Decided to create a thread on this since it was in the survey and I think it's a fairly interesting topic. Do horcruxes induce insanity? If they do why is that a good element of a story, why is it a bad element?

Personally I feel horcruxes don't induce insanity or perhaps more specifically, that they shouldn't induce insanity. I fully understand why people write this trope in and even feel it makes some sense, if we acknowledge the existence of souls it makes sense that damaging yours is really quite bad for you, but there's one major problem; I feel like it's a complete cop-out. Voldemort was supposed to be a genius from a very young age, disturbed but brilliant and Rowling utterly failed to reflect this in any of the actions he takes or decisions he makes in the books. The "horcrux induced insanity" trope exists, or so I feel, primarily to make excuses for Rowling and reconcile the Voldemort she tells us about with the Voldemort she shows us. As a result I also feel it indicates a sort of obsession with canon i.e. "I want my Voldemort to be smart so I need to justify his behavior in canon" rather than just disregarding the parts of canon that don't fit with the view/point of the author.

Interested to hear what other people think since the poll on the survey showed a pretty good spread.

 

The point of the trope is to make 'Tom Riddle' a good guy. Canon Voldemort isn't insane, he's very cunning and capable, but he's got an unhealthy fixation on Harry who keeps thwarting him despite his best efforts. The fanon idiot Voldemort has nothing to do with this trope I think.

Horcruxes don't induce insanity, but you've got to be a bit off in order to think he's a good idea to make one.

 

There's no evidence from canon that making horcruxes induces insanity or mental degeneration of any kind. There is a reinforced view that "splitting the soul" is a vile and unnatural act, but I think this has more to do with the requirement of making a horcrux (murder) rather than any impact of the act of doing so on one's mental faculties or magical ability. Voldemort made his first horcrux while he was still at Hogwarts, and given what we're told in canon about his intelligence I think we can safely assume he would've done his research.

I don't think Voldemort was afraid of physical death to the point that he would be willing to sacrifice his sanity to get there, though I'm not sure if there's any firm evidence for this in canon. (After all, succumbing to insanity of this kind may very well be considered another form of death.) If one agrees with this assumption, then Voldemort making horcruxes to begin with in a world where they induce insanity is hard to understand. It could be explained if Voldemort had simply been ignorant of the hazards of making a horcrux, but "splitting the soul" sounds extreme enough that even we're suspicious of the potential consequences of doing so out-of-universe. Voldemort lacking this basic awareness runs contrary to what we're told about his character.

In canon the case is pretty clear - Voldemort is who he is for reasons that are unrelated to his creation of horcruxes. JKR said in an interview that it was because he was conceived in a loveless union, but you can come up with some alternative explanation for it which doesn't have the same problems that horcrux-induced insanity does.

I think this trope comes from a desire to keep the canon universe as intact as possible while simultaneously making Voldemort a more sympathetic character. Instead of rewriting the history of the First Wizarding War or providing context that's missing in canon that would justify Voldemort's behavior, the author simply says Voldemort was insane and therefore his behavior doesn't need to be explained. I suppose it could work for some stories, but it's been done many times before. It's hard to read a story like this unless it's especially well written and it has something new to offer.

We're never actually shown (as opposed to told) much in canon to support the notion that Voldemort is very cunning. Most of the evidence for his cunning comes from what we know about him in his Hogwarts years. All of what happens later can be explained (and probably ought to be explained) by his magical ability instead.

 

I think that any insanity of Voldemort's after his resurrection would be more due to the time that he spent as a spirit, alone and bodiless then to his horcruxes. There must be some negative draw back to the creation of horcruxes, or every two bit dark wizard would have one, but I think that the negative effects are felt more in the soul then in the body.

The fact that remorse is a requirement to undo the process of horcrux creation would suggest to me that a lack of remorse and perhaps empathy would be required to make one, so perhaps the creation of a horcrux simply emphasizes certain traits in the creator, while suppressing others that could lead to it's destruction.

 

This is somewhat more plausible (still has no evidence supporting it in canon), but many stories use the horcrux-induced insanity as an excuse to wave away Voldemort's actions during the First Wizarding War as well, a purpose which this explanation wouldn't serve.

This is better explained if creating a horcrux is a difficult enough task that only very few dark wizards (ones close to Voldemort's level of skill) have the magical ability required to do so.

