Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
- (01:00) - Intro
- (01:23) - Ch. 24 - Morgan Stonewalls and Elaine provides aid
- (28:46) - Ch. 25 - Challenging the Winter Unicorn
- (41:23) - Ch. 26 - The Mothers
- (01:01:13) - QfB: What are the mythological inspirations for Auror and Maeve?
Episode Art by Nick Strom; you can find his work here: https://mrnickstrom.com/
Nick Strom's book "Bronze and Blood" can be found here: https://mrnickstrom.com/the-runetech-archives
Creators and Guests
Host
Adam Ruzzo
Adam has been producing and hosting podcasts for over 20 years. Such podcasts include Tales of Heroes, Tales of Tyria, and Tales of Citizens. Spread throughout this is various video and streaming projects on his youtube channel. The most recent production is Recorded Neutral Territory, which examines the Dresden Files book series in a chapter-by-chapter re-read.
What is Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast?
Recorded Neutral Territory is a chapter-by-chapter re-read podcast for The Dresden Files book series. Each episode, we one to four chapters with a deep dive on the writing, characters, and worldbuilding within this fantastic series. These episodes contain spoilers for all DF related material released at the time of recording.
New episodes drop on Fridays (~3 per month).
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:00)
Brian, you know there's the R slash movie details subreddit, right?
Brian (00:04)
Yeah. I
we obviously both love that subreddit because we are trope fiends who want to be like, yeah, this is when they invoked this thing from T V tropes.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:13)
Yeah, and you know there's the other one that's like r slash shitty movie details, where you like make yeah, you
Brian (00:17)
Perhaps even better, right.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:18)
make jokes about, yeah, this particular detail was put in there by the director or whatever, and it's clearly not. So I think the R slash shitty movie details about like Jim Butcher's whole lore thing here is Exactly, exactly.
Brian (00:30)
Right, our shitty recorded neutral territory. That's what you're saying. Yes.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:33)
like an April first episode we'd say something along the lines of, Yes, and if you see here, he's named her Aurora because that is the princess from Kingdom Hearts. You see, that's the connection that he was influenced by.
Brian (00:47)
I feel like this
is like a specific attack against me, and you know what, it's entirely valid.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:51)
Okay.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:00)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through 12 months. I'm Adam Ruzzo and joining me as always, it's something disguised as a unicorn, it's Brian O'Reilly.
Brian (01:13)
Nyehehehehe!
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:14)
Is that an ice cream cone glued to your head?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:18)
I feel like this is a Bojack Horseman reference or possibly Mr Ed. I don't know.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:23)
But what we do know is that today we're discussing chapter 24, 25, and 26 of Summer Night, and we have a lot to go over. So let's jump right into chapter 24, Brian. This is the chapter where Harry tries to do the smart thing and call for backup, but it doesn't really work.
Brian (01:43)
Yeah, Morgan intercepts the phone call Harry attempts to make to the senior council and he shuts him down pretty hard. Honestly, he shuts him down so hard that I have kind of a little bit of trouble with it.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:57)
Now that's interesting because I read through this and the note that I made is that this feels very coherent, right? When I got to the end of the conversation between Morgan and Dresden where he really just kind of starts screaming at him and he says, you know, who are you to judge that? You are no one, Dresden, you are nothing. And at some point he says, you know, someone I dearly cared for was at Archangel Dresden and this time your lies aren't going to get you out of what's.
coming for you. I read through this whole scene and the note that I made is this was obviously from a doiless perspective. Jim needed Harry to do the smart thing, right? This is getting in way over his head. There are people that could really help him with this and the whole world is on the line. He's just a PI from Chicago. He should call for more magical backup, right? So when he does, obviously he can't get it or the rest of the book doesn't work.
So how does he make sure that he does the smart thing, but he doesn't get the help? Well, you put a antagonist, in this case, Morgan, in the way. And the way that it was written felt to me very natural. Because we already had established Morgan's bona fides as a Dresden hater, and we've reestablished those at the beginning of this book, it felt to me very well done, not contrived at all, unlike...
a later portion that we're going to talk about in the next chapter.
Brian (03:25)
Okay, I see all of that and I agree that from the perspective of the plot of Summer Night and Harry's development as a character within the first four books, this works great. And I want to add, in addition to everything you're saying, that it not only shows Harry being perhaps smarter than he has been, it also shows him as kind of being the same do-gooder with a little bit of a self-sacrificial bent.
Because of course, bringing in somebody else could get him in trouble, given that I believe he's supposed to do this on his own. That's the
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (04:03)
Yeah.
Brian (04:03)
trial that he's been set up for. So bringing somebody in, he's saying, listen, I don't care if it kills me, we need the world not to end.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (04:12)
Right.
Brian (04:13)
But Adam, let me ask you this.
You've read the journal Microfiction. I've read the journal Microfiction. Why doesn't Morgan, at the very least, he's sworn to help Harry or something, protect him. Why doesn't he at least ask Harry, what information do you have to get to the senior council?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (04:33)
Yeah, I guess that's a good question, right? Because you're right. The microfiction just named Journal, which is available on Jim's website for those of you that have not read it, is essentially the last journal entry that Morgan wrote before he died, apparently.
And so yeah, if you take that journal micro-fiction and try to use that lens to look at this scene, it does feel like things fall apart a little bit because apparently Morgan promised Harry's mother that he would do what he could to watch out for her son. And this chapter
he doesn't appear to be upholding that promise at all. So why wouldn't he ask what information do you have that's important? Well, the first thing that comes to mind, Brian, is he's just not that interested. He's incurious by nature. Things in his world are black and white. He already knows the answer to most questions, right? That's the kind of personality that he is. And he also is prejudice against Dresden.
for a number of reasons are already apparent in this So to me, I think he just doesn't believe him. I think he literally thinks that Dresden is lying and he believes what he says, that Dresden is trying to get out of his trial here. And so what information that Harry would give him would be lies. So why even bother asking about it?
Brian (05:58)
So I think that's a reasonable response. But I have trouble squaring that lack of curiosity, is how you put it, let me put it another way, that lack of concern with Morgan's sort of lawful good duty bound nature. If he's the one manning the phones,
representing the interests of the White Council, an organization that prides itself on having all of the information. And a member of the White Council calls up saying, I've got extremely important information. I need to give it to the senior council. Morgan can always get the information from him and just say, they don't need to know about that, Dresden. I'm not going to pass it along. Or don't, don't even say that. Just let him twist in the wind. Do you want to get him killed as fast as possible? Just do that.
And he does neither. And
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (06:48)
Hmm.
Brian (06:49)
that doesn't necessarily make sense to me as a response from Morgan. I feel like the person he is who is so fixated on sort of how you're supposed to do things, you know, we're going to see him in proven guilty, essentially convinced that Molly shouldn't be executed, still willing to swing the sword if the vote goes the way it goes.
just so committed to procedure that he's not gonna even evaluate the message. And I can come up with two reasons why he's cutting it off that fast. The first is he's actually under orders to totally stonewall Harry as much as he can. And therefore, because he's rationalizing how to follow that order,
He doesn't even want to hear the information. That's only going to interfere with what his mission is, which is just to ensure that Dresden fails so they can hand him over to the Reds so that they can avoid this war or whatever the more the Maryland's plan is. Or two, which is more interesting.
that what Morgan says about the person who died at Archangel is the reason he's so irrationally angry. The same way he is when he appears to see Dresden shoot Lucio in Deadbeat.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (08:10)
Yeah.
Brian (08:10)
That it just drives him completely over the edge. In which case, who?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (08:16)
Yeah, I guess that's a good question. mean, he is 150 years old. It's entirely possible he formed a lot of, well, not at least one other close relationship besides Lucio.
Brian (08:25)
in
the words of, Val Kilmer in Tombstone, why he's following Wyatt Earp around, he says, "'Cause Wyatt Earp's my friend." And then the guy responds, "'Hell, Doc, I got lots of friends.'" And Doc Holliday says, "'Well, I don't.'" Morgan is not a man with lots of friends.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (08:44)
Agreed, agreed, but that could explain, yeah, if he's only got one friend and that friend happens to be an archangel when it goes kablooey, that would make him exceptionally angry. You killed all of my friend!
