I’d propose that he has a slightly different plan. I’m going to give you my pet theory here so hold onto your hats.
I think Quirrellmort probably decided at one point in the past that it would be way easier to take over magical Britain if everyone thought he’d already failed at doing so. I think he’s probably going for control of both sides. Imagine if Darth Vader had created the rebel alliance in order to funnel potential opponents into a harmless straw-opposition: he could let them attempt the occasional coup, always avoiding any real cost to himself and throw them the occasional minor victory to keep them on the hook.
To quote the chapter Contagious Lies:
“Yess,” Harry hissed dryly, “very amussing, I am ssure. Except now am sstuck in Hogwartss for next ssix years, for ssafety! I have decided that I will, indeed, sseek power; and confinement iss not helpful for that. Musst convince sschoolmasster that Dark Lord iss not yet awakened, that esscape was work of ssome other power—”
Again the rapid flickering of the snake’s tongue; the snakish laughter was stronger, dryer, this time. “Amateur foolisshnesss.”
“Pardon?” hissed Harry.
“You ssee misstake, think of undoing, ssetting time back to sstart. Yet not even with hourglasss can time be undone. Musst move forward insstead. You think of convincing otherss they are misstaken. Far eassier to convince them they are right. Sso conssider, boy: what new happensstance would make schoolmasster decide you were ssafe once more, ssimultaneoussly advance your other agendass?”
Harry stared at the snake, puzzled. His mind tried to comprehend and unravel the riddle -
“Iss it not obviouss?” hissed the snake. Again the tongue flickered sardonic laughter. “To free yoursself, to gain power in Britain, you musst again be sseen to defeat the Dark Lord.”
That’s obviously not the same plan I’m talking about, but we can see that Quirrell has at least been thinking along similar lines to me. I can see a number of different ways he could have formulated this plan, but the simplest one seems to be:
Set up evil organisation and make an attempt at taking the country over. Allow everyone to gauge your intelligence from your actions, and to form the strongest alliance they are capable of forming against you. Everyone’s gauge of your intelligence will in fact be off by several points, since this isn’t really your big ploy—it’s actually a feint and you intend it to fail.
Fake your own defeat, simultaneously creating a (young, impressionable) hero for your opponents and removing yourself from all further suspicion, since almost everyone will think you’re dead.
Become a role model to the aforementioned young hero and mould him to your will. The kid is in the perfect position to take over the leadership of your opposition, so you now effectively have control of both major players in the game.
Win.
This is also foregrounded in Coordination Problems 2 and 3. Quirrell wants Harry to bind the population together under him and Harry makes a short speech about the dangers of group thinking. Quirrell’s reaction is one of anger—obviously he can’t have Harry breaking the monopoly that the Order of the Phoenix has on do-gooding, because that opens the field up for thousands of free-agent challengers to Quirrell’s power. It also mirrors Harry and Draco’s plan to play the two sides off against each other, except obviously Harry is aiming for world optimisation, not domination.
Finally, Dumbledore seems to think Voldemort is still alive, but he’s either pretending to have irrational justifications for this or he really does. I think it’s waaaay more likely that Dumbledore is just playing dumb, since he’s definitely smarter than he lets on, as evidenced by his and Snape’s big discussion about the Bellatrix thing, but I’m not entirely sure how much Dumbly knows for sure. Quirrell knows Dumbledore acts as though he thinks Voldemort is still alive. The real wildcard is Harry, because Quirrell probably wasn’t expecting him to be such a major agent in all this, he’s almost certainly playing Xanatos chess at this point trying to keep ahead of Harry and keep his plan alive.
If I were in Voldemort’s shoes I definitely wouldn’t want to stake decades of work on a plan that could be derailed by my “hero” simply dying in an accident, and that’s disregarding all the ways he could fail to be properly impressionable.
I don’t think either of those represent a big risk to him. Consider that he knows this particular child will be under Dumbledore’s constant care, and that Voldemort himself will always be available to step in and rescue the kid if there’s a risk of him dying early. Obviously that doesn’t lower the risk to zero, but it’s still a big reduction. Also, remember that during the “grooming” phase of this plan it’ll be an eleven-year-old against the most intelligent and insidious wizard in history: given what Voldemort did to Bellatrix it seems like he would be very confident of successfully being able to brainwash Harry.
