Malfoy family (Pottermore)

[oryx_leucoryx]

I looked up the spoilers site and found there is more detailed information about The Malfoys. Enjoy!

Comments

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

Word!

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

It really is starting to sound like a broken record at this point, isn't it? "This character is good in the main Harry Potter storyline; therefore his family has always been good. This character is evil (or at least mean to Harry) in the main Harry Potter storyline; therefore his family has always been evil."

I feel like that thing about all traits going through the father is a tired cliche in its own right. "Only men carry power, prestige, or talent in their bloodlines; women are just insignificant vessels for the next generation." I wonder, then, if there's a deeper philosophical meaning behind the notion that Harry looks almost exactly like his father, except that he's got eyes the same color as his mother's.

So yeah, it's just more tired cliches which have been discredited in multiple works and which Rowling should feel bad for so blithely adhering to.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/I feel like that thing about all traits going through the father is a tired cliche in its own right. "Only men carry power, prestige, or talent in their bloodlines; women are just insignificant vessels for the next generation."/

That’s a very interesting point. It kind of goes along with a trend that I’ve noticed in fiction, which is that female characters are rarely mentors and role models, especially not for male protagonists. If a boy is trying to emulate someone, it’s usually his father or a father figure. Harry has James and Dumbledore, Draco has Lucius, etc. And even with female protagonists, it’s often the father who’s taught the heroine her skills, whose death changes her for life, and so on.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

That's true and I feel like it's been noted by several different bloggers and amateur critics over several different situations. The relative invisibility of mothers and other female family members of the protagonist in most media is one reason why I love the "Code Geass" subplots involving Lelouch's mother and sister. In the case of male protagonists I feel as though it could go along with the notion that people find it "emasculating" for men to emulate women in any way shape or form--which in and of itself has sexist connotations (though it'd be completely in character for Harry Potter, since all the most powerful women are evil or in the background).

So, where exactly does Lily, Harry's mother, fall into all this? Because she's consistently held up as more virtuous than James, and I think Dumbledore at one point mentions that Harry is more like his mother, and less like his father, than Snape may realize. And it's her death, not James's, that makes Harry protected against Voldemort (allegedly, anyway).

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

So, the entire series seems to be based upon children inheriting their father's characteristics and morals and yet it is supposedly wrong for Snape to think Harry is a mini-James?

Not that I am saying Snape would be right for thinking that - but if JKR is going to have generations of families exactly the same as the previous generations, then why should Snape not think so?

[oryx_leucoryx]

In the Potterverse we have the following (that I can remember off-hand):

Tom Riddle - looks like his father. As arrogant as his father and maternal grandfather put together, with many extra bits.

Severus Snape - has his father's nose and his mother's skin and facial expression, probably her schoolbooks as well. Starts out with his mother's views.

Barty Crouch - I'm not sure which parent he resembled physically, but he loved his mother and hated his father.

Harry Potter - looks like his father, has his mother's eyes and his father's talent for Quidditch. Protected by his mother's magic.

Draco Malfoy - can't say which of his parents he resembles more (they are a matched pair). Cares about his father's opinion. Has mother's wand (twice!)

Neville Longbottom: His paternal grandmother wants him to be a recapitulation of his father (she even gives Neville his father's wand). He looks like his mother. If his father was a 'popular Auror' for being tough on suspects, maybe Neville has his mother's character.

Weasley kids: Their parents are physically a matching pair. Which of the 6 boys resembles Arthur the most?

[sunnyskywalker]

I read a few more of those spoilers posts, and just had to point everyone's attention to this excerpt in the "technology" post:

When you can summon any book, instrument or animal with a wave of the wand and the word ‘Accio!’; when you can communicate with friends and acquaintances by means of owl, fire, Patronus, Howler, enchanted objects such as coins, or Apparate to visit them in person; when your newspaper has moving pictures and everyday objects sometimes talk to you, then the internet does not seem a particularly exciting place. This is not to say that you will never find a witch or wizard surfing the net; merely that they will generally be doing so out of slightly condescending curiosity, or else doing research in the field of Muggle Studies.

I just... does she know what the internet does? It's like saying, "When you can communicate friends by means of letter, telephone, singing telegram, or text messages, or drive or fly to visit them in person; when you have electronic picture frames which can animate your photos, then the internet does not seem a particularly exciting place." Our moving pictures* are even more exciting than theirs, so it's a wonder any of us are on these here interwebs.

*She tries to explain why they don't have TV, and it's spectacularly unconvincing.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

*Sigh* It's typical fantasy-race fail, and I've seen it everywhere. "My magical creatures/races/whatever are so impossibly awesome that they regard anything we've got as fundamentally worthless! After all, they're so special that if something we had was good, they would already be doing it!"