Brian (08:58)
And it's really, I think, interesting if that friend is Simon Petrovich, the only named
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:05)
Hmm
Brian (09:06)
person we know who died at Archangel. So
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:08)
That's true.
Brian (09:09)
that, think, if he's actually this irate and it's not all the Merlin's fourth plan,
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:17)
Right.
Brian (09:17)
is the reason why he stonewalls him so
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:20)
Yeah, that's entirely possible. So after that and Harry winds up getting hung up on, he decides he's gotta do everything himself. First he quickly debates, you I could ask Murphy for help, could he bring the human authorities in on this? Decides against it. That's not really gonna work, even if she traced the phone number down, know, Ebenezer probably would be shielded from other ways. I couldn't get to him. So he instead decides he's gotta change and do everything himself. So.
We get this moment, quote, my sneakers were covered in muck, so I dragged my cowboy boots out of the closet and put them on. What the hell? Putting on the boots, maybe it will do some good, unquote. Now that is a very understated callback to that conversation that Harry and Murphy had where she, asserted that she was the one who put on the boots in the Walmart situation, and without her, he'd be dead, which we agreed basically was the case.
Brian (10:15)
I will say, Harry's about to do a lot of running. I gotta assume these are like actual Missouri buy-in-the-store-to-do cowboy stuff boots and not like I went to Nashville cowboy boots, because you can't
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (10:29)
Yeah.
Brian (10:30)
run around in those.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (10:31)
No, no, that wouldn't work. Okay, so at this point, Harry needs help and he can't get to Ebenezer and Murphy's out for the count. So he goes to another person that he trusts. He tracks down Elaine. She's at O'Hare Airport.
this is a very interesting conversation, Brian, because during this conversation, Harry basically points out, hey,
So it looks like you're running. She says, well, yes I am. If you knew what I knew, you'd be getting out of town too. In fact, you should come with me. He basically says, no, I can't. We've got to try and stop this. And he uses as evidence of the fact when she's basically points out, what can we possibly do? We're bugs compared to everything that's going on here. And his argument is, you don't try to have someone killed if they're not a threat to you, which means...
there is something I can do. And you know, if Harry's got a chance, so you're saying there's a chance Harry's gonna do the right thing, right? So he actually convinces Elaine instead to come help him. So during this whole conversation, I started thinking to myself, Brian, what parts of this conversation is Elaine being genuine about? Because we know she's secretly working for Team Aurora. So is this whole scene,
a setup, is she planted here with the goal of trapping him and bringing him to the mothers? Or is she actually running away? What do you think?
Brian (12:02)
Okay, let me first stake out this position. There is a coherent story here if this is completely a setup, but I don't like it. And here's why. If this is completely a setup, that means the part where Harry mentions Slate carrying the knife with blood into Maeve's club and Elaine
shivers That means she's the world's greatest actress But that's an act right all of this from the beginning has been contrived slate, you know getting blood on the knife Maybe it wasn't even hers. All this is contrived. She's just been playing him the whole time and this is just you know continuing she's still playing him and I don't like that story as much because I think it makes a lane a much less interesting character and first she's reoccurring but
Second, think she's going to continue to reoccur and play a part in the end of the story. So I'd be happy if she's more interesting. And I also think that the more interesting reading has more support. So for example, if we take it that Elaine is just trying to lure Harry into getting the unraveling so that Aurora can take it from him.
Basically everything we're gonna talk about for the next two chapters is meaningless fluff.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (13:25)
Yeah, it's a bunch of extra stuff that they added to the plan to make it more complicated for no apparent reason. The most obvious question is, okay, getting past the unicorn becomes this big trial, but why bother having Korok disguised as a unicorn in the first place? Why bother having Elaine fail and then succeed at-
Blocking than distracting the unicorn for Harry like
There's so many extra complicating factors that don't seem necessary if they're all in on the plan together. I fully agree with you there.
Brian (14:01)
So that suggests that Aurora does have an agent in Elaine, but that Elaine either doesn't want to be, hasn't wanted to be the whole time, or potentially at this point is actively hoping that Aurora loses, just not really seeing a way that she can tilt the outcome in that direction.
I think Aline is actually running away from town. I think she's running away from town because she's decided that she's not going to work for Aurora's team anymore. The last straw for her might have been Slate stabbing her. That's why she shivers when Harry brings it up. And she's inviting Harry to go away with her earnestly because
Even though she understands that the stakes of this confrontation that's about to happen are dire, Elaine does think that their life expectancy and life quality is much higher if they flee than if they stick around.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (15:05)
Yeah, and I think if any part of this conversation is genuine, I think it's that part where she asks him to run away with her. I think if he says yes there, even if it was originally a setup, she's gonna say, okay, good, let's go, and by the way, this was all set up for you, so I'm glad you decided to come with me or whatever, right? She might even admit it. But I think this is sort of an interesting moment here because they have a chance
under those conditions, assuming the world doesn't end, right? Maybe Aurora fails for some other reason. But if Harry decides to run away with her and they're basically gonna be on the run for their whole life because Harry's hiding from the Red Court and he doesn't have the White Council to protect him anymore, but let's say for the sake of argument they make that happen.
They get to try their relationship again, but here is a distinct difference between the two of them. She wants to run away from this. But Harry won't turn his back. He is just more of a heroic, self-sacrificial person than she is. That's the divide between them now. They didn't necessarily have that divide when they were kids because they weren't put in situations where someone would have to sacrifice themselves in their life.
for something, they didn't have those kinds of horrible circumstances to deal with that they're dealing with now. But that's why their relationship isn't working anymore. She's still apparently a good person, she still thinks she's doing what's right, she's just not willing to sacrifice herself to do the right thing in the same way that we see Harry do over and over and over again.
Brian (16:36)
So I think that's one possibility, Adam. And I want everybody to kind of like mentally lock in that what Adam said is what you kind of have to believe. Unless you believe the following. Because the other possibility is that the reason Elaine thinks that she can get away. And doesn't even particularly worry about the fact that that might lead to an apocalyptic scenario. Is because Elaine's Kimori.
And if Helene is Kumori, then she's going back to Cal. If she brought him Harry to join as Starborn, potentially number two in team kind of, you know, maybe let things get destabilized enough that we either take advantage of the outsiders or help them.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (17:17)
Yeah, I call them team opportunists.
Brian (17:19)
Right. That if she's working for that team, and she thinks the goal, the actual goal is to end death and create a utopia, well, maybe she is willing to lay down her life. Maybe she is willing to take immense risks. Maybe she's willing to get involved in stuff like what she just went through. But she's only going to do it if she thinks it's gonna further...
this cause that she's committed to.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (17:46)
The greater good.
Brian (17:48)
Right. And the difference between Elaine and Harry might be that Elaine is a consequentialist and Harry is not. Elaine
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (17:57)
right.
Brian (17:58)
is willing to do what needs to be done for the world she wants to create. Probably something she learned from Cal. Harry learned from Ebenezer that you can only do things within certain limits, which is why it's so ironic that Ebenezer is the Black Staff.
But either of those interpretations, that Elaine is simply running because she's not as brave as Harry, or that Elaine is retreating because she doesn't think she can do any more in this battle for the greater cause, both of them make a lot more sense than if this is all a con, because as we approach the next chapter, there are a lot of ways to get the unraveling that involve
taking way fewer chances. Before we go there though, Adam, I wanna hit you with a counterfactual. Let's say that Harry agrees and says, yeah, fairies, never liked him liking him less every single day. Let's cut bait and run.
Like, what's actually going to happen?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (19:02)
Now that's interesting. So assuming Aurora cannot get the unraveling without the help of the emissaries, right? The mothers are not gonna give it to her or anybody working with her, because they know that she's the one, right? They lead Harry to that conclusion when he actually gets there. So they definitely know she's in on it. They won't give it to her. They won't give it to anybody working for her. She can't get the unraveling. What does that lead to? Well, that means that Lily stays trapped as a statue.
the battle happens and you have Summer at the height of their power, but only one night on the field and he works for Summer. So I think Summer wins under that condition, which is unusual since it appears that Aurora's goal is to get Winter to win. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe her original goal was to have Summer win and Winter winning is like
option that she goes to and pivots to when summer can't win under the new conditions when the unraveling's on the table? I'm not sure, Brian. I can't really figure that out.