So, the risk of Harry dying or being unbrainwashable seems low, but it also pays to consider that either contingency wouldn’t stop the plan in it’s tracks. If Harry dies (or has to be killed because he can’t be brainwashed) there are a whole battalion of potential replacements who could emerge as the new posterboy for good—Neville being clearly at the top of the list. Harry is the >best< choice, but he isn’t the only one.
I’ve actually cooled a little on this theory since the latest arc began because I think someone is clearly trying to turn Harry evil (see my theory from earlier in the thread). That said, I still think this would be a workable plan for attaining uncontested dark lordship.
Imagine if Darth Vader had created the rebel alliance in order to funnel potential opponents into a harmless straw-opposition: he could let them attempt the occasional coup, always avoiding any real cost to himself and throw them the occasional minor victory to keep them on the hook.
Did I really just get down-voted for my taste in literature? I’m sure it’s a very nice book and that you enjoyed it very much, Mr Down-voter, but I don’t see how there’s anything objectionable about it not appealing to me. I’ve been told before that I spend /too much/ time reading the classics so don’t worry that my intellectual growth has suffered. I prefer Huxley to Orwell, although the former seems to have been a little touched, judging from his correspondences.
I know I’m new to the forum and all that, but I feel like that shouldn’t be what the voting system is for. Surely in most circumstances up- and down- votes would be better used to indicate how /rational/ you think a post is, not how close to your own opinion it is. People’s karma score shouldn’t suffer just because their opinions differ from the majority. Anyway, regardless of what the actual forum guidelines are you’ll only see me disliking arguments that display poor logic. On that note, consider that down-vote down-voted.
Downvoted the grandparent comment just now for pointlessness (I wasn’t the original offender). It adds nothing to the discussion, and I generally downvote comments that I’d rather didn’t exist.
Voldemort won’t always be able to step in and rescue him, he doesn’t have him under constant tabs, it’s not like he’d instantly know if something bad were about to happen to him.
There are other ways aside from being oppositional that Harry could have failed to be properly impressionable. For instance, he could have been extremely stupid (there would be no way to tell when he was a baby,) and it would have been impossible to set him up as a figurehead leader because he was too obviously incompetent.
In Voldemort’s place, I would never attempt a plan like this, because the odds of success, even at their best, do not justify sinking a couple of decades into its execution. Given the same amount of time, I’d expect him to be able to take over the country several times over. I could probably take over the country several times over in his place, given the same level of power along with an outside perspective on wizarding society, and I don’t think I’m as good at plotting as Quirrelmort.
I’m betting on what happened with Harry not being intentional, because, for all the ways that one can postulate that the events that followed benefited Quirrelmort, I think the fact that he lost his body, much of his power, all his servants, and a decade of time, should shift our prior considerably away from whatever happened that night being deliberate.
Again, I’ve cooled on this theory myself, so I think I probably agree with you in the broad sense that I don’t think this is exactly what happened. I’m still going to argue a few of the points you made though, because if we share an opinion but disagree on the justifications for it I still think that’s a disagreement we should try to heal. Better to be justified but coincidentally wrong than unjustified but coincidentally right, right?
Anyway, I agree with your first point. remember that I said:
Obviously that doesn’t lower the risk to zero, but it’s still a big reduction.
So what I’m saying is, having Voldemort hanging around in the wings won’t save you from everything, but it certainly won’t hurt your chances of survival. There’s nothing to say Voldemort hasn’t done little things to increase Harry’s survival like magically lower the risk of lightning strikes in Surrey. Wizards are more durable than muggles AND Harry also has Dumbledore’s protection AND there’s no absolute reason Voldemort has to use /Harry/ as his posterboy for good—he’s just the best available choice. So I don’t think the risk of Harry dying unexpectedly is great enough to invalidate this plan, although I do agree that it would be inconvenient if it happened.