And come on--just because a world is strange or fanciful to us doesn't mean it's going to appear that way to those who call it home. This point was illustrated masterfully in the children's magical-realism books about the Wayside School. The first book included a short at the end in which the all-knowing yard teacher described a "normal" elementary school--as we know it--to the Wayside School kids, and all of them found it strange and silly, in the same way the antics at Wayside School are considered strange and silly to the target audience.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

I personally find it in particularly poor taste that she went and insisted that the Black Plague and Queen Elizabeth I's refusal to marry were both the result of something a Malfoy did. Seriously, is there ANY major historical event which she will not insist was somehow caused by a wizard?

[oryx_leucoryx]

I don't think it says Nicholas Malfoy caused the Black Death (which after all had spread through Europe before arriving in Britain), but that while the epidemic was going on he killed his Muggle neighbors and disguised those deaths as Black Death victims. Anyway, surely if a wizard had been behind the Black Death itself, that wizard should have been a Black rather than a Malfoy?

Personally, the part I found most interesting was about Abraxas Malfoy sabotaging the first Muggle-born Minister in the 1960s. In the 1940s lacking certifiable wizarding ancestry was considered a glass-ceiling factor, but that would have been the time Nobby Leach started his long climb in the Ministry. And he probably didn't have Slughorn's backing. This is the first time Rowling attempts to show us the Voldemort-supporters had any reason to feel they were being displaced by a new power of Muggle-borns. Too bad there was nothing like it in the books.

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

What I found interesting is that the Ministry of Magic was created in 1692 but it was until about 250 years later that they got a Muggleborn Minister of Magic. If most people had nothing against Muggleborns, why did this take so long? And how many Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts have been Muggleborn?

Heck, even just looking at the genders shows how skewered in favor of males these positions are, no matter how much JKR might say about the WW being more gender equal. According to the HP Lexicon there were 10 male Minsters of Magic and only 3 female ones and of course the ones we meet in the books are all male.

As for the Headmasters, there are 9 known ones, three of which are female. But one of them is Umbridge, who I don't think really counts as she pretty much appointed herself and didn't get access to the office.

But of course JKR still likes to pretend that her world is gender blind and equal: "(I)n fact, if you look at the Hogwarts' staff - I had this discussion with someone the other day - it is exactly 50/50. Although it is true that you do have a headmaster as opposed to a headmistress, but that has not always been the case. As you will find out, there have been equal numbers of headmistresses." So in JKR's world 6 = 3. "Oh dear, Maths" indeed.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

I guess given how socially excluded women were for most of human history, it's possible that the WW still was, at least in the past, more gender-equal than ours... for a given definition of gender-equal. I mean, having 3 female Ministers of Magic is still more than female presidents of the US (we haven't had a single female president in all this time, after all), and possibly, there have historically been fewer female government officials in the various countries around the world. So I suppose being "more egalitarian" than our world does not necessarily mean being perfectly egalitarian, but yeah--it does seem as though Rowling is trying to present the WW as perfectly equal, which I don't buy, and I don't think anyone can afford to.

Of course, what this feels like is Rowling not quite understanding what prejudice is. She seems to think that because women have ever held positions of power, they're automatically the equals of their men. It doesn't seem to occur to her that you can be sexist and still think women should be effectual--the various incarnations of the Bible and Old Testament, for example, feature powerful women at points, and they were put out there at a time when everyone would have thought women in general should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Similarly the Japanese codes of behavior from Samurai days held that women should be docile little flowers who existed to truckle to their husbands, but still wanted them armed so they could defend the home if necessary (and they could still exert a measure of control over the men in their lives if need be--they'd just have to be subtle about it).

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Yes. I also think this shows how little JKR cares about history. Back before Secrecy, magical folk would have been living as part of the same society as non-magical folk, and ought to have had roughly the same ideas. The notion of women as inferior to men wasn't some evil idea dreamed up by a group of conspirators who then forced/persuaded everyone to believe it, people who otherwise would have 'naturally' thought women and men equal. It's actually a fairly new idea, and wizards back then ought to have been just as patriarchal, overall, as their non-magical counterparts. Even after Secrecy this idea should have lingered (hell, it's hard enough to get it really taken seriously in much of the so-called "civilized" world, instead of seen as just "political correctness"). Positing a magical society that is simultaneously parasitical upon the non-magical world from which it grew AND more enlightened than the latter doesn't really work, historically. It also falls apart when you look at how backwards magical society is in many other things. JKR is talking through her hat.

[sunnyskywalker]

I could see them becoming slightly more egalitarian after Secrecy, in a similar way that some of the Western states in the US granted women the vote decades earlier than the rest of the country - there were so few (white) women out there, demonstrably doing difficult work, that they had to grudgingly accept that maybe women weren't quite as inferior as people said and that they needed to make a few concessions to get the women's support. If they were (secretly) importing and/or stealing Muggle goods and foodstuffs, thus freeing many witches and wizards from doing a lot of drudge labor such as farming and mining which they used to do right alongside their Muggle relatives, then they may also have had a situation where witches were freer to spend time on education etc., much like some aristocratic and middle class women historically (perhaps with some rhetoric about magically educated mothers being able to teach their young sons well, which also started coming into vogue in Muggle society in iirc the 18th century - Revolutionary mothers and all that). The House-elf relocation project might have also helped a little, if a significant number of elves had previously lived on Muggle properties. (Hogwarts might have had at least some human laundresses and cooks previously, for instance, if the large elf population there now is in part due to the relocations.) So perhaps a few decades into it, wizarding society could have been noticeably more equal than Muggle society.

