Have there been any . . .

[Mira]

IIRC, JB has said that one of Margaret's motives for getting entangled with LR in the first place was that she wanted some supersex.  Which is not all that different from deliberately seeking out heroin or crack cocaine for the thrill, except that it's worse in that in this case the heroin is sapient and can plot against you.  It's not the sort of self-destructive move that a genuine chessmaster would be likely to indulge.

No, but if Margaret was one of the chess pieces she wouldn't be able to control those moves, would she. Now who do we know who really considers herself a true chess master, maybe even of three dimensional chess?  Does the name, Mab, ring a bell?  Mab is a great chess master but she isn't infallible and while she has made some great moves, and often is ahead in the game, sometimes she chooses the wrong pieces to make those moves.  She may have seen or predicted that Margaret could bare a star child, but she picked the wrong piece to pair her with the first time around.

We know that Margaret was pretty screwed up when she took up with Lord Raith.  She was angry, rebelling against her father and the White Council, seeking super sex with a WCV would be one way to express it.  In steps the chess master, Mab, thinking four moves down the road, the breeding of a star child.  Mab's huge weakness is she no longer understands human nature, in other words on paper the pairing looked great, in reality it sucked.

[g33k]

...
I'm fairly confident that at one time, Margaret absolutely would have considered herself to be a chessmistress, even as people like Lord Raith and Heaven only knows who else were pulling her strings and pushing her buttons ...

I dunno, I think she saw herself more in the "loner" role, rebelling against the "system."

Not a player in the game, which would have made her part of the system.

Later, I think she came to the realization that she just didn't have enough power, a lone WCWizard, to make the changes she wanted... so she started making alliances, started "playing the game."  Even then, I don't think she saw herself as a master-manipulator "chessmistress" sort of player.

Trying to become the mother of the Starbabe was, I think, her Big Move.

Ironically, the "main" effort (with Lord Raith + Arianna Ortega + likely others (so far AFAIK unnamed)) didn't work out; at least, I've been presuming the "Starbabe" plan was what Maggie was trying to recruit Ebenezer for, that fateful party where Arianna noticed Eb & Maggie "fighting like family."

But then she abandoned that plan & those allies, ran away, fell in love with Malcolm Dresden... and then had a Starbabe.  I'm sure that part of her was cursing the ironies of Fate-or-whatever.

[g33k]

... IIRC, JB has said that one of Margaret's motives for getting entangled with LR in the first place was that she wanted some supersex ...

My own memory is otherwise:  it wasn't part of her motivation to start the affair, but supersex just kinda happens when you're involved with whampires.

[Mira]

But then she abandoned that plan & those allies, ran away, fell in love with Malcolm Dresden... and then had a Starbabe.  I'm sure that part of her was cursing the ironies of Fate-or-whatever.

I think you got that backwards, according to Eb in Blood Rites, and I believe what Lash says as well, somewhere Margaret met Malcolm, fell in love, then had the "courage" to leave Lord Raith.

[g33k]

I think you got that backwards, according to Eb in Blood Rites, and I believe what Lash says as well, somewhere Margaret met Malcolm, fell in love, then had the "courage" to leave Lord Raith.

The dresdenfiles wiki -- which is not a guaranteed-correct resource, but AFAIK overwhelmingly more correct than not  in  simple matters of fact -- says Margaret left Papa Raith and met Malcolm sometime during the following year.
" ... When her son was about five, she escaped Lord Raith, abandoning Thomas to the mercy of his father, who had killed all his other sons. The next year[5], she met Malcolm Dresden."

The (moderately official, and usually very acurate) DF timeline says Maggie left Raith before she met Malcolm.

[Mira]

The dresdenfiles wiki -- which is not a guaranteed-correct resource, but AFAIK overwhelmingly more correct than not  in  simple matters of fact -- says Margaret left Papa Raith and met Malcolm sometime during the following year.
" ... When her son was about five, she escaped Lord Raith, abandoning Thomas to the mercy of his father, who had killed all his other sons. The next year[5], she met Malcolm Dresden."

The (moderately official, and usually very acurate) DF timeline says Maggie left Raith before she met Malcolm.

I am going by what I remember reading in the books themselves.  My memory can be faulty so I will recheck. If I am right, or if the writing gives that impression it becomes a matter of which do you believe? 

[g33k]

... or if the writing gives that impression it becomes a matter of which do you believe?

If the writing is ambiguous, then it clearly becomes a case of "believe whatever you prefer to believe," with a side of "please don't present preferences as if they were facts" and topped with speculation as to whether Jim just got sloppy there, in his unclarity... or if the ambiguity is intentional (either he wanted to obscure the truth, or he wanted to hold his options open for future storytelling uses, or etc).

[LordDresden2]

I think you got that backwards, according to Eb in Blood Rites, and I believe what Lash says as well, somewhere Margaret met Malcolm, fell in love, then had the "courage" to leave Lord Raith.

That's not how I recall what Eb said.  My recollection is that Margaret managed to flee from LR, and while on the run (from the White Court, the White Council, and probably others) she met Malcolm and fell in love with him.

I don't see how falling for Malcolm before she escaped from Raith would even be likely to happen, I mean I'm not sure how it would come about.

[LordDresden2]

I dunno, I think she saw herself more in the "loner" role, rebelling against the "system."

Not a player in the game, which would have made her part of the system.

Later, I think she came to the realization that she just didn't have enough power, a lone WCWizard, to make the changes she wanted... so she started making alliances, started "playing the game."  Even then, I don't think she saw herself as a master-manipulator "chessmistress" sort of player.

Trying to become the mother of the Starbabe was, I think, her Big Move.

Ironically, the "main" effort (with Lord Raith + Arianna Ortega + likely others (so far AFAIK unnamed)) didn't work out; at least, I've been presuming the "Starbabe" plan was what Maggie was trying to recruit Ebenezer for, that fateful party where Arianna noticed Eb & Maggie "fighting like family."

But then she abandoned that plan & those allies, ran away, fell in love with Malcolm Dresden... and then had a Starbabe.  I'm sure that part of her was cursing the ironies of Fate-or-whatever.

I think we actually mostly agree.  When I said that I think she thought she was a chessmistress, what I actually meant was that I think Margaret thought she was way smarter (in the Machiavellian sense of the word) than she actually was.  I'm sure her IQ score was through the roof, but that's not necessarily the same thing as 'smart'.  I think she thought she could outplay everybody, manipulate anyone she needed to and defy established power and get away with it, to a way greater degree than was actually the case.

My own memory is otherwise:  it wasn't part of her motivation to start the affair, but supersex just kinda happens when you're involved with whampires.

Now that I think about it, that matches what Thomas told Harry, too (though Thomas too is going by what others have told him), i.e. that she got involved with LR and it turned personal.

But that still kind of comes to the same thing.  It's still heroin, crack, crystal meth, fentanyl, all wrapped up in a handsome face.  Even if she started out working with LR to further her own plans (whatever they were), it's still not a smart play to bed LR, not the move of a true mastermind.