Your second point, on the other hand, I have to disagree with prima facie. The wizarding world in general has no problem taking idiots as leaders—look at Fudge. If anything, a stupid figurehead would be BETTER, because it would give Quirrelmort more control. The only thing I can see being a barrier here is if Harry had some obvious, crippling mental condition. That sort of thing, though, WOULD have been obvious from a young age and as I’ve said, in that case he can tragically kill off Harry in such a way that Neville becomes the new posterboy. So again, whilst there is a risk here it is low, manageable and avoidable. I don’t think it’s enough to rule out this plan.
Your third argument. I’ve discussed the odds of success already, but I think the effort and time involved is an important point. You’re absolutely right that Voldemort could have taken the whole country over several times by now—he was winning when he disappeared, after all. The difference, though, is that before Voldemort would have had control over a broken, wretched country and a whole generation of wizards who had no goal except vengeance. On the other hand, if he fakes his own death at the eleventh hour, lets the goodies think they’ve won and then takes them over from the inside eleven years later, he now has control over a strong, united country AND their opposition. He’s unopposed because he controls both sides. I had only heard the term “super villain gambit” when I came up with this theory, but having read the article here on LW since I think you’ll be able to see the utility in this ploy. I think it’s worth ten extra years.
Finally, I should point out that I’m theorising he FAKED the Godric’s Hollow scene. If this is what happened then Voldemort wouldn’t have been hit by a rebounding curse that night and wouldn’t have lost his body or his power. Harry’s scar would have been intentionally created to mark him as the storybook hero everyone wanted and Harry would have been intentionally made a horcrux to in order to keep tabs on him. Also, in cannon horcruxes are close to indestructible: if this carries over in some form then it would be a good way to keep Harry safe.
To reiterate: I now doubt that this is what happened, because it looks like someone is trying to turn Harry evil.
Your second point, on the other hand, I have to disagree with prima facie. The wizarding world in general has no problem taking idiots as leaders—look at Fudge. If anything, a stupid figurehead would be BETTER, because it would give Quirrelmort more control.
Fudge isn’t particularly stupid, he’s just not particularly smart. He occupies a position of nominal power with significantly more competent people maneuvering around him, so he looks dim by comparison.
A not-very-bright figurehead would probably be better than a very clever one, but a legitimate dimwit, someone significantly less intelligent than average, not merely about average, would be very unlikely to make it into high office.
It’s possible that Voldemort faked the Godric’s hollow scene, but I seriously doubt it; real or fake it took too much time and resources for too little return for me to think it’s likely.
Imagine if Darth Vader had created the rebel alliance in order to funnel potential opponents into a harmless straw-opposition: he could let them attempt the occasional coup, always avoiding any real cost to himself and throw them the occasional minor victory to keep them on the hook.
According to the (admittedly non-canon) game The Force Unleashed, this is the original source of the Rebellion.
Something like this was done in the book ″Hair carpet” by German author Andreas Eschbach. Readworthy. I think it is generally wise to found the opposition by oneself. The government in 1984 did it as well.
I’d propose that he has a slightly different plan. I’m going to give you my pet theory here so hold onto your hats.
I think Quirrellmort probably decided at one point in the past that it would be way easier to take over magical Britain if everyone thought he’d already failed at doing so. I think he’s probably going for control of both sides. Imagine if Darth Vader had created the rebel alliance in order to funnel potential opponents into a harmless straw-opposition: he could let them attempt the occasional coup, always avoiding any real cost to himself and throw them the occasional minor victory to keep them on the hook.
To quote the chapter Contagious Lies:
That’s obviously not the same plan I’m talking about, but we can see that Quirrell has at least been thinking along similar lines to me. I can see a number of different ways he could have formulated this plan, but the simplest one seems to be:
Set up evil organisation and make an attempt at taking the country over. Allow everyone to gauge your intelligence from your actions, and to form the strongest alliance they are capable of forming against you. Everyone’s gauge of your intelligence will in fact be off by several points, since this isn’t really your big ploy—it’s actually a feint and you intend it to fail.
Fake your own defeat, simultaneously creating a (young, impressionable) hero for your opponents and removing yourself from all further suspicion, since almost everyone will think you’re dead.