But not totally equal. Nowhere near. How would that even happen?

[sunnyskywalker]

ETA: re the Western states analogy, I mean that the short-handedness matters. If your new British Ministry of Magic has five guys and some sheep, then suddenly hiring women in the lower civil service ranks looks like a much better idea than when you're integrated into the relatively vast Muggle government. So maybe in fact women are perfectly suited to careers doing research for the guys actually drafting legislative bills and we just never realized; what a convenient discovery!

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

RE shorthandedness, I agree. However, allowing women into some slots out of necessity and actually thinking of them as fully equal are two different things - so I guess I see the WW as more the former than the latter. As you say, not totally equal.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Seriously, is there ANY major historical event which she will not insist was somehow caused by a wizard?

It isn't just Rowling. There are a ridiculous number of works which subscribe to the idea that anything extraordinary couldn't possibly have been done by human beings. Countless theories about how aliens must have built the pyramids/Naztec Lines/(insert cultural artifact here). More recently, any human being of any accomplishment whatsoever (Houdini, Jack London, Marilyn Monroe, etc...) must somehow be something more (e.g. demigods: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, vessens/fairy tale creatures: Grimm). At least in the good ol' days they used to be more reasonable about handing out divinities: emperors and wanna-be's only, everyone else pipe down :p

Lately I've been toying with the idea that this comes from a bizarre mix of an inferiority complex and a general misanthropy. The theory creator is on some level painfully aware that they will never have opportunity, ability, or dedication to match the accomplishments they're so envious of. On the other hand, they also have such a low opinion of every other human on the planet that none of them could have done it either. These stories gain traction and remain popular because a significant portion of the population feels the same way.

Besides, if the beings that accomplished all those great things were something intrinsically "better" than mere humans to begin with, then there's no reason to feel bad that you can't compare. Heck, why bother if you're guaranteed to come up short. No need to stress about accomplishing anything. Give up before you hurt yourself. Just let the ubermenschen deal with the world's problems while you stay out of the way like the good little parasite you are.

...

Anyone else feeling a Randian zeitgeist upon us?

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

It's funny, but I reacted to different things in that post. I honestly liked the stuff about how the Malfoys had interacted regularly with Muggles, even if only wealthy Muggles, before Seclusion. Yes, it's supposed to make them look bad and hypocritical, but I enjoy thinking of the Malfoys as primarily opportunists, rather than idealists(-with-very-bad-ideals).

Everything that people have said about the ancestry thing is true, of course. I think that at this point I just filter it out... in a way, it's probably why I enjoyed the history so much, because when you recognize that JKR shamelessly conflates past and present, why, she's halfway to saying that Lucius or Draco might consider interacting with (wealthy) Muggles, should it become more advantageous than not. After all, every person in the family is basically the same throughout history. (rolls eyes/shrugs)

Anyway, that bit reminded me a little of the Malfoys in Arsinoe de Blassenville's "The Best Revenge," which I would recommend to anyone here who hasn't already read it.

[sunnyskywalker]

I liked those bits as well. They seemed plausible and sensible and for once things centuries ago were not quite how their modern descendents remember or claim.

I'm less enthused about every Malfoy ever being a nasty piece of work.Why couldn't one of them have murdered tenants and blamed the Black Death, another have gone to visit his French cousins and hung out with Flamel, and another have just thrown some great parties? You know, regular variation. I suppose she could have done something emphasizing the corrosive effects of power, but even then you'd expect at least a Malfoy or two who was more bad in the sense that they thought giving the servants a day off and donating a few trunks of clothes to an orphanage made up for passing laws against Muggleborns holding high political office (for their own good, of course!), or whatever polite wizarding aristocrats did in centuries past. ("Hey, we're not trying to legalize Muggle-hunting like the Blacks! We're the good guys!")

But I very much like your spin that she must mean that Lucius and Draco might also make exceptions for wealthy Muggles under the right circumstances. She did already say they are more or less okay with halfbloods (which actually matches what we see in the books, hooray!), so why not a Muggle billionaire or two? Perhaps little Scorpius will go to Hogwarts with a Muggle-born heiress of considerable talent and charm, and they will suddenly come up with reasons why this would be an excellent match after all, and change their reputation to "the family which graciously recognizes talent wherever it arises and sponsors the worthy so that they may truly become part of the wizarding world." (Which reminds me of Arsinoe de Blassenville's "The Golden Age," where they adopted a Muggle-born girl, which I thought that worked well.)

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

I've read various arguments that the Malfoys are "new money," given their behavior, so I think it's interesting to find out that they arrived with William the Conqueror.