After a readthrough or two, either I'm missing something or the White Council is kind of a joke. If there is any in-setting reason why they've survived this long, it must be because they have benefactors helping them behind the scenes. I'm more of the Opinion that Jim just didn't really think things through, although I don't really blame him. There's that old thing about "write what you know". If you aren't a lawyer, don't try to write a detailed court procedure. If you don't have martial arts experience, don't try to write a detailed blow-by-blow of a clinch for a grapple, etc. Obviously good authors get around this by reading the writings of subject experts or directly consulting them, or they use abstraction to avoid the issue entirely. Robert Jordan wasn't an expert swordsman, but he has some of the best sword fighting sequences in fiction because he uses evocative but largely unexplained sword-fighting forms to describe actions. "Arc of the Moon countered Parting the Silk, which flashed into Heron in the Weeds," etc. Jim's problem comes from the fact that he isn't a .01%er, and there's (supposedly) no 300 year old illuminati guys to talk to in real life so he didn't think through how a group of hyper-rich information brokers would actually go about business.
Jim calls attention to the idea of how conservative long-lived organizations would work, but what exposition says and what the books actually show are very different. The Black Court is a perfect example of about how failure to adapt is absolutely fatal to long-lived beings. The black court have all the tools to be discrete manipulators on par with the white court, but they didn't use those tools wisely, so they were almost wiped out. They have infinite time, infinite money, can control the minds of mortals, have immense leverage when dealing with supernatural beings, and are massively dangerous if ever confronted directly, a lot like wizards actually. Predictably, the only ones that survived the stokerclipse were the ones who used those advantages, kept their head down, and mostly kept out of direct confrontations. Just like wizards. The problem is that how the wizards are described (how the mechanics of the setting established they SHOULD work) and how they act in the books are radically different.
They have wizards answering the phones? THEY HAVE WIZARDS ANSWERING THE PHONES??? It's an organization of 200 year old millionaires lead by a group of 300 year old billionaires, and they don't hire personal staff? Rich people don't do anything themselves. Once you get above a certain income bracket, you start hiring assistants, both because it's convenient, and because your time is way too valuable to be spent doing your own taxes, answering your business phone, or wiping your own butt. Yet you have wizards doing drudge work administrative tasks? Personally doing ground-level assessments of warlocks? Wizards aren't *just* hyper-rich elites, they're technical specialists whose talents require centuries of dedicated full-time practice to develop. It would absolutely be worth spending 100 grand a year or whatever to hire clued-in staff members to take care of all the little details. Peabody being a dedicated beurocromancer for the senior council doesn't bother me. Wizard Macfee(?) answering phones in Changes does. Morgan, head ass-kicker and #1 field guy of the council personally following around wardens for YEARS does. Captain Luccio, commander of the wardens, sitting in front of a phone on desk-duty in the middle of a crisis point during a war does. The White Council should have dozens of hundreds of staff members for every actual wizard, including a ton of mercenaries, allied spirits, and personal retainers to help in the war, yet when we see crisis points it's never a wizard and all their assets, it's two wardens and three noobies responding to a council-ending crisis, or six dudes on a boat coming to throw down with two of the most dangerous people alive. You'd think there would be dozens of wizards who made their fortune by building businesses based around providing confidential, clued in help for other council members, but the only person we ever see doing that is One-Eye.
By contrast, Harry is what, late thirties, early forties by the later books? And he has like a dozen people he can call on for help in a crisis, or even everyday tasks. Dude's got half a dozen warriors on hand, a pack of werewolves, several fae allies, multiple vampires, and a gang of favors he can call in. I get that he's a protagonist, punching above his age and means, but if he can get that in like 15 years as an active wizard, why don't the senior wizards have PILES of resources to call on? Even in emergency "the red court is actively kicking our asses" situations, why on earth wouldn't Luccio have hired some Einherjaren or whatever for the Darkhallow? Why are senior council members personally risking their lives to bring in a prisoner when they could whistle up a gang of spirits to go poke that beehive first? Personnel restrictions can be explained by the war, but not the bizarre risks taken by council members, or the sheer bizarre internal structure of the council. Why are wizards answering the phones? WHY ARE WIZARDS ANSWERING THE PHONES? I know this is an odd thing to fixate on, but imagine Elon Musk or Bill Gates or whatever sitting at a secretary's desk going down a call list verbally giving out an employee newsletter. Then remember that maintaining your talent as a wizard is a full time job on top of whatever other responsibilities you have. So Elon Musk is running his companies, personally doing secretarial work, and holding down a full time job as an engineering supervisor. What?
The mechanics of the setting have absolutely hammered home the idea that an organization that works as inefficiently as the council does should have been destroyed decades ago. For the last couple decades they've had Harry there personally pulling their bacon out of the fire, but what about the 100 years before that? It just really seems like the council should be gone by now. Lara Raith even calls them out for this in Turn Coat, but the text acknowledges the idea without actually implementing it. I really hope I'm just missing something, because it seems like a pretty big error.