Brian (20:05)
So I think that, one, the idea that Summer's gonna win if they run isn't as cut and dried as it appears on page. Because we of course know that Slate's true loyalty is to Aurora. He wants to do whatever her scheme is because, again, I'm not exactly sure how it's gonna help him if...
Winter gets a bunch of extra power and destroys the Summer Court, but he wants to do that. Well, if he fights with Aurora, his partner in crime, and they win, well, they don't get what they apparently want. But that might be okay because
Summer defeating Winter could lead to the same exact apocalyptic scenario that results from the end of the wars between the courts. So it's just as beneficial to he who walks beside and it gets Aurora what she thinks she wants. But it's also possible that Aurora is gonna tell Slate to fight for Winter.
In which case, Summer is doomed to lose because they don't have the Knight's Mantle and things are out of balance and Winter is going to win. So I think that they could achieve either outcome. And we already know Winter winning is good enough for Aurora. But Summer
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (21:28)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (21:29)
winning might be even better. First of all, if Summer tries to take over the defense of the outer gates, that's going to be over in a heartbeat. So for he who walks beside, that's just an incredible a-
And maybe if summer wins, that means that, well, they've just got to kind of go it against the rest of winter's forces, which just further weakens the gates and probably ultimately results in summer losing eventually anyway. know, Aurora might have kind of an all paths lead to victory set up here as long as the summer night doesn't take the field because
anyone winning the battle might serve her interests, in which case she could order Slate to fight for either side.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (22:16)
Yeah, I guess I had assumed that he would fight for her, but you're right. Him being under her control means she can have whoever she wants win with the whole day. So yeah, that's an interesting thought experiment. Now, before we leave this chapter and the airport and head through into Ferry to find the mother's cottage, Elaine equips herself for battle. Now, Harry's got his duffel bag filled with all of his stuff, and she, of course, has that little jibe at him saying, huh.
Staff and Rod, huh? Still going with the phallic foci? Meanwhile, what she pulls out here are a series of enchanted items that work as focuses for her, starting with a slave ring of ivory carved in the shape of a ring of oak leaves and attached to a similar bracelet by a silver chain. Now I think, Brian, a slave ring is a ring that has another smaller ring on it that can have a little chain or something attached to it. Often,
this would be attached to a bracelet. And that's the way that it's described here. So my first thought when I was reading this is what could this be? Maybe it carries a spell like Harry's rings do. But later in the next chapter where Elaine is fighting Korok as the unicorn, she uses it to send like this weird memory, motes of memory spell.
at the unicorn to distract it so Harry can get through. And that seems like an awfully odd enchantment to put on your focus that just that one thing. So I thought maybe this is more like a generalized tool in the same way that Harry's staff is a generalized tool that he can use for air or force or even earth magic.
Brian (23:55)
So that I think is definitely possible. The first thing that I want to flag that's very funny here is that Jim does make the joke about Harry having phallic foci and it works way better if Elaine has her like little stubby wands that she's gonna have the next time we see her but now all of her foci are
essentially either things that you put other things in, right? Their rings, their holes, or, you know, I'm not going to get Georgia O'Keeffe with the teardrop, but you see where I'm going. So,
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (24:26)
Ha ha ha.
Brian (24:27)
Jim has neatly divided them into having very like Freud would have a field day with their folk However, I think that you're right about the rings being a general tool. And I wonder if.
The reason why she has the slave ring on a chain is because Harry's foci are designed to help him with the things that he's worst at, in his words, evocation. I wonder if part of the reason that even though we constantly hear Harry say that Elaine's not as powerful as him, but she's got better control,
Part of the reason that doesn't really seem to be manifest when they're throwing around magic is because Elaine's actually better at evocation. And the Slavering, that is a small version of a thing attached to a large version of the same object,
is to assist her with thaumaturgical workings, which is what she's best.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (25:30)
That's a really cool idea. So then what about this earring, fashioned of what might have been copper and a teardrop shaped black stone?
Brian (25:40)
So on my first read, and I based this mostly off of the anklet, I got the idea that Elaine's magical objects were a little bit more like things like Harry's bear belt buckle, stuff that essentially is going to let her go beyond her normal limits because Elaine's issue is having the raw power. And I thought the earring might be something that she's...
stored some reserve energy in or
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (26:08)
Okay.
Brian (26:09)
you know some other kind of you know way to to allow her to keep her head clear when she's you know reaching for more power but honestly Adam I like your interpretation a lot more
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (26:22)
Yeah, I took the idea of it being a teardrop shape and I remember that Harry's shield bracelet has sort of these little medieval shields that are in the shape of like a teardrop shape almost. And I thought maybe this earring acts as a sort of boost or shield for her mental defenses because it's right near her head, right? So if you want to prevent somebody from getting into your head, then what better way to...
do that than to put up a shield right at the barrier where your head is. So that's kind of my interpretation of it. It could also just be like a generic shield thing, but it feels like the positioning of it is very specific.
Brian (27:03)
Yeah, and I think that's really brilliant because the next time we see Elaine in White Night, she is going to have a whole rant about how she won't let people control her anymore. And
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:14)
Yeah.
Brian (27:15)
it all fits into her being the one who just didn't actually put the mental whammy on, who has the psychic scars from that. So Elaine
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:23)
Exactly.
Brian (27:24)
dedicating an entire portion of her magical arsenal just to protect against that would
absolutely seem in character to me it would also be sort of kind of sad and ironic if it does turn out that she's still being manipulated by somebody with or without magic.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:43)
Yeah, Maybe cowl. But the last one we have here is an anklet dangling with bangles shaped like bird wings. That one seems a little more straightforward. It's either some kind of speed or flight or hover type charm, or possibly just an agility slash coordination charm, right?
Brian (28:01)
Yeah, I don't remember if during the battle Elaine does any particular acrobatics, but what I assumed on reread was that it was a balance enchantment, you know, like you said, kind of agility.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:15)
She is gonna come
in riding a horse and without experience doing that, doing that through a battle could probably require a lot of extra coordination and balance.
Brian (28:22)
Right, and she runs around away from this unicorn and Elaine, you know, doesn't trip and fall and land on her face at any point. And Elaine being really smart might realize that one of the worst things that you can do in a fight is lose your footing. So she's got an enchantment that's allowing her to keep her balance. She might even find that more important than the ability to leap small buildings in a single bounce.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:46)
Yeah, absolutely. All right, that takes us to the end of chapter 24 and the beginning of chapter 25. Here, Elaine escorts Harry to the Mothers via a carriage that she calls up. She basically says she's calling in a favor.
So at this point they get there and they see a winter unicorn. The first time that Jim has introduced this thing that is going to play a pretty important part in Battleground. But by the time we finally get to book 17. But here it's actually Korik pretending to be a unicorn. We find this out later after.
Harry comes out of the mother's cottage and is ambushed by Team Aurora again. Now, the question I have then, why is Korrick pretending to be a unicorn in this scene? Because if this is all part of the plan, why does he even need to be here? What is going on? If it's not part of the plan, I guess then the easiest explanation is, well, he's here to just act as a lookout.
to say, is there anybody that's going towards the cottage where the only thing that could alter our plans is currently stationed? We need somebody watching that door, more or less. And for the same reason that Lord Marshal Talos always appears in his grum disguise, they don't want anybody to know who's really behind everything that's going on. So anytime he goes out,
acting on behalf of Team Aurora, he's gotta be hidden as Korrick. But that still doesn't answer, you know, why his actions here are the way they are. Why do you think that is? Why does he confront them and try to attack them when it appears that Aurora wants the unraveling for herself?
