We gotta talk about Margaret LeFay

[g33k]

True, but the powers of the Fallen in the Coins is limited, that's part of the point of the Coins.  They have to work through human hosts, and that reduces their power substantially, and so yes, it matters that Nicodemus is human.

While in the coins, I think the Fallen cannot interact with the real world at all -- only with a mortal who touches one.

Once a mortal has taken up a coin, become a Knight, the Fallen get considerably more scope.

Certainly not the full capacity of their angel-caliber self; but each of the Fallen has various more-than-human powers they deploy.

Ursiel in "battle form" is probably capable of ripping-apart ordinary human beings largely without limit... 100, 1000, he's just a killing machine.  Tessa's ability to transform into an insect-swarm, then re-form, is something I don't think even Listens to Wind could replicate.  Anduriel can listen from any shadow, anywhere around the world; again, I think this is something beyond the ability of White Council magic to achieve.

I don't think we have any sort of sense of where the Denarian limitations are... in part because I think Jim is deliberately leaving many of them open for further storytelling use as-needed.

[LordDresden2]

  I doubt that Malcolm knew everything, however I don't think he was totally ignorant about Margaret's world either.  However we still don't know what Malcolm
was told so he would go along with it. Then again, Margaret could have told Malcolm everything, but how much would he be able to understand or believe?  You would think that Margaret would have run into the same problems that Harry did trying to explain his world to Susan and even Murphy.

Yeah.  The more I think about, the more significant it gets.  Morally, if Margaret really was trying to 'go straight', she had an obligation to make sure Malcolm understood what he was buying.  He's getting a lot more than a sexy wife, after all.

Stop and think about it from Malcolm's POV:  the biggest issue isn't necessarily Margaret being a Witch, though that's no small thing.  There's also the fact that she's a century old.  OK, maybe Malcolm was attracted to older women.  But along with that, comes her own past crimes.  Would you be casual about marrying a murderer?  Or whatever else she had done?

Plus there's the fact that he's quite literally risking his life from her foes by getting entangled with Margaret. 

Margaret was being hunted by the bad guys and the good guys.  The (more or less) good guys wanted to disconnect her head from her shoulders, Lord Raith and who knows who else probably wanted to do substantially worse.  A mortal caught in the line of fire is not safe.  The Wardens probably would go out of their way to avoid harming Malcolm in getting at Margaret if they could.  But if they couldn't...

The White Court and who knows who else was after her would at best be indifferent to Malcolm's survival, many would eat him or take pleasure in killing him along with getting her.

The more I think about the implications of the Margaret/Malcolm marriage, the more complicated and impressive they get.

[Mira]

The more I think about the implications of the Margaret/Malcolm marriage, the more complicated and impressive they get.

Nebulous and enigmatic as well.. Just reread the passages from Blood Rites and from Dead Beat, the first is Harry's soul gaze with Thomas resulting in the conversation with his mother.  In it she takes full responsibility for Harry's birth and voices some regret that she placed such a burden on him. She says she was arrogant to have thought she could have pulled such a thing off.  That suggests that it was all her, that Malcolm merely supplied the sperm.  Then again, was she solely responsible? Or is she displaying a character trait that her younger son so often displays?  A character flaw that is as dangerous as not ever taking responsibility for anything,  something a fallen angel might take advantage of, " and it's all your fault!"

But then if you carefully read Harry's dream sequence of Malcolm in Dead Beat, it suggests something a bit more complicated, and yeah, in my opinion anyway, that Malcolm knew fully what he was getting into when he married Margaret, and even more so when they conceived Harry.  When Harry wonders why he had hadn't dreamt of  Malcolm before, Malcolm answers that he wasn't allowed to come in contact before.  Who didn't allow him?  Sounds like a bigger deal to me than just Mab for example. Malcolm says he was allowed because others crossed the line, then warns of the Jabberwock. Others? Who or what others?  His last words to him was that he wishes he could have been there to help him prepare for what is to come.  Maybe that is why Malcolm was murdered?  Perhaps he was meant to help prepare young Harry, and someone or something took him out of the picture.  Then muddied the waters so the likes of Morgan, and Eb is he was looking for him could find him, and Justin was able to step in.

To me at any rate this hints of a very complicated existential planning, I think Margaret told Malcolm, he understood as much as any mere vanilla mortal can understand, agreed and went along with the conception of Harry.  Clearly he understands a hell of a lot more now.

[g33k]

... But then if you carefully read Harry's dream sequence of Malcolm in Dead Beat, it suggests something a bit more complicated, and yeah, in my opinion anyway, that Malcolm knew fully what he was getting into when he married Margaret, and even more so when they conceived Harry ...

I'll have to re-read it.
My memory is thinking that Jim had written it very carefully so that Malcolm was clearly clued-in (more even than Harry) during their chat, but that he never started outright whether he learned that stuff in life, or after death.