Become a role model to the aforementioned young hero and mould him to your will. The kid is in the perfect position to take over the leadership of your opposition, so you now effectively have control of both major players in the game.
Win.
This is also foregrounded in Coordination Problems 2 and 3. Quirrell wants Harry to bind the population together under him and Harry makes a short speech about the dangers of group thinking. Quirrell’s reaction is one of anger—obviously he can’t have Harry breaking the monopoly that the Order of the Phoenix has on do-gooding, because that opens the field up for thousands of free-agent challengers to Quirrell’s power. It also mirrors Harry and Draco’s plan to play the two sides off against each other, except obviously Harry is aiming for world optimisation, not domination.
Finally, Dumbledore seems to think Voldemort is still alive, but he’s either pretending to have irrational justifications for this or he really does. I think it’s waaaay more likely that Dumbledore is just playing dumb, since he’s definitely smarter than he lets on, as evidenced by his and Snape’s big discussion about the Bellatrix thing, but I’m not entirely sure how much Dumbly knows for sure. Quirrell knows Dumbledore acts as though he thinks Voldemort is still alive. The real wildcard is Harry, because Quirrell probably wasn’t expecting him to be such a major agent in all this, he’s almost certainly playing Xanatos chess at this point trying to keep ahead of Harry and keep his plan alive.
Or at least that’s my theory.
If I were in Voldemort’s shoes I definitely wouldn’t want to stake decades of work on a plan that could be derailed by my “hero” simply dying in an accident, and that’s disregarding all the ways he could fail to be properly impressionable.
I don’t think either of those represent a big risk to him. Consider that he knows this particular child will be under Dumbledore’s constant care, and that Voldemort himself will always be available to step in and rescue the kid if there’s a risk of him dying early. Obviously that doesn’t lower the risk to zero, but it’s still a big reduction. Also, remember that during the “grooming” phase of this plan it’ll be an eleven-year-old against the most intelligent and insidious wizard in history: given what Voldemort did to Bellatrix it seems like he would be very confident of successfully being able to brainwash Harry.
So, the risk of Harry dying or being unbrainwashable seems low, but it also pays to consider that either contingency wouldn’t stop the plan in it’s tracks. If Harry dies (or has to be killed because he can’t be brainwashed) there are a whole battalion of potential replacements who could emerge as the new posterboy for good—Neville being clearly at the top of the list. Harry is the >best< choice, but he isn’t the only one.
I’ve actually cooled a little on this theory since the latest arc began because I think someone is clearly trying to turn Harry evil (see my theory from earlier in the thread). That said, I still think this would be a workable plan for attaining uncontested dark lordship.
So, basically the plot of 1984.
Oh is THAT the plot of 1984? I never bothered to read it. In that case, yes, I guess.
Did I really just get down-voted for my taste in literature? I’m sure it’s a very nice book and that you enjoyed it very much, Mr Down-voter, but I don’t see how there’s anything objectionable about it not appealing to me. I’ve been told before that I spend /too much/ time reading the classics so don’t worry that my intellectual growth has suffered. I prefer Huxley to Orwell, although the former seems to have been a little touched, judging from his correspondences.
I know I’m new to the forum and all that, but I feel like that shouldn’t be what the voting system is for. Surely in most circumstances up- and down- votes would be better used to indicate how /rational/ you think a post is, not how close to your own opinion it is. People’s karma score shouldn’t suffer just because their opinions differ from the majority. Anyway, regardless of what the actual forum guidelines are you’ll only see me disliking arguments that display poor logic. On that note, consider that down-vote down-voted.
Downvoted the grandparent comment just now for pointlessness (I wasn’t the original offender). It adds nothing to the discussion, and I generally downvote comments that I’d rather didn’t exist.
I retract my criticism, I hadn’t considered that utility.
Voldemort won’t always be able to step in and rescue him, he doesn’t have him under constant tabs, it’s not like he’d instantly know if something bad were about to happen to him.
There are other ways aside from being oppositional that Harry could have failed to be properly impressionable. For instance, he could have been extremely stupid (there would be no way to tell when he was a baby,) and it would have been impossible to set him up as a figurehead leader because he was too obviously incompetent.