Brian (30:34)
Right, so I think that Korok is here because Aurora has accounted for the unraveling when she made her plans. She knows that's the one thing that could release the Summer Nights mantle. She knows exactly who could make an unraveling. So she's watching the approach, right? If there's like one magic dagger that the hero can take to, stab the
Death Beast in the heart, you make sure that you guard the dagger. So Korrik is there on guard. But because Aurora's plan works, even if somebody gets the unraveling, I think that the point is to just know when someone arrives at the Mother's Cottage. Korrik has the understanding he's there to
keep people away from the Mother's Cottage because he doesn't fully comprehend the plan or he's just making assumptions, but Aurora's actually positioned him there to be able to warn her. And we do know at least that wizards can communicate over distance, you know, using magical foci or, you know, any kind of item that the stone...
Harry uses to communicate with Ebenezer in changes, for example. So it's very possible that Korok is there in the guise of a unicorn, which I guess especially since it's a winter unicorn doesn't point any fingers towards Aurora, to sort of act as an alert system, but he's interpreted his job as guard.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (32:18)
Yeah, and we know he's impetuous, right? When Harry shows up in Aurora's garden, what does he do? He says, winter here, this cannot be born. And he charges in and Aurora basically has to tell him to stop. Actually it's Talos, I think that tells him to stop. So it seems to me that it's entirely possible that he is taking his duties a little bit too seriously here, not really comprehending the plan as you say, but then why does
Elaine's like memory spell actually work against him. And why would she use it against him? Right? Does she, if she knows this is Korrick and not a unicorn, then the memory spell shouldn't work, right? Harry's whole hypothesis here is that this is a unicorn. Unicorns are attracted to thoughts, send him thoughts to distract him and keep him pinned while I slip by. So that to me suggests that Elaine
is working on the same hypothesis as Harry. She thinks this actually is a unicorn. She doesn't know that this is Korrick. But then the real question is, then why does this memory spell distract Korrick? I mean, I guess maybe if you were hit with the full whammy of what Harry got a little piece of it. So if you were trapped in sort of a memory until it ends, maybe that's enough. And after the memory ends, Korrick comes out of it, Harry's gone, and Elaine says,
What the hell are you doing, Korrick? Like maybe she figures out it's him or whatever, or Aurora pops up and tells him to stop, and Elaine somehow convinces them, no, no, no, this is all part of my plan. I'm still on your team. I've delivered him here just for you guys, right? Because by the time we see her again, they're all hunky dory. They think she's still on their team. So if our hypothesis that she was running is correct, then maybe Korrick and Aurora
also know that she's running and she has to convince them, no, no, no, it was all part of the plan between this scene and the next one we see her
Brian (34:20)
So, I think there's a few possibilities for the exact permutation of what's going on here, but I think we can eliminate a couple of them. If the whole plan was just to lead Harry to get the unraveling because that's what Aurora wants, then here's the thing that doesn't make sense.
Quote, Elaine turned and began walking down the length of the lines of trees. The unicorn followed a pace or two behind her, the tip of its horn bobbing several inches above Elaine's right shoulder.
They'd gone several paces before I saw that the plan wasn't working. The unicorn's body language changed, its ears flattened back to its skull, and its feet Shifted restlessly before it finally rose up on its hind hooves, preparing to lunge with the deadly horn centered on Elaine's back.
unquote. Why do that if this is the plan, right? You've already convinced Harry, this is a unicorn, Elaine's distracting it, now I can walk into the cottage.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (35:34)
Maybe Harry's suspicious if it's too easy, and so they have to add this little charade,
Brian (35:40)
But see,
that's where I think this falls apart because having the unicorn there is already, okay, this got more complicated than we were hoping.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (35:50)
Agree.
Brian (35:51)
This is a great excuse for Elaine not to go inside with Harry and it doesn't kill your own teammate. It makes perfect sense if this just doesn't work and the unicorn just charges Harry, but why?
have it go for a lane first, even, right, have her lose control of it and jump out of the way and then it goes for Harry. Wait till Harry's not looking if you want to take him out. But this just seems to be sort of the the complication on top of a complication that just, why let the spell work in the first place if the whole point is that you're gonna have it fail so that it doesn't seem too easy.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (36:31)
Okay, so then What is the explanation for all these characters' motivations that makes this scene make sense?
Brian (36:37)
So there's two basic branches. The first one is that Elaine's spell just works. And that's actually why all this happens. Korrick is attempting to guard the cottage from everybody. He does not know why Elaine's here. It seems like she's betraying the plan by leading Harry here, but...
He doesn't attack at first because her memory spell, as you said, Harry gets a piece of it, is effective enough to even work on him. And we know that the she can shrug off magic pretty well, but maybe this kind of mental magic based on something like a memory is even more intoxicating to them because they're all attracted to, you know, mortal thoughts and mortal feelings. And that's the whole reason why all of this happens. The spell just works and
Only when Aurora finally gets down there does she set the situation.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (37:37)
So Elaine is able to actually hold him off long enough for Aurora to come in and tell him to calm down and give Elaine a chance to explain herself and she tries to implicate, yeah, this is all part of the plan, don't worry about it. She's, of course, panicking in her head, knowing, god, god, they're gonna try and kill Harry, what am I gonna do? And maybe this is when she's coming up with the plan that she's going to use where she suggests, she has an excuse for, you can't just kill him, his death.
curse will get you, but here's what I suggest you do. I'll bind him and then you do this, knowing that that's her best chance to let him get away. So she's coming up with that plan while she's spinning lies for Aurora. I think that's a really interesting interpretation of this whole thing.
Brian (38:20)
The other one I think is a lot more disjointed, but I want to add it just for the sake of completeness. It's that Elaine's spell doesn't work. And the reason why Korrick, because he's not a unicorn, and the reason why Korrick attacks her is because Korrick doesn't realize that she's actually leading Harry into the cottage until things develop a little more, believes that she's gone traitor, and then
The reason why he eventually stops attacking them is because Auroras sent him a psychic message that he's not a guard dog, let them go. So he just stands down because even though Corrick doesn't know it, this is part of Auroras plan. So.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (39:05)
Right, good
outcome, the unraveling never leaves the cottage. Better outcome, it leaves the cottage and is in my hand. That's from Herrora's perspective.
Brian (39:15)
Right. So I think that first one is a little bit more complimentary to everybody. It's just that Elaine's spell is successful at subduing Korok. It might not work the first time because he's not a unicorn.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (39:29)
the extra detail that does make that work is she doesn't cast that spell. She's
Brian (39:34)
Exactly.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (39:35)
just trying to hold it at bay by like, with her thoughts, like projecting her thoughts the way that Harry suggested might work against a unicorn. It's not until Harry says, you know, then I noticed that the plan wasn't working. That's when she uses the ring, the slave ring and the bracelet on her hand.
to cast the spell that has these motes of light that Harry only catches a piece of that is projecting this memory from her into the thing. And if Harry only got a piece of it and it distracted him for a second or two, maybe Korrik actually could be, you know, hit by that and distracted for it, regardless of the fact that he's not a unicorn anymore. This is a spell that's going to force you to relive someone else's memory, in which case.
Maybe it's breaking one of those mind magic rules that the White Council sets up, but it could be forcing you to sort of experience this person's memory, which effectively takes you out of the fight for just long enough, 30, 40, 50 seconds.
Brian (40:36)
Right, and the reason why I'm saying that those two actions are sort of, one is a more intensive version of the other, is because when Elaine does the hold her mind on something thing, she spends the whole time moving with dream-like slowness. Elaine is sort of doing something that appears ritualistic, and it might not be like offensive magic.
but she's holding this image in her head, whatever thought she's locking into, in a way that's sort of supposed to call to the unicorn. You know, she's projecting an image in some sense. And then what does she do the second time? She projects, like you're saying, Adam, like dozens of them to really disorient him.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (41:23)
Yeah, okay, so that brings us to the end of that chapter and now we're finally into
Harry arriving at the mother's cottage. But before we talk about the entire discussion that Harry has with the mothers, which is filled with interesting tidbits, I first wanna talk about three things that he observes about the cottage. The first is he says, quote,
I could smell mildew beneath an odor of fresh baked bread, unquote. And Brian, what an amazing way to sort of demonstrate the two mantles of mother summer and mother winter, right? Winter representing death and decay and mother summer representing growth.
or in this case sort of a production, but yeast itself is pretty much growth, so I guess that does track with bread. it's just perfect.
