mind seeing with a Coin just because it means the gloves can come off in dealing with him.......good ole Rudolph.

Hmm ... it's a long shot, but what if he already has been? H+K speculated he was being paid to stick the bank thing to them, but it didn't really fit with their previous theory he was on Marcone's payroll. What if Nic mailed him a coin after skipping town, and he's semi-possessed rather than bought? Maybe he's new enough not to be fully under the Fallen's thumb, but more or less as susceptible to mood and perception manipulation as Hannah Ascher was?

A fallen riding shotgun and torquing his mood and perceptions would explain a lot - the repeated loss of control, the apparently delusional take that Karrin had blown up a person rather than a jotun, and firing without seeming to mean to.

At first it seems weird that if he had a coin, he wouldn't have transformed when Harry was trying to kill him. But what if instigating Harry to murder him was the whole fallen plan? If Butters hadn't stopped him, he was on the verge of doing something that would have stained him as a warlock, submerged him into the winter knight mantle, and possibly even corrupted his access to soulfire (based on the smell of brimstone when Butters cut him). Could be Rudolph as a host, especially a not fully compliant one, wouldn't have been enough to take Harry out in an open fight. But tricking him into corrupting himself with a wrathful murder, with good odds Uriel would cut him loose and the Council might take him out? That's a good trade for one dixie cup bearer.

Thomas can, Jim has talked about how the result would be a very onesided power struggle between the hunger and the fallen.

In Thomas' specific case because he tries to tamp the hunger down, or in general? For any regular whamp without a conscience, I'd expect the hunger and the fallen would be synergistic. The hunger doesn't seem to have much in the way of high-level strategic objectives that would come into conflict with the fallen's scheming; it just wants to eat life. The fallen wants to corrupt the host, and nudging them to enjoy taking life even more seems to suit the bill.

Any but the most self-disciplined of whamps in that case won't be particularly conducive to Nicodemus' brand of wanting high-functioning lieutenants, but the combination would be hell on wheels for Tessa's preference for powerful goons addicted to hedonism.

I don't think anything Drakul and his posse were doing in the cemetery is more advanced than it's reasonable to assume Drakul already knew in his own right. The Word was Kemmler's final book with the most advanced secrets.

Raising zombies is elementary stuff by comparison. If Drakul didn't know that before Kemmler was even born, he could easily have got copies of the elementary necromancy texts that Kemmler was flooding around Europe to cause problems for the Wardens by giving two-bit baddies real power.