Elaine's Necklace, Where Did It Come From?

[Mira]

   Continuing my Summer Knight reread, we get Harry's description of Elaine, and aside from the usual he mentions that she is wearing a pentacle necklace identical to his own...  We know or rather Harry believes that his pentacle came from his mother, that she wore it.  It is his main link to her through the first three books, he fingers it, he feels her when he fingers it..  It is very special, no where up through Skin Game is it mentioned that another wizard wears such a necklace, except for Elaine. 

So where did she get hers?  Did her mother give it to her?  Harry doesn't explain how she came to have an identical pentacle necklace to his own.  He doesn't say he gave it to her, indeed where would he get the money for it?  He doesn't say her mother gave hers to her.  He doesn't say that Justin gave it to her.   He implies that the necklace is a symbol of the bond between them.  However Elaine never indicates that her necklace holds as deep a meaning for her as his does for Harry.. So what is the deal here?

What if Harry had been lied to from the beginning?  While it may have come from his mother, it isn't a keepsake type of thing.  We know that supposedly there were two or we think two possible star borns, Harry and Elaine.  Harry is confirmed to be one, the jury is still out on Elaine.  What I am saying is suppose only star born baby candidates get the necklace?  Then while true that his mother left him his, she never wore it and it merely indicates his status as a possible star born, the same goes for Elaine.  In fact this may have been one of the ways Justin selected them out of the orphanages.   It stands to reason that Harry and Elaine wouldn't be the only two kids with talent among the hundreds of orphans who needed adopting...  If Justin knew about star born, he may also have known about the distinctive necklace only they wear. 

One more point,  once Harry is more or less confirmed to be a star born, he is gifted with the jewel to put in it with the road map of the Ways, why not before?     

[Fcrate]

Interesting thought. I always assumed that they crafted one together while they were apprenticed to Justin to link them together.
As for being a sign of star born, I have no idea, but Harry's mother's jewel supposedly fit into the necklace, and she gave it to Lea to pass it on when Harry is in need of it/ready for the knowledge and won't get himself killed or lost in the Ways.

[Regenbogen]

I have asked myself the same question, but forgot about it. Yes, that's weird. She has the same necklace as Harry.
Thomas and Harry have the same, too. Thomas even showed it to Harry in Blood Rites as a means to convince him that he is his brother.
So why does Elaine also have one?
And do other wizards have one, too? I mean, pentacles are quite common even among non wizards. And to be honest, they all look almost the same.
So what is so special about the three pentacle necklaces that it's worth mentioning several times that they are so similar?

Maybe it has something to do with the group Margaret got involved in. Perhaps they all had the same kind of pentacle necklaces to give new apprentices or their heirs. Why? Don't know. Tracking members? But maybe that's why Justin had one to give to Elaine. Margaret had given her spare one to her first child, Thomas. And her own necklace was inherited by Harry after her death.

[Yuillegan]

Jim has said that the necklaces are significant because it shows that they both have ideals rooted in the same place. They think differently, but are on the same page.

I once proposed that they were actually related (like Luke and Leia) but admittedly it didn't go down well (too much ick).

[Regenbogen]

Jim has said that the necklaces are significant because it shows that they both have ideals rooted in the same place. They think differently, but are on the same page.

I once proposed that they were actually related (like Luke and Leia) but admittedly it didn't go down well (too much ick).

Them being related is a goid idea. Maybe not siblings, but distant cousins. Ebenezar is quite old. He could easily have fathered more than one child. There could be generations in between.

Do we actually know, who gave it to Elaine? Was it Justin or one of her unknown parents?

Or did Harry make one for her? That would change the meaning.

[Mira]

Them being related is a goid idea. Maybe not siblings, but distant cousins. Ebenezar is quite old. He could easily have fathered more than one child. There could be generations in between.

Do we actually know, who gave it to Elaine? Was it Justin or one of her unknown parents?

Or did Harry make one for her? That would change the meaning.

  Yeah, but Jim's answer is kind of a non-answer..  Kind of like his sing-song," I'm not going to tell you..."  Ideas rooted in the same place?  What does that mean?  I'd forgotten about Thomas, but then again did Margaret wear both necklaces?  One for show and one for blow?  Did Eb give her the two that she had?  No where is it mentioned that Eb wears a pentacle necklace..  There are a couple of good reasons for that, 1] he doesn't want or wasn't ready until recently for Harry, the Council, or anyone else to know his real relationship to Harry.   2] Eb and Margaret's mother wore them during their marriage, he in turn passed both on to Margaret to give to her children... However that still doesn't explain Elaine.

[Regenbogen]

Aaah, so we can speculate here as much as we want. No theory will be confirmed until written by Himself in one of the next books.

[Yuillegan]

  Yeah, but Jim's answer is kind of a non-answer..  Kind of like his sing-song," I'm not going to tell you..."  Ideas rooted in the same place?  What does that mean?  I'd forgotten about Thomas, but then again did Margaret wear both necklaces?  One for show and one for blow?  Did Eb give her the two that she had?  No where is it mentioned that Eb wears a pentacle necklace..  There are a couple of good reasons for that, 1] he doesn't want or wasn't ready until recently for Harry, the Council, or anyone else to know his real relationship to Harry.   2] Eb and Margaret's mother wore them during their marriage, he in turn passed both on to Margaret to give to her children... However that still doesn't explain Elaine.