Brian (42:10)
Yeah, this gives some real Demeter and Persephone kind of vibes to the whole thing, which I don't think is the relationship because that would be mother-daughter, but sort of harvest goddess and thing of the underworld.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (42:23)
Yeah, absolutely. Now, speaking of Greek gods, Harry spots a loom and a spinning wheel, which is pretty obviously a direct reference to the Fates, which is another tripartite goddess that is actually common to many different European mythologies,
including the Greek, the Romans, and the Norse. The Greeks called them the Moirai.
The Romans called them the Parque, and the Norse called them the Norns.
Brian (42:50)
Yeah, and there's other sort of fate weaving deities that we looked at. These are the cleanest ones that fit into the triple
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (42:57)
Yeah.
Brian (42:57)
goddess version. And it's really interesting that we see this here because it means that Jim was thinking about something that he was going to wait 10 years to pull out already. Because this isn't, we think it's a reference to the fates. It's definitely a reference to the fates. Two of the names.
that Harry uses to summon Mother Winter in cold days are Atropos and Skuld. Atropos is one of the Greek fates. Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachasus measures it, and Atropos snips the thread. And then among the Norse fates, the Norns, Skuld fulfills essentially the same role.
So two of those names seem to apply to Mother Winter and definitely it appears that one of the mantles they've taken is the mantle of the Fates.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (43:59)
Yeah, very cool. We talked a lot about that last time during the stone table discussion about how those mantles might have wound up going from the Greek pantheons and the Norse pantheons and becoming part of the fairy courts. But the last thing I wanted to talk about before we jump into this big discussion about the mother's conversation with Harry, quote, on the hearth above the fireplace sat several sets of teeth, more or less human sized.
One looked simple enough, all white and even. The next was rotted looking with chipped incisors and a broken molar. The next set had all pointed teeth stained with bits of rusty brown, what looked like rotten bits of flesh The last was made out of some kind of silvery metal shining like a sword." Now, Brian, what are these? Are these like fallen foes that the mothers have defeated to keep the teeth?
Brian (44:53)
I'm going to be honest, Adam, I didn't look into this that deeply, so I could be missing something. But my mind immediately went to Baba Yaga with her iron teeth. So maybe these are like Mother Winter's dentures. And when she's sort of wearing different hats, she puts on different versions. You know, the pointy rusty ones are the Baba Yaga version and the, you know,
cracked rotten ones are some other death goddess like Hela from Norse mythology or something like that.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (45:30)
Yeah, and I mean, we know that Mab has several different guises that she uses, like the gown of judgment that she comes to see in some cases.
And the other connection, Brian, here is a quote from Cold Days. She has spent too much time with mortals, Mother Winter continued. Withered lips peeled back from iron teeth the sparks from her cleaver's edge leapt higher, unquote. So we know that when Harry calls on her in Cold Days, she has these iron teeth. I think that kind of clinches that these teeth are different sets that Mother Winter
and maybe Mother Summer, but I'm guessing mostly Mother Winter use for the different mantles that they wear, for the different guises that they take on for different roles.
Brian (46:13)
Yeah, the whole cottage always gives us really interesting tidbits of information. But speaking of information in that cottage, man, the mothers may carry work to get any out of them.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (46:30)
Yeah, and I did note that later when he's walking away from them, he's like, stupid fairies, why is it always so hard to get any good information? And it just occurred to me that like, yeah, this is how he feels now, but later he will understand better about the fact that they helped him way more than they had any right to. Like it was actually, they worked hard to give him the information within the bounds of their limitations. I think this is really something that dawns on him
only during proven guilty,
when he realizes that Lillian Fix want to help, but are prevented from doing so, unless he figures it out on his own and is able to then sort of lift that burden of information off of them and they can give him more details. That's similar to what's happening here.
So he's gonna see that happen multiple times and he's gonna get a better idea of how that works. But let's start with the method in which they choose to try to get him this information.
Now, before they get to answering any of Harry's questions, they demand this question from him. Quote, which is more important, the body or the soul? Unquote.
And Harry says, the answer isn't as simple as one or the other, unquote. And we think that this is exactly the answer they're looking for because Summer says precisely. So Brian, why did they ask him this question, the body or soul question?
Brian (47:59)
Yeah, it's really interesting because they do want him to give that answer. That much is clear. And the fact that they know he's going to give that answer tells them something about Harry. You know, there's a lot of questions that you could ask somebody to which they'll reply. It isn't as simple as one or the other. They knew this question would elicit that of him. So.
Harry, you know, believes in an equality between the body and the soul that makes it not that complicated. And we can view this metaphorically or more philosophically as sort of spiritual duality question. You know, what matters more, sort of to put it in brief, life here today on this earth or the afterlife? And Harry's saying, it's not that simple. You can't just divide it up like that.
There's a lot of people, usually people who are characterized as extremists, who do cut it up one way or the other philosophically. So they know something about Harry's temperance with regards to valuing, life and lives on Earth versus sort of spiritual goodness, the afterlife, valuing those in ways that are balanced. They know that about him, which is interesting.
but it appears that the answer isn't just important because it isn't as simple as one or the other. There's probably other questions that would even get Harry to say that, right? So that suggests that the answer to this question is important for Harry in and of itself.
him saying it isn't as simple as one or the other is something that he needs to keep in mind to correctly interpret the clues in this instance and that might have something to do with sort of the difference between what someone's body is worth
and what their soul is worth, very apropos with the subject of Lily.
And the answer might also be important for the she the mothers are referring to in Mother Summer's next sentence. And not she as in the fairy, but Mother Summer says, quote, this child sees what she does not. And I think Adam that we can assume
The mothers are talking about either one of the fairy queens or maybe like a lame outside, know, some woman who is important in this book who you could have heard of already,
who do you think Mother Winter and Mother Summer are talking about when they both refer to this woman?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (51:07)
That's a really good question. I also thought they might be referring to Elaine because of sort of what we were talking about before, where if you're right and Elaine is like consequentialist, then she would be, you know, prioritizing one thing over the other. The outcome is all that matters, you know, the means don't matter. So that is also a sort of...
extreme position as opposed to a balanced one that you're talking about, but I don't think it's Elaine.
Because it very specifically calls out, child sees what she does not. And you wouldn't include that word if you weren't making a comparison. Harry and Elaine are basically the same age, so you can't say he's a child compared to her. But you know who you can say that about? This child sees what she does not. Titania is...
very clearly not a child in comparison to Harry and he very much is a child in comparison to her. So I think this could easily apply to her. And another reason I think that is because Mother Winter responds, it is not in her nature. She is what she is, unquote. So what is it that Harry sees? Well, he sees that it's not as simple as one or the other. It's not black and white. It's not summer or winter.
they're both working together, they're both responsible for killing Ruel. So maybe Titania is starting this war because she assumes it has to have been someone on Winter's side. My daughter wouldn't do that, neither would Mother Summer, so it must be somebody on Winter. She's thinking in black and white and not in gray. And
than the comment about it being not in her nature, well we know when Harry calls her up in cold days that she describes herself as being like a force of emotion, right? If Mab is reason to Tanya is emotion. And that means that she can't see that her child could be a part of this. Mab does eventually see when Maeve
is infected and she does what must be done because she is using pure reason to figure out what must be done. Titania can't see that. It's not in her nature.
Brian (53:30)
Yeah, I think that's really compelling, Adam, because even though we refer to the oldest, most powerful fairy queens as the mothers, that's not what you would normally consider them as in a triple goddess setup. It's normally the maiden, the lady, is the lowest leg on the totem pole. And the highest step up is
the crone. It's the middle portion, the queens, that correspond to mother in the traditional tripartite goddess split, mother, maiden, crone. So it's very apt to call Harry a child in comparison to a mother as the grandmother. So I think that that works really, really well.
