If I were the Volturi, and had complete knowledge of everything the readers know (or even everything Adelaide knows) I would be very concerned about the fact that a supernaturally effective communicator who was also an Alpha’s imprint was working on a way to subvert the influence of my primary mechanism for ensuring the loyalty of a mass of other witches and werewolves.
That is, I don’t think it would be at all implausible for Elspeth to work out a heuristic for neutralizing Chelsea’s ability—not by supernaturally negating it, but by developing her self-awareness via the exercise of explicitly formalizing the interactions among her cognitive subagents; by prioritizing what she knows about her values over what she experiences about them (or, to use Alicorn’s terminology: by choosing to endorse the parts of her psyche that align with her pre-Chelsea values and repudiate the parts that don’t) and consequently behaving in ways consistent with what she believes to be most importantly true of her, rather than consistent with how she feels).
And if Elspeth does develop a heuristic for doing that, she can communicate that heuristic to others very effectively. That’s what she does, after all: she is a supernaturally powerful outbound communicator.
And, well, if she communicates that heuristic to the newly Chelseaed witches effectively enough, then some of them may well manage to do the same thing. And if she does the same to Jake, he is pretty much immediately on her side, and presumably a sizable chunk of wolves go along with him (especially since the wolves’ telepathic network will propagate her heuristic like a virus through Windows).
And the Volturi suddenly have a collection of powerful enemies right in their midst, and for every “turned” vampire there are another half dozen who haven’t turned but they can’t necessarily trust. Their power structure doesn’t collapse, but it certainly gets wounded, which can easily give Elspeth, Jake, and whoever ends up turned a chance to get away.
And after that, well, it’s basically a magical propaganda war.
Yes, this is probably (and hopefully) what will happen if there’s to be an escape for Elspeth and potential vampires and wolves. I wonder how much Aro knows about Adelaide’s interactions with Elspeth. Her judgement on the risk Elspeth poses may be clouded by her interest in developing the usefulness of a witch’s power, but I doubt Aro has enough interest in that or enough tolerance for Adelaide to permit this huge risk. I think it’s very unlikely that with all his wisdom and experience he wouldn’t realize the risk, if he knew what Adelaide currently knows of Elspeth. If he did, he would probably order her and Jacob killed, immediately.
So I think it’s safe to assume Adelaide hasn’t shared her information on Elspeth with him since she learned of her ability to start behaving like she did before Chelsea affected her relationships, at will. If I remember correctly, we haven’t learned much of Adelaide’s life before she joined the Volturi, and so we can’t know for sure how much of her behavior is caused by the effect Chelsea may have had on her. Perhaps she isn’t loyal to the Volturi by her original values, and now that Chelsea may be concentrating more on Elspeth and the newly seeded witches, those are starting to come through, allowing her to refrain from reporting to Aro.
I imagine Aro would be worried enough to take action if he knew of Chelsea’s continuously failed attempts to keep Elspeth’s values of her relationships in check, too. Maybe she’s too busy being afraid of what he may do if there’s reason to believe her witchcraft isn’t as infallible as previously believed, to consider whether Elspeth can pass the ability onto others or not. Just recently they learned of Bella, who she can’t affect at all, and now Elspeth is, to Chelsea’s knowledge, seemingly somehow able to restore much of her previous values, despite increased maintenance. She’s probably scared out of wits of being deemed dispensable, irrational though it is, as neither Bella or Elspeth has any means to spread their immunities to others, yet.
If Elspeth is to do this, she will have to do it all very quickly at the right opportunity, and before Aro or anyone who would think the risk not worth anything she contributes gains the knowledge Adelaide and Chelsea posses. The Volturi have ways to detect what she is doing or about to do if she takes her time spreading her heuristic; Alice will for example likely see many vampires fleeing or rebelling—unless there are wolves or half-kinds nearby her or the subjects of her visions—when she makes the decision to spread it, or even as a result of her sessions with Adelaide, before she makes the final decision. Alice may however think about this before she informs Aro or anyone else in the Volturi, and decide to avoid doing that and instead flee together with Jasper when the others do, especially if she sees herself and Jasper flee in her initial visions.
since she learned of her ability to start behaving like she did before Chelsea affected her relationships, at will.
Well, even if I’m right, it’s not clear that Aro is likely to believe it. It is quite an inferential jump from “can talk to herself” to “can undo the effects of Chelsea’s magic,” after all, and we are not always aware of the implications of what we know.
Unrelatedly, but for example: it occurred to me the other day that if someone had told me a few months ago that we would soon be receiving the first confirmed signals from a technological artifact outside the solar system, I would not have believed them, despite that fact being trivially derivable as the highest-probability outcome of things I knew about.