What I recall from canon is that it's not remorse in itself which undoes the process, it's remorse for the particular murder that was used to make the horcrux in question. One can be capable of feeling remorse in general but not feel any remorse for a specific murder, which would be enough to fulfill the requirements of horcrux creation. I could be wrong about that, so feel free to correct me on this point.

 

I don't necessarily agree with this, both in canon and usually in fanon the creation of horcruxes is an obscure and ludicrously dark art. Magick Moste Evile literally wouldn't speak more on the subject iirc. Basically the creation of horcruxes is a lost art that is, even in ignorance, considered so despicable even supremely dark wizards are disgusted by it. There doesn't need to be a drawback to prevent everyone from having one ,since the knowledge is incredibly obscure and the act itself considered abhorrent to even dark wizards.

We can however perhaps derive some implication that there is a drawback by the fact that even supremely dark wizards seem to abhor the practice, Rowling doesn't give us a strong religious background for wizards so we can guess that they don't have such a reason for finding the "splitting of the soul" to be abhorrent, thus we can assume some other reason, perhaps the dire consequences thereof, lead to the negative opinion of horcruxes even among dark wizards.

 

I don't know if it was ever stated that Lord Voldemort ever acted irrationally during the first war. Except for the whole prophecy thing, but Voldemort was still attacking some of his most powerful enemies while trying to prevent the prophecy, so I'm unsure about his sanity.
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As powerful as Voldemort would eventually become, there is no indication that a 16 year old Tom Riddle would be more powerful then an older, moderately strong dark wizard, and as Tom found the book detailing the creation process (as far as we know) in the restricted section of a school library, I don't know how lost the art could be. Then again, most dark wizards who could have created one would hardly advertise the fact that they did so we don't know how many immortal dark wizards and witches there are in the Wizarding World.

 

JKR has stated out of universe that the process of creating the soul container requires one to commit a "horrific act". She never makes it explicit what this act involves, but if it is sufficiently horrible then that may be sufficient reason for even dark wizards to shy away from creating a horcrux.

It's not definitive evidence, but Griselda Marchbanks (Dumbledore's NEWT examiner in Transfiguration and Charms) states that in his examination Dumbledore did things with a wand she'd never seen before. Dumbledore and Voldemort are of a similar level of skill, and Dumbledore himself says that Tom Riddle was the brightest student to ever attend Hogwarts (perhaps out of a sense of modesty, but still), so there is at least an indication that 16 year old Tom Riddle would be able to accomplish what "moderately strong dark wizards" could not.

 

Per Dumbledore in HBP:

The horcruxes never affected Voldemort's ability to think. Voldemort was always the way he is, he just hid it better during school.

The idea that Tom Riddle was a perfectly reasonable guy until he split his soul is a trope that exists in order to enable Harry/Tom Riddle slash.

 

And for that we can all be grateful. If his soul was the only thing Tom was interested in splitting in half, the fandom would be much diminished.

 

Which handwaves one of the bigger obstacles to Riddle having romantic feelings of any sort. It would make for a more interesting story should Tom seek to become less reprehensible for reasons of his own.

Like Dumbledore, who seemed like he was well on his way to becoming a dark lord himself, and then chose otherwise, after which he defeated Grindelwald.

 

Again, I feel like this is a case of what Rowling tells us not lining up with what Rowling shows us. After OotP we see precious few examples of Voldemorts brain or magical powers, unless we count being able to throw around the killing curse a few thousand times as magical prowess and we all know how terrible an idea "magical exhaustion" is. I also seem to recall the horcrux induced insanity trope spawning from dark-harry rather than slash. Created to give Harry a reason, beyond being batshit-crazy, to join Voldemort and the Death Eaters; though I may simply not recall that murky era of Fanfiction as clearly as I thought I did.

 

For: If your soul is your personality (as seems to be the case in the HP universe) then splitting/harming/manipulating your soul should logically have some impact on said personality - whether that includes going insane or not.

Against: Both Dumbledore and Rowling (Rowling squared) says no; Voldemort was always like that.

Pick your side gents.

 

Unaided flight is a good example of Voldemort's magical skill.

 

Adding to Scarat's unaided flight, there's also the Taboo. Of course, Voldemort creates this after he takes the ministry, so it may be