I do want to throw out that it could be Aurora for almost the same reason it could be Titania, and this is an additional reason on top of the ones you stacked up. Aurora could be failing to see that even if she ends the spiritual conflict between the courts, that's not
so much more important than all the human lives it will cost that it's worthwhile. Aurora is incapable of seeing that she must preserve lives as well as seek to end these spiritual conflicts. She's sort of making reckless decisions because she's too emotionally invested in ending this conflict. Titania could sort of have the similar problem
But rather than with regards to the larger conflict, it's regards to not understanding what has happened to Aurora. Because Aurora's body, her sort of physical self, what Titania is able to perceive, the part of Aurora that is Summer, might not have changed. But she is
being manipulated by or she is infected by the outsiders and her spirit is sick. Titania might
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (55:53)
Ooh, yeah.
Brian (55:54)
not be able to perceive that, but it's more complicated than just what's going on with Aurora's body.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (56:03)
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, now we talked about the fact that they're kind of be talking in riddles, they're gonna answer his questions with other questions, but this is a really interesting example of this brilliant writing by Jim here. Specifically, this whole scene can read very differently on a reread versus your first read, and one of the great examples of this is when Harry finally gets to ask his question, he asks, who killed the summer night and stole his mantle?
and they sort of tsk tsk him and say, you ask a foolish question, boy. You are more clever than this. And this answer might at first look evasive, right? Why don't they just tell him who killed the summer knight and who stole his mantle? But if they can't tell him, because you've read all the way up through proven guilty and you understand that the queens and the knights can be under these restrictions for communication, then you can see that if they did,
answer that question, right? They're bound to give him one true answer. And if they answer, who killed the summer night? Then the answer will be Lloyd Slate, which will lead him down the wrong assumptive path. So they can't answer that question if they want to lead him to the truth. So then you, when you read it through the second time, you can understand why they're evading this question and trying to lead him to a
different question, which he does finally ask later.
Brian (57:32)
Yeah, this works so much better on reread than the scene before it. It's honestly absurd.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (57:39)
Right, that's exactly
what we were doing in the previous chapter. The first time you read it, it fits perfect. Yes, Korrick, there's a unicorn here. Harry knows about it. They managed to get by it. It all works perfectly, but on reread it's so, wait a minute, this is Korrick, does she know it's Korrick? Why is it so hard? Why wouldn't he let him go by? You have all these questions that aren't answered by the text and you have to figure out for yourself.
Brian (58:01)
Right, the conversation with the mothers is the person walking across the gymnastics mat and then the conversation about the unicorn is doing the backflips through the ring of fire kind of thing.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (58:09)
Yeah.
Brian (58:11)
The really tricky thing the mothers are doing is, while they're only allowed to give him one direct answer, by criticizing his questions and giving him lots of indirect answers,
They allow him the time to see the whole picture.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (58:27)
Yes, exactly. Now, it's also fun to sort of analyze this and like, okay, they're entering this conversation knowing they need to give him a few pieces of crucial information, but knowing that they're not allowed to just state it to him. So what pieces of information do they need him to know before he leaves?
Brian (58:46)
Well, they need him to know that Aurora is sort of the big bad evil guy, right? She's behind it all. And much more specifically, because they're gonna give him the unraveling, they need him to know why he has to use it on this random statue, which is honestly the part that I think they're way more worried about.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (59:12)
Yeah, that's the one they really try to get him to like ask the right question and try to point out. Like for example, we get this reference to the German sage with the wild hair, which is Einstein as Harry figures out. And that helps him realize that they're trying to describe the law of conservation of matter. Like there's a law of conservation of fairy power.
It cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be changed. And they're walking him to the water, hoping that he'll figure out how to drink, in the sense that he'll put two and two together and finally get, it's the statue of Lily, that's where the mantle went. So, he has to finally have that epiphany that of like, it's not those two cases that are combined, it's these two cases that are combined.
Brian (1:00:06)
Right. And I think it's very funny. I really love the the German sage with the wild hair. just I think that's such a good pull from Jim. But I also think he is using this conversation because it's our first interaction with the mothers to tell us stuff about the fairy courts. And by saying that their power cannot be created or destroyed, he is sort of telling us that it's it's almost a divine level.
that it's truly immortal. And that's like a whoa, you know, I thought these were just, the fairies, you know, this is just like the D &D stat block, not this is a force of nature. And this kind of thing is really driving that home. But I've got a question for you, Adam. Harry gets the key piece of information from his question, how does the Knight's Mantle pass?
Mab and Titania knew the answer to that question. Why do they even need emissaries on this case?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:01:10)
Yeah, if this is the answer that unlocks everything for Harry, surely they should already know the answer too. They know how the mantle passes. It's happened dozens and dozens of times under their rule. So why don't they know? And I think the answer is Mab does know. And that's why she chose Harry because she wants him to actually investigate and figure it out and he's the best shot she's got.
but she can't just ring up Titania and say, yeah, it's your daughter, your daughter did it. Because Titania is gonna be automatically suspicious of anything that Mab says, probably because of their falling out, but also just because their mantles are opposites. It might be pushing her to distrust anything from somebody in winter anyway. So I think she just says, that's a non-starter. I can't explain what happened because she just won't believe me.
I can't go through Aurora because she's the one who did it. I can't go through the mothers because they're not allowed to interfere. So my only hope is that this random wizard figures it out. And why doesn't Titania figure it out? Well, I think this goes back to what they were saying earlier. This child sees what she does not. They are pointing out it's unusual. She should see.
The answer to this question, it couldn't have been anybody in winter. They could not have stolen the mantle because of what happens when the mantle passes. So Titania, unable to see her daughter in the criminal role of this case, is perplexed. I'm stumped.
The only place it could have gone is to one of us, and I know it's not in me, and it can't be in Aurora, so it must be Winter. Urgh, those criminals, those vile cretins. That's, think, what this is getting at.
Brian (1:03:04)
Yeah, I really like that. This provides excellent support for the idea that Titania is the she the mothers are talking about because of all the reasons you said. And it also provides some support for a little theory we came up with earlier in this book that Mab, because she knows who killed Rule and because she suspects
that the emissary Summer has chosen is one that will mislead Titania, chooses her emissary specifically to counter Elaine. Which is just like levels of genius by Mab. I just love that for her. So Harry asks the mothers directly if they can help, but.
They have limits. They're even more constrained with them. The queens who we know can really only interact with, you know, mortal realm through their nights. But they do whip up a little something for Harry. The unraveling.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:04:09)
Yeah, and when they say it can unmake any enchantment, he immediately realizes I could use this to undo what the vampires did to Susan and make her mortal again. And it's great on the first read, it's even better on the reread. There's a line that the mothers say,
you are the one who may set things aright once more if you are strong enough." At first you take this to mean like, he has to fight his way through the climax to save the day, but no, it's not just about how strong you are in body, but also in your soul or your mind. He has to resist the temptation to use this
to solve the problem that's been plaguing him personally for the last six months, to save the woman he loves. He has to resist that temptation. He has to be strong mentally, not just physically. it's so beautiful.
Brian (1:05:14)
And I really love that when Harry says that to the mothers, I could make her mortal again. Who replies? Mother Winter, with a bone dry amusement. You could, Emissary. Because Mother Winter has issued this, or the mothers have issued that you are the one if you are strong enough.
from other Winters' perspective is kind of a challenge. It is to her kind of amusing to see whether this immortal is strong enough to rise to it, the same way that the next time Harry comes to see her, she'll find it amusing to see if he can avoid getting killed by-
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:05:57)
Yes, exactly. And then the next time he sees her, she'll find it amusing to force him to stand up to her with Mab in 12 months. She just has fun testing Harry every time, right?
so That's gonna end our discussion of chapter 26. Just a note for next week, we are going to have our Patreon episode, so our Patreon listeners are going to hear us talk about B is for Bigfoot, the first of the three Bigfoot short stories that are collected in brief cases or the separate small novella working for Bigfoot.
So we're gonna talk about those next time. after that patron episode, then we're going to be talking about chapters 27 through 29. 27 is after Harry leaves here. have the whole confrontation with Aurora where she explains her evil plan. Harry then has to escape the mud trap and talk with the gatekeeper. And then finally 29 is they prep to go to battle with the Alphas and Merrill and Fix and they also confront the Tigress.
and Ace for the last time. So those are the three chapters we're gonna talk about next time after the Patreon episode. But before we get to those, we've got a question for Bob.
