The mysteries of Maggie, Sr.

[LordDresden2]

  The main thing we know is who her likely associates were.  It is an interesting list.
Nicodemus - says he respected her.

Not just respected, he says he has 'fond' memories of her.  Think about that.

Now, he could be lying (he does that), but there is one piece of supporting evidence for a connection between Margaret and the Denarians:  she planted something in the minds of her sons that looks suspiciously like a baby-version of a 'shadow'.  One place she could have learned about that sort of thing, and studied how to do it, would be with the Denarians.

The message-Margaret in their heads was far short of Lash, but it was still an impressive bit of magic.  I consider it evidence for a Margaret/Denarian link.

Justin DuMorne - mentioned as an associate by Ebenezar.
Goodman Grey - calls her a piece of work.
Leanansidhe - mentioned throughout the series.

Also, note what Lea tells Harry in Grave Peril.  Lea is trying to comprehend why Harry would risk a painful death in order to do what he was doing, and she has trouble fully comprehending his answer.  She does, however, note that his mother sounded the same way...just before her death.  What Harry has been throughout his adult life, his mother apparently found just before the end, a change from what had gone before.

Ebenezar - says the Wardens were under orders to arrest, and he had orders about her as well.  Why send the Blackstaff after a lone wizard?

Note that Ebenezar specifically tells Harry that Margaret had violated the First Law, along with others.  Not 'pushed the edges' or anything, but straight-up violations of the Seven Laws.

Now, her killing with magic might have been self-defense, in itself.  The Council would probably not have looked favorably on even that, given her other associations.

(The Council is far more likely to accept a self-defense claim in a First Law violation if that Wizard in question had not gone out of her way to get into situations where it might happen.)

But she had also violated other Laws, and Eb also tells Harry that she had deliberately used the Council's Laws as weapons against the Council.  It doesn't sound like her actions were easily defensible.

Thomas Raith - calls her "one hell of a dangerous witch".
Chauncy - says she was headed for Hell, "but we lost her".

  The above list suggests Margaret LeFae was involved in very shady business.  She had also broken at least some of the Laws of Magic.

Which is where things get strange and contradictory.

Yeah, we have all that.  It's pretty consistent.  But we also have the very, very strange conversation between Harry and Stacy in Dead Beat, the one that implies that she was just a misguided idealist.

Rashid is also said to have had an occasional dinner date with her, where they discussed Faerie and how to traverse it.  Of course that could have been further back, before she went majorly bad.

But something happened to make her change her ways just before the end, apparently something pretty profound.  Whether it was meeting Malcolm, or whether she met Malcolm as a result of it, or just what, we can't know.  Insufficient data.

As for Thomas...this is really nasty.  Thomas believed that Lord Raith had her addicted to White Vampire sexual ecstasy, and that she broke away.  Lash told Harry something that chimes with that, adding that she found the strength to break away 'for a reason' involving the birth of Harry as a starborn.  But it's not clear if she knew that, that is, if her desire to produce a starborn gave her the strength to break away, or she was given the strength to break away because of her role in some larger cosmic plan.

Why didn't she take Thomas with her?  We can't answer that, because we don't know the circumstances of her 'escape'.  It might be that the opportunity presented itself and it was 'then or never'.  It might be something else.  There are a lot of unanswered questions about that whole business.

Thomas told Harry he thought their relationship started out as business, and turned personal.  What Eb told Harry about the infamous 'dinner party' years later chimes with that, but it doesn't explain how she got addicted.

Even her being addicted is odd.  I mean, as an experienced Wizard, she presumably ought to know better.  "Here, just one done of the heroin..."

Of course sometimes supposedly smart people do profoundly stupid things, especially if they pride themselves on how smart they are.  Which brings us back to what the shadow-Margaret told Harry, that she was 'so arrogant'.  Harry saw a look of arrogance in her portrait at Chateau Raith, too.

Was she arrogant enough to think she could enjoy supersex without getting hooked?  I don't rule it out.  Still, it's another case of 'insufficient data'.

[wardenferry419]

You have given Maggie a good deal of thought. I haven't put the pieces together well. But, I believe there is WOJ that we will learn more about her in future books.

[Kindler]

Good points.

But something happened to make her change her ways just before the end, apparently something pretty profound.  Whether it was meeting Malcolm, or whether she met Malcolm as a result of it, or just what, we can't know.  Insufficient data.

I think we can make a reasonable guess that she met Malcolm after her heel-face turn. Chapter 21, Blood Rites:

"All I know is that there was some sort of business between them. It developed into something else. Father was trying to snare her permanently, but she wound up being too strong for him to completely enthrall. She escaped him when I was about five. From what I've been able to learn, she met your father the next year when she was on the run."

I'm conjecturing that leaving Raith was part of her turnaround. I'd also further state that Malcolm was unlikely to have married her if she was still all Dark Side.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

At one point, JB was asked if Mab could remove the demon-thing from Thomas.  As I recall, he said yes, she could rip Thomas' demon right out of him, the problem would be that it leave Thomas in a ghastly state if she did it.  That implies a certain separateness, at the least.

I would take that as implying the opposite; the difference between removing a tapeworm and removing a cancerous major organ.