Remember Carmichael (the cop) & his relationship to the supernatural in life; and then how incredibly-much-more clued-in he was when Harry met him again in Ghost Story...  I saw nothing in Malcolm's big "ghost/dream sequence" to make me think Malcolm's arc was all that different from Carmichael's.

Nor was there anything definitive to say that their "supernatural learning paths" were all that similar... I can only presume that Jim wrote the ambiguity deliberately.

Jim's a bastard that way.

[LordDresden2]

I'll have to re-read it.
My memory is thinking that Jim had written it very carefully so that Malcolm was clearly clued-in (more even than Harry) during their chat, but that he never started outright whether he learned that stuff in life, or after death.

I lean toward 'after death'.  I suspect Malcolm is a major figure in Heaven.

Remember Carmichael (the cop) & his relationship to the supernatural in life; and then how incredibly-much-more clued-in he was when Harry met him again in Ghost Story...  I saw nothing in Malcolm's big "ghost/dream sequence" to make me think Malcolm's arc was all that different from Carmichael's.

Nor was there anything definitive to say that their "supernatural learning paths" were all that similar... I can only presume that Jim wrote the ambiguity deliberately.

Jim's a bastard that way.
[/quote]

[Mira]

My memory is thinking that Jim had written it very carefully so that Malcolm was clearly clued-in (more even than Harry) during their chat, but that he never started outright whether he learned that stuff in life, or after death.

  I'm sure Malcolm learned a lot more after he died, but at the same time I don't think he was kept in the dark by his wife as to why she wanted to conceive a child at that particular time.  What we don't know is whether or not there is ritual involved when a star born is conceived.  I think there must be otherwise there would be thousands of star borns running around, I don't think there are.  If there is a ritual, Malcolm would have to have some knowledge.  Also is it the conception or the birth that is more important? Conception you might have some control, but babies tend to have their own way as to when exactly they are born,

[g33k]

  I'm sure Malcolm learned a lot more after he died, but at the same time I don't think he was kept in the dark by his wife as to why she wanted to conceive a child at that particular time.  What we don't know is whether or not there is ritual involved when a star born is conceived.  I think there must be otherwise there would be thousands of star borns running around, I don't think there are.  If there is a ritual, Malcolm would have to have some knowledge.  Also is it the conception or the birth that is more important? Conception you might have some control, but babies tend to have their own way as to when exactly they are born,

One issue is that we have so little info about what it means to be a "Starborn."

Maybe only wizards can be Starborn... if so, the natural rarity of wizarding talent means that most of the (potentially) relevant births are rendered irrelevant by their lack of magic.

Even of the wizard-born, some will just go crazy; some will go black-magic and get snicker-snacked by a greycloak; some will get moralistically-preached that "magic is bad" and suppress the gift, and likely there's multiple other ways for them to crash & burn.

But we don't know if any of that is true or relevant.
Thank you Jim.   

[Mira]

Maybe only wizards can be Starborn... if so, the natural rarity of wizarding talent means that most of the (potentially) relevant births are rendered irrelevant by their lack of magic.

Maybe, but there is no evidence of that.  Neither Listens or Drakul strike me as having been wizards at one time.  However you could be right about natural talent.

But we don't know if any of that is true or relevant.
Thank you Jim.   ]

Agreed..  The only hint I can glean, at least in Harry's case, what little we learned from Lash, that a conscience effort goes into conceiving a star born child.  Now Listens and Drakul might be total accidents and that's why they seem character wise anyway different from Harry, or their parents had totally different intentions than Margaret and Malcolm.

[g33k]

Maybe, but there is no evidence of that ...

Yes, as I said.
Though I'd argue that the sheer lack of Starborn's is (at least circumstantial evidence).  It seems to need something beyond mere "time of birth."

But the most detail we have, I think, is Lash's microsecond "Starborn for Dummies" from the Raith Deeps, but IIRC she only mentioned the time & "circumstances" of the birth; the whole Hagrid-y "Yer a Wizard, Harry!" might have been an obvious element to skip, given the brain-frying accelerated-mind effect (or Jim may have had Doylist reasons).

But also, that "time and circumstances" (my emphasis added) could be doing some really heavy lifting, here.  What "circumstances" then, eh??!?

My own WAG is that Raith had put out a deadly entropy-curse on Margaret, but she had foiled it with a Winterfae-magic "can't find me" fueled by Lea and/or Mab, linked specifically to Harry, as part of the "Fairy Godmother" bargain.  Foiled it, but not dispelled it:  the moment Harry was born, the protection on Harry no longer covered Margaret, and Raith's lurking curse struck:  "died in childbirth."

So maybe one thing to qualify as "Starborn" is "Outsider-Magic active during childbirth" or "survived a death-curse at birth" or etc...  That would certainly increase Starborn rarity!  There's a certain  satisfying symmetry about Outsider-magic being part&parcel of Starborn origins...