Brian (1:07:14)
So Bob, is Aurora actually the goddess Aurora, the mythological figure? You know, is Mave the mythological figure that has that name, or are these fundamentally different beings?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:33)
Yeah, that is a fantastic question that I would love to know the answer to, and Bob being a repository of knowledge going back six hundred years could probably tell us. But he sent us a text saying he's looking for a discount stairway to heaven.
Brian (1:07:46)
I feel like he just discovered Zeppelin.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:50)
Yeah, I was thinking of it more literally. But okay, that's entirely possible. So we're gonna do our best here. We've compiled some information for you. So before we talk about the possible inspirations using our own mythology that Jim obviously took from, let's talk about what we know about the in-universe, Aurora and Mave. And we're gonna start by kind of going back and talking about the mothers and then the queens and then the ladies. So we know that Mother Winter
is the original mother winter. We know that Mother Summer is not the original. The original Mother Summer retired at some point and has been replaced by the current Mother Summer. We then
Brian (1:08:27)
Yeah, I
wonder if the reason why they have sort of the mantle of the three fates, but there's only two of them, is that the third one retired.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:08:38)
yeah, and then th that could be. We also know that Mab and Titania are not the original queens,
and we can be pretty sure that they were the original ladies before they were Mab and Titania. so that sort of brings us to the ladies themselves. Not much is known about Aurora's backstory in the Dresden universe. We know that she's Titania's biological daughter, but we don't know the father. We don't even have a word of Jim as far as I can tell that says anything about Aurora's father. now we do know that Aurora and Maeve have
each had at least one predecessor in the last thousand years because we believe that both of them became the summer and winter lady respectively somewhere around the eighteenth century.
And part of that we get from a word of Jim where he said that Mab and Titania are actually twin sisters. Maeve and Sarissa are also twin sisters from Mab. Their father was an Austrian composer and musician who died young. Many people presume this to be either Schubert or Mozart, who both died somewhere in their thirties.
So Brian, that's about the best we can do as far as Mave and Aurora's history within the Dresden universe. That's as far as we can go back. But what do those names mean in our mythology? And can we connect them more directly?
Brian (1:09:57)
We can. So both Mave and Aurora are mythological figures that pre you know figure the Dresden Files. before we go into that, I just want to mention that you can presume Mother Summer might have retired when the original Mab, the original Winter Queen, died.
And that would have Mab and Titania elevated at the same time. But because before then they were ladies, there's no way they could have had daughters to immediately elevate to the bottom rung on the chart. That's why they almost certainly had to have a predecessor, and why we presume they were elevated to queen before the 18th century. Also because, you know, we have other in-series information on that. but
as for the original mythological figures, Aurora is just the Latin name for the Greco-Roman goddess of the dawn. And this goddess is essentially unchanged from like the Indo-European goddess of the dawn, as far as we can tell. So this is a very, very old mythological figure. Aurora is a promiscuous goddess, which doesn't necessarily fit the Dresden Files version.
Aurora the goddess takes many mortal lovers. In the Dresden Files version, she obviously can't, but I think this might sort of be a little bit of a tie-in in that our Aurora is clearly deeply involved in the mortal world. So she's not promiscuous in the sense that she's taking lovers, but she is, you know, interfering more than she should in the mortal world.
And Aurora in mythology has a pair of siblings, Sol and Luna, that's in Latin. In Greek, the trio is Eos, Helios, and Selene. And interestingly, while Eos, the goddess of the dawn, is not commonly considered a triple goddess, Selene, the goddess of the moon, is. So Selene, Artemis is
And Hecate are sort of the triple goddess of the moon. and the last of those three, Hecate, is sometimes r replaced with Persephone, presumably because Persephone's a more popular and personified goddess. She doesn't fit nearly as well, so I'm assuming that's mostly a later edition.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:12:26)
Okay, so it sounds like Aurora is a little bit more disconnected from the Aurora that we know in the Dresden files.
Brian (1:12:33)
Yeah, so the Titania Aurora pair as a whole doesn't actually have any strong mythological significance either, you know, as a combination or with regards to the characters we see on screen, but they do work together. So the mythological Aurora, the goddess, is the daughter of Titans, Thea and Hyperion. and Titania can of course be read as feminine Titan.
Titania's name might also suggest that she herself is an offspring of Titans or Fremorians, because in the Dresden Files, Ethneu, the last Titan, is in Irish mythology a Fremorian. But Titania might only appear as a function of a Shakespeare reference by Jim. Titania is, you know, Shakespeare's Queen of the Fairies, so, if you're gonna write a novel in English with a fairy queen, you you pay, you tip your cap to the bars.
on the the way through the door. and while that means that the pair works as a fairy queen and her daughter, you know, there's no real tie between them and it doesn't really blend with the universe in any really intricate way.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:13:42)
Yeah, not really not not the same as, yes, when they refer to the original Merlin, they're talking about the Merlin from our Arthurian legends, right? There are characters in the Dresden Files like, yeah, Bigfoot is the Bigfoot that you've heard of, or at least one of them.
Brian (1:14:00)
Right. Like, yes, here is Merlin. He's the Merlin from the Sword and the Stone. Also, here's the sword, you know? Yeah.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:14:07)
Yes, exactly.
There are some direct parallels in his universe, but this doesn't sound like it's one of them. What about Maeve? Does she fit more directly into our mythology?
Brian (1:14:17)
So funnily, if you actually take Aurora's name and look at it r in relation to the winter queens, there's a really strong thematic element there. So we already talked about how the moon goddess is often represented as a triple goddess. So you're combining the idea of the moon with the you know notion of Artemis, the Virgin Huntress, and Hecate, the goddess of magic and darkness. Well
Maeve is literally the virgin queen of the predators, and Mab is associated with darkness, even as we know the fairy courts as a whole are tied to Hecate. So even sort of though summer isn't mythologically significant, you know, in in terms of the names, they parallel a strong mythological significance and winter. And it gets a lot deeper than that, because unlike Aurora.
Maeve has a very clear mythological parallel that Jim is using parts of the story of. Because Queen Maeve of Kanaw, which is just a region of Ireland, it's it's the west of Ireland, Galway is there. so Queen Maeve, and this is spelt M-E-D-B, because that's just how Irish is sometimes.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:15:38)
Ugh, gotta be kidding
me. As as if I didn't have enough problems with the word she
Brian (1:15:43)
Right, so S-I-D-H-E-She, fabulous. Also, and this is my favorite part about Irish, everything can be pronounced like in multiple different ways. So she can also be pronounced Sith, depending on whether it's old Irish or New Irish. It's fabulous. That's why it can be canocked or canaw, too. so Queen Maeve is featured in an Irish pagan story, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, which is a lot more like the Irish Iliad than you would expect from that title.
like almost every character in Irish mythology, Maeve is in the story a mortal queen who has some sort of, you know, magical abilities and mythological significance and and you know, whatever. And that's because the actual stories that came down to us, the written stories, were written down by Christian monks, and in the original oral versions of the tale.
Mave and many other figures are almost certainly gods or in or incarnations of gods. So Maeve is very likely a goddess specific to that region of Ireland. She's proud and warlike, and her name literally comes from the word meaning intoxication or intoxicating, the word for mead. So Mave is
is this warlike intoxicating temptress, very femme fatale. In fact she has many husbands and she's the reason most of them die.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:17:16)
Okay, well, half of that directly seems to relate to Maive, but she's not sh she's not sounding like the virgin queen that we see in MAVE inside the Dresden Files.
Brian (1:17:26)
No.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:17:27)
what's the timeline of where these stories like r come from, as best we can tell? Is it around the time of the Greek
That many of us are familiar with?
Brian (1:17:37)
Yeah, so that's really hard to answer. think the best way to answer it is that the Irish chronicles set the date that the actual story, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, happens, at about the time of the birth of Christ. So that's when they think the story happened. We d actually don't know if the oral tradition is older than that or younger than that. The first written works are way more recent than that.
But again, they were only written down once Ireland had already been Christianized, and these are fundamentally pagan stories, so they have to predate the writing down of the stories.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:18:17)
Right,
we're getting them after they had been told from one generation to the next in an oral tradition, and we really can't tell how far back that goes, but it it's probably a little more recent than the Greek stories.