If I were the Volturi, and had complete knowledge of everything the readers know (or even everything Adelaide knows) I would be very concerned about the fact that a supernaturally effective communicator who was also an Alpha’s imprint was working on a way to subvert the influence of my primary mechanism for ensuring the loyalty of a mass of other witches and werewolves.
That is, I don’t think it would be at all implausible for Elspeth to work out a heuristic for neutralizing Chelsea’s ability—not by supernaturally negating it, but by developing her self-awareness via the exercise of explicitly formalizing the interactions among her cognitive subagents; by prioritizing what she knows about her values over what she experiences about them (or, to use Alicorn’s terminology: by choosing to endorse the parts of her psyche that align with her pre-Chelsea values and repudiate the parts that don’t) and consequently behaving in ways consistent with what she believes to be most importantly true of her, rather than consistent with how she feels).
And if Elspeth does develop a heuristic for doing that, she can communicate that heuristic to others very effectively. That’s what she does, after all: she is a supernaturally powerful outbound communicator.
And, well, if she communicates that heuristic to the newly Chelseaed witches effectively enough, then some of them may well manage to do the same thing. And if she does the same to Jake, he is pretty much immediately on her side, and presumably a sizable chunk of wolves go along with him (especially since the wolves’ telepathic network will propagate her heuristic like a virus through Windows).
And the Volturi suddenly have a collection of powerful enemies right in their midst, and for every “turned” vampire there are another half dozen who haven’t turned but they can’t necessarily trust. Their power structure doesn’t collapse, but it certainly gets wounded, which can easily give Elspeth, Jake, and whoever ends up turned a chance to get away.
And after that, well, it’s basically a magical propaganda war.
Yes, this is probably (and hopefully) what will happen if there’s to be an escape for Elspeth and potential vampires and wolves. I wonder how much Aro knows about Adelaide’s interactions with Elspeth. Her judgement on the risk Elspeth poses may be clouded by her interest in developing the usefulness of a witch’s power, but I doubt Aro has enough interest in that or enough tolerance for Adelaide to permit this huge risk. I think it’s very unlikely that with all his wisdom and experience he wouldn’t realize the risk, if he knew what Adelaide currently knows of Elspeth. If he did, he would probably order her and Jacob killed, immediately.
So I think it’s safe to assume Adelaide hasn’t shared her information on Elspeth with him since she learned of her ability to start behaving like she did before Chelsea affected her relationships, at will. If I remember correctly, we haven’t learned much of Adelaide’s life before she joined the Volturi, and so we can’t know for sure how much of her behavior is caused by the effect Chelsea may have had on her. Perhaps she isn’t loyal to the Volturi by her original values, and now that Chelsea may be concentrating more on Elspeth and the newly seeded witches, those are starting to come through, allowing her to refrain from reporting to Aro.
I imagine Aro would be worried enough to take action if he knew of Chelsea’s continuously failed attempts to keep Elspeth’s values of her relationships in check, too. Maybe she’s too busy being afraid of what he may do if there’s reason to believe her witchcraft isn’t as infallible as previously believed, to consider whether Elspeth can pass the ability onto others or not. Just recently they learned of Bella, who she can’t affect at all, and now Elspeth is, to Chelsea’s knowledge, seemingly somehow able to restore much of her previous values, despite increased maintenance. She’s probably scared out of wits of being deemed dispensable, irrational though it is, as neither Bella or Elspeth has any means to spread their immunities to others, yet.
If Elspeth is to do this, she will have to do it all very quickly at the right opportunity, and before Aro or anyone who would think the risk not worth anything she contributes gains the knowledge Adelaide and Chelsea posses. The Volturi have ways to detect what she is doing or about to do if she takes her time spreading her heuristic; Alice will for example likely see many vampires fleeing or rebelling—unless there are wolves or half-kinds nearby her or the subjects of her visions—when she makes the decision to spread it, or even as a result of her sessions with Adelaide, before she makes the final decision. Alice may however think about this before she informs Aro or anyone else in the Volturi, and decide to avoid doing that and instead flee together with Jasper when the others do, especially if she sees herself and Jasper flee in her initial visions.
Well, even if I’m right, it’s not clear that Aro is likely to believe it. It is quite an inferential jump from “can talk to herself” to “can undo the effects of Chelsea’s magic,” after all, and we are not always aware of the implications of what we know.
Unrelatedly, but for example: it occurred to me the other day that if someone had told me a few months ago that we would soon be receiving the first confirmed signals from a technological artifact outside the solar system, I would not have believed them, despite that fact being trivially derivable as the highest-probability outcome of things I knew about.