What Jim was referring to seems pretty obvious to me. When Harry talks about his pentacle he talks about it being five elements (Fire, Water, Earth Air and Spirit) bound within a circle of Will. Which means at least to some extent, Elaine believes in that level of restraint too. Consider the symbol in Small Favor and a Fistful of Warlocks - magic without restraint. Elaine is hardly an anarchist - a bit sketchy but seems like she does intend to help people.

As to why a few people have them - that much is also pretty obvious. It is far from a unique magic symbol to Harry's family. One of the most common there is. So Elaine having one isn't weird if she made it whilst working for Justin. So I suspect that Margaret made them for all her children as she wanted them to have something to remember her by (I think she knew she might not be around for them). Question really is: how did Dresden get his? He didn't know magic was real until Justin. If Malcolm gave it to him then I would say probably he just said here is a nice necklace from Mom. But if not, then Justin had them. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Maggie and Justin knew each other - in fact I suspect they worked together at one time or another. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Justin adopted her child. Unless you suspect he wasn't really adopting at all...and Elaine and Harry are his children. But that is tinfoil hat stuff (I mean Margaret is perhaps tall for a women, but Eb hardly is tall, and Malcolm is never described as a giant either - so where does Harry's height come from? Perhaps his real dad).

Of course the most likely answer is that Butcher accidentally has made an error, and that originally the pentacle was from Harry's mother but then he accidentally retconned and decided that Justin taught Elaine and Harry how to make them as part of their apprenticeship (or the other way round). But that is the least fun explanation.

Edit* Earlier I said I suspected that Margaret and Justin knew each other - this is actually canon. In Summer Knight Eb mentions it with Harry when talking about Maggie's death at Lord Raith's hands.

[spiritofair]

It's the "identical to his own" part that trips me up. He described Thomas's the same way.

Seems to me either (1) a mistake on Jim's part (he originally meant for Elaine and Harry to have them because Justin gave them to them, then he forgot about that and had Thomas have one, too), (2) Elaine is a third child of Maggie (ick, but, hey, DuMorne was a messed up dude, and maybe this was a way to mess with them... Elaine is pretty tall and lean, which could imply sibling to Harry... fraternal twin?), (3) Maggie was somehow involved in Elaine in another way... such as maybe Maggie isn't dead and knew Elaine's parents), or (4) those amulets were a symbol used by the group Maggie was involved in and Maggie gave one to each of her sons and Elaine's parents or DuMorne (assuming he was also in the group) gave her one.

Elaine has a pretty strong talent. Her mother may have been a wizard. Harry has never speculated, that I remember, on Elaine's parentage, just says she was an orphan.  As icky as it sounds, I suspect (2) was the plan, but maybe it will never come to fruition. Who knows.

[g33k]

Harry's and Thomas' pentacles were stated to be identical and to both come from their mother.

Elaine's is said -- IIRC -- to be very similar, rather than identical.  But we don't know the origin.

I'm going with the idea that Harry and Elaine crafted one together, so she'd have something that matched something of his.  2nd choice would be created by Justin.

Emotionally, I like the idea that maybe Elaine got hers from her mom, who was maybe a sister or cousin (or somesuch) of Margaret McCoy LeFay Raith Dresden.  Logically, I don't see it as likely:  Harry was deeply emotionally attached to his mom's pentacle amulet, and if Elaine had a nearly-identical amulet also from her mom, that'd have been a beyond-coincidental topic they both bonded over and talked-up and etc etc etc; we'd have heard about such a remarkable parallel.

So I'm going with a non-mom origin for Elaine's, but something-in-common since they're so similar.  So Elaine's was made to be as much like Harry's as their amateur-jeweler skills could get.

 

One more point,  once Harry is more or less confirmed to be a star born, he is gifted with the jewel to put in it with the road map of the Ways, why not before?

Before Harry was as skilled and experienced as he was then, it would have been a death-sentence.

The Ways that Margaret LeFey had mapped were not safe Ways, they were only Ways that a skilled and powerful wizard should attempt.
 

[Arjan]

It tells us that one of Elaine’s parents was a wizard from the same magical tradition as Harry’s mother and she got her pentacle in a similar way. That is all.

[Mira]

It tells us that one of Elaine’s parents was a wizard from the same magical tradition as Harry’s mother and she got her pentacle in a similar way. That is all.

Possible, or Harry made it for her in his shop class...

[Bad Alias]

Harry's pentacle definitely cam from his mom. It's mentioned in just about all the books, Thomas has an identical one, and the jewel, which we know is from his mother, fits it perfectly. Also, Harry was ten or so when he was adopted. He had the necklace before he met Justin.

Harry got the jewel when he did because Margaret left instructions to Lea that Harry figured out in Changes.

Before this thread, I'd have sworn on a stack of bibles that I read that Harry gave Elaine her pentacle.

[toodeep]

And we know there is still more to learn about Harry's pentacle as well, since unlike all his other gear - like his duster, it didn't translate into his ghost form, despite it being literally the only thing he has owned since birth and something he instinctually considers to be there.

That might imply that is magic in its own right in some way and thus something that doesn't automatically translate into the ghost world- like Harry's staff and rings and such.

[Snark Knight]

Them being related is a goid idea. Maybe not siblings, but distant cousins. Ebenezar is quite old. He could easily have fathered more than one child. There could be generations in between.

I'm reasonably sure there's a WOJ about no more living relatives.

Which is probably wise, as it would start getting trite after the "Thomas was his brother all along" and "Ebenezar was his grandfather all along" reveals. There are only so many times the author can go back to that particular barrel.