Brian (1:18:29)
Yes, probably. I think that's a a a reasonable thing to assume. And that makes sense because Ireland effectively has a shorter history than a place like Greece. The you know gales in Ireland have been around for less time, or have been in Ireland for less time than the Hellenes in in Greece. so Jim not only has this you know direct reference
MAVE, the queen in Irish mythology, versus Maeve, the character in our story, it's a it's actually a double reference. Because Mab is a name that first appears in Shakespeare, but some scholars think that when Shakespeare takes that name from somewhere, because Shakespeare steals everything, like every good artist, when Shakespeare took that name from somewhere, he actually took it from a corruption of Mave.
Now that's not the dominant theory anymore, but by pairing Mab and Mave in his story, Jim suggests he's following this tradition or referencing this tradition at the very least.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:19:35)
that's interesting. So maybe Shakespeare's character of Mab was inspired by the same character that Mave's name is inspired by. And and that's kind of it it that kind of dovetails nicely with the Dresden Fowls because early on, if you listen to the audiobooks, I think it's throughout all of Summer Night specifically, when Marsters pronounces Mave, he pronounces it Mav, like Mab with a with a
V at the end and it was difficult for me to parse that the first time or two that I was listening to it. It's like is he saying Mab or Mav? that that's a tricky one to deal with.
Brian (1:20:14)
Yeah, and I think that might be the actual corruption that may have occurred. because again, I believe you can pronounce MAVE slightly differently depending on whether you're talking old Irish or modern Irish.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:20:29)
Okay,
so they might have said Mav later the vowels just shifted at some point in the language. Or earlier. Yeah.
Brian (1:20:35)
Yeah, or like Mev or something. You know,
I'm not sure. I'm not a linguist, so I just know that there is this difference in pronunciation, and it makes learning how to pronounce anything correctly even harder. but the reason why he's got both Maves in the story, the reason why you would make that reference with both of the characters and include them is because in the Cattle Raid of Cooley, so this Irish Iliad,
So Maeve, the mythological figure, Queen Maeve of Kanaw, has this daughter, Fiona there, who she's offering to marry off. She's using sort of as a pawn, her beautiful daughter.
And that name means white phantom. So very appropriate for a she or sort of a scary mythological figure. And it's in fact an exact cognate to a name you're all familiar with the Welsh name Gwenevere. So Bull Thionavere, the name of Maeve's daughter in The Catalraid of Cooley.
and Guinevere mean the same thing, and in fact they're the same name, just in two different languages.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:21:49)
now that's very interesting. So I wonder, since we don't know who the Summer Lady was before it was Aurora, right? We know that Titania was the Summer Lady at some point, but presumably around 1066 was when the previous queens were
killed or vacated their positions in some way and it elevated Mab into Tania. So there was a summer lady somewhere between ten sixty six AD and the time when we think Aurora became the Summer Lady. Maybe if we ever get that information, we'll find out it's Fiona Vare or or Guinevere is the name of that one because that's another sort of main character in this story where these other names come from.
Brian (1:22:30)
Right, yeah. It's real Jim definitely either noticed that that name is in Arthurian tradition and Irish mythology, or it's a happy accident that he's relying on both Irish mythology and Arthurian tradition, and it just so happens that there's this bridge character. I'm inclined to believe he was aware of it. but that mean the the reason I
I bring that up is because you can sort of assign in your brain, when you're thinking of the character of Fionnevere, some of the tropes that you would assign to Guinevere, you can sort of use them to kind of fill in the blanks a little bit. And that means to an extent you can see Fiona as sort of a blameless figure. But if you've read some modern adaptations of our theory and myths, you know, Guinevere is a lot more of a femme fatale.
You know, the relationship that she has with Lancelot, right, isn't you know, just courtly love. It it she can be a character that has more of a dark side, a selfish streak, you know, in certain adaptations. And Fiona Vere sort of has a little bit of the same ambiguity. Mave obviously is a femme fatale. Fiona, in you know, in my opinion, justice for Fiona Vere, she's much less
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:23:48)
Yeah.
Brian (1:23:49)
blameworthy than Maeve will ever be.
But Maeve is definitely preying on that sort of idea of being literally a femme fatale. You if you sleep with her, she's she's gonna mess you up really bad. And Queen Maeve is a useful figure to tie to the winter queens for another reason that we've seen on page. Mythologically speaking, Queen Maeve is almost certainly a sovereignty goddess.
And sovereignty goddesses were these sort of ideas in Irish mythology, and I believe in other mythologies, though I'm more familiar with Irish mythology, that were representations of the kingdom, like the physical land of the kingdom that you know were elevated to the status of a a deity. So Maeve was the name for the sovereignty goddess of Kanoa. It might have
also been the name of the sovereignty goddess of Meath. Tara might have been another one. The Hill of Tara is also in in Meath. there's you know Ain, I think might be the one of Ulster. I don't remember all of them and they change over time. Sometimes parts of the Morrigan triple goddess are sovereignty goddesses. So it it changes depending on the ideas of the people, but you can kind of think of this as like Britannia or
Lady Liberty or Lady Justice or Columbia, if you've seen those old representations of of America as like a mythologized woman. And the king has to symbolically marry that goddess upon their accession to the throne.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:25:30)
And consummate the marriage.
Brian (1:25:31)
well, yes, exactly. So this is very important in Ireland for a couple reasons. First of all, because
kingly succession is not strictly father to son. So you're getting your legitimacy not from, you know, bloodline descent every time, but from the fact that, you know, you've been accepted by the sovereignty goddess. And how do you know if the sovereignty goddess has consummated the marriage? Well, the literal fertility of the land itself tells you.
So if the king marries the sovereignty goddess and the crops are good and everything, then yeah, you know, this is the rightful king. And you know, if there's a drought the next year, better spin up the propaganda mill.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:26:13)
so it sounds like it's a very early version, a prototype of the divine right of kings that we see so thoroughly used in the Middle Ages.
Brian (1:26:22)
Yeah, or like the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, exactly. Same same idea.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:26:24)
Yes,
Brian (1:26:26)
So the reason this obviously works so well is when Dresden becomes the man of the house in the winter court, he symbolically consummates a marriage to Mab. And that's why it's so very interesting to see the way Jim is developing the Harry Molly relationship.
Because it appears to be paralleling, you know, this sort of sovereignty goddess idea as well, in the in the sense that they're working together very closely. They're sort of thickest thieves. So I think that Jim definitely drew inspiration from the mythological figure of Queen Maeve to create his Maeve and Mab, and the winter court almost as a whole. And you can see that.
Both in her character and sort of her role and her personality and in the sort of magical functions and ways in which she interacts with humanity.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:27:28)
Yeah, well that is fascinating. And I'm glad that you're here to do that deep dive because my best bet would be like, maybe he got it from the Disney stories of Aurora. so I appreciate your ability to go into those details. Now, that's gonna do it for this episode. But important to know, while we talked about next week's episode's gonna be a Patreon, the one after that we're going to basically see Aurora
For the second to last time, where we see her whole evil plan sort of unfurled. And what we want to know from you, our question for Bob for that episode is how did Nemesis convince Aurora to take action in summer night?
Brian (1:28:09)
Yeah, and just you know, if you guys think that Nemesis has hijacked her from day one, totally fine answer, we want to hear that. And if you think almost nothing to do with it, we want to hear that too. But if you think there's a point at which this is Nemesis speaking, or you know, she's saying this because she was convinced to, what point is that?
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:28:31)
my personal mental image is that he's somehow whispering in her ear in a way that she can't detect and subtly
Brian (1:28:36)
Right.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:28:37)
giving her ideas that she latches onto or changing her perception. So that's why I think this is a very interesting question. How would Nemesis do that? How exactly what would be needed to change her perception or to give her ideas? What things could push her over the edge that were done subtly, as opposed to like you said,
Completely hijacking like he does like Nemesis does with cat Sith.
Brian (1:29:01)
Right. Next week we'll be dropping a Patreon episode
On B is for Bigfoot.
Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:29:06)
We'll see ya then.