In Voldemort’s place, I would never attempt a plan like this, because the odds of success, even at their best, do not justify sinking a couple of decades into its execution. Given the same amount of time, I’d expect him to be able to take over the country several times over. I could probably take over the country several times over in his place, given the same level of power along with an outside perspective on wizarding society, and I don’t think I’m as good at plotting as Quirrelmort.
I’m betting on what happened with Harry not being intentional, because, for all the ways that one can postulate that the events that followed benefited Quirrelmort, I think the fact that he lost his body, much of his power, all his servants, and a decade of time, should shift our prior considerably away from whatever happened that night being deliberate.
Again, I’ve cooled on this theory myself, so I think I probably agree with you in the broad sense that I don’t think this is exactly what happened. I’m still going to argue a few of the points you made though, because if we share an opinion but disagree on the justifications for it I still think that’s a disagreement we should try to heal. Better to be justified but coincidentally wrong than unjustified but coincidentally right, right?
Anyway, I agree with your first point. remember that I said:
So what I’m saying is, having Voldemort hanging around in the wings won’t save you from everything, but it certainly won’t hurt your chances of survival. There’s nothing to say Voldemort hasn’t done little things to increase Harry’s survival like magically lower the risk of lightning strikes in Surrey. Wizards are more durable than muggles AND Harry also has Dumbledore’s protection AND there’s no absolute reason Voldemort has to use /Harry/ as his posterboy for good—he’s just the best available choice. So I don’t think the risk of Harry dying unexpectedly is great enough to invalidate this plan, although I do agree that it would be inconvenient if it happened.
Your second point, on the other hand, I have to disagree with prima facie. The wizarding world in general has no problem taking idiots as leaders—look at Fudge. If anything, a stupid figurehead would be BETTER, because it would give Quirrelmort more control. The only thing I can see being a barrier here is if Harry had some obvious, crippling mental condition. That sort of thing, though, WOULD have been obvious from a young age and as I’ve said, in that case he can tragically kill off Harry in such a way that Neville becomes the new posterboy. So again, whilst there is a risk here it is low, manageable and avoidable. I don’t think it’s enough to rule out this plan.
Your third argument. I’ve discussed the odds of success already, but I think the effort and time involved is an important point. You’re absolutely right that Voldemort could have taken the whole country over several times by now—he was winning when he disappeared, after all. The difference, though, is that before Voldemort would have had control over a broken, wretched country and a whole generation of wizards who had no goal except vengeance. On the other hand, if he fakes his own death at the eleventh hour, lets the goodies think they’ve won and then takes them over from the inside eleven years later, he now has control over a strong, united country AND their opposition. He’s unopposed because he controls both sides. I had only heard the term “super villain gambit” when I came up with this theory, but having read the article here on LW since I think you’ll be able to see the utility in this ploy. I think it’s worth ten extra years.
Finally, I should point out that I’m theorising he FAKED the Godric’s Hollow scene. If this is what happened then Voldemort wouldn’t have been hit by a rebounding curse that night and wouldn’t have lost his body or his power. Harry’s scar would have been intentionally created to mark him as the storybook hero everyone wanted and Harry would have been intentionally made a horcrux to in order to keep tabs on him. Also, in cannon horcruxes are close to indestructible: if this carries over in some form then it would be a good way to keep Harry safe.
To reiterate: I now doubt that this is what happened, because it looks like someone is trying to turn Harry evil.
Fudge isn’t particularly stupid, he’s just not particularly smart. He occupies a position of nominal power with significantly more competent people maneuvering around him, so he looks dim by comparison.
A not-very-bright figurehead would probably be better than a very clever one, but a legitimate dimwit, someone significantly less intelligent than average, not merely about average, would be very unlikely to make it into high office.
It’s possible that Voldemort faked the Godric’s hollow scene, but I seriously doubt it; real or fake it took too much time and resources for too little return for me to think it’s likely.
According to the (admittedly non-canon) game The Force Unleashed, this is the original source of the Rebellion.
Something like this was done in the book ″Hair carpet” by German author Andreas Eschbach. Readworthy. I think it is generally wise to found the opposition by oneself. The government in 1984 did it as well.