Also, pretty much everybody who soulgazes a White Vampire sees the things.  Carlos made a reference to it 'that silvery thing' after soulgazing Lara, for ex. 

There is a WoJ somewhere about how differently different wizards can perceive the same underlying thing, and iirc what various wizards saw looking at White Court vampires is used as an example therein.  And I am remembering that the range there was not narrow enough to exclude equivalents of Harry seeing Molly's friend's addiction as having monstrous mouths, in PG.  Which seems to me to leave the possibility open that a White Court demon is of the nature of a supernatural or metaphysical disease or addiction rather than an independent parasite.

I don't think there's any question that there's something in there initially separate from the human, though they made become one thing after the first feeding.

I may have said before, my standard for proof that there is something there separate from the human would be one such demon being shown as an independent entity in the physical world, rather than in what have been both told and shown are subjective and metaphorical looks inside people's heads.

Yeah, but that's so rare that it's never the way to bet.

It seems workable for Maggie to be heroic in that rare a way to me, though.  Pretty much everything in the entire series starts off from Maggie's actions, so those including the single rarity that everything else is built upon works for me.

[Arjan]

I would take that as implying the opposite; the difference between removing a tapeworm and removing a cancerous major organ.

The problem with a tumor is exactly that it has started to act as individual cells and not as a part of the body anymore. In a very real sense the tumor has become a separate life form. Again it is very depending on how you look at it.

There is a WoJ somewhere about how differently different wizards can perceive the same underlying thing, and iirc what various wizards saw looking at White Court vampires is used as an example therein.  And I am remembering that the range there was not narrow enough to exclude equivalents of Harry seeing Molly's friend's addiction as having monstrous mouths, in PG.  Which seems to me to leave the possibility open that a White Court demon is of the nature of a supernatural or metaphysical disease or addiction rather than an independent parasite.

So what was Lash? No separate physical existence bu we know from wok she got autonomy.

I may have said before, my standard for proof that there is something there separate from the human would be one such demon being shown as an independent entity in the physical world, rather than in what have been both told and shown are subjective and metaphorical looks inside people's heads.

It seems workable for Maggie to be heroic in that rare a way to me, though.  Pretty much everything in the entire series starts off from Maggie's actions, so those including the single rarity that everything else is built upon works for me.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

So what was Lash? No separate physical existence bu we know from wok she got autonomy.

I don't see her being a parasite infected from outside, with an established means for how (the Denarian coin) necessarily being of any definitive relevance to the case of White Court "demons"; we have no evidence for any ways of getting them into otherwise uninfected humans.

[Arjan]

I don't see her being a parasite infected from outside, with an established means for how (the Denarian coin) necessarily being of any definitive relevance to the case of White Court "demons"; we have no evidence for any ways of getting them into otherwise uninfected humans.

Hereditary. Much like mitochondrien. Those are seperate creatures with their own  dna.

Of course mitochondrien are not parasites. They started as symbiots and they became so integrated in the host that we do not see them as a seperate organism anymore. But from a Mitochondrien point of view they still are.

[wardenferry419]

I kinda see the supernatural world as being an infection on the mortal world with varying degrees of contamination. Vamps for example, WCV are lightly infected, RCV are moderate to severe infection, and BCV are complete infection of the mortal.

[Rasins]

I kinda see the supernatural world as being an infection on the mortal world with varying degrees of contamination. Vamps for example, WCV are lightly infected, RCV are moderate to severe infection, and BCV are complete infection of the mortal.

What about mortal Wizards?  They are part of the Supernatural world.

[Kindler]

What about mortal Wizards?  They are part of the Supernatural world.

Wizards are what happens when you fight off the infection and acquire an immunity. Hashtagmetaphorcomplete.

[Arjan]

Wizard is just what you get if you do not have enough power to become something else. 

[wardenferry419]

I think I like Kindler's extension of the idea better.

[Rasins]

Still suggests that Wizards are part of the Supernatural world.  Maybe they are the missing link?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Hereditary. Much like mitochondrien. Those are seperate creatures with their own  dna.

Yah, but, to complete my comparison, we do not have any examples of contemporary living creatures that exist without mitochondria suddenly acquiring them. Inheriting something from your parents does not confirm that that thing can exist outside a human.

[Arjan]

Yah, but, to complete my comparison, we do not have any examples of contemporary living creatures that exist without mitochondria suddenly acquiring them.

That is because biology and evolution are not as fast as magic and are not intelligently designed either.

Inheriting something from your parents does not confirm that that thing can exist outside a human.

And the mitochondrien can not exist outside the human body either. Whether you see them as independent creatures depends on your point of view. In some cases it is still usefull to see them that way.

Being able to exist outside the human body is not the only criterium. To go back to Lash she started as a part of Lasciel even when she was residing in Harry. Then she gained authonomy and made her own decisions even if she was bound by her now changed nature. The remnants of that spirit fused with some part of Harry to form something new but according to your definition that was only a seperate entity after she was born.

Harry could have reabsorbed her as Lasciel was planning (consume her you could say) but he did not.

This is a magical world. Spiritual entities can reside in someones elses body and it is sometimes difficult to state how seperate or integrated they are  and what their relation to the host is because things flow over into each other just like in biology but shown seperation is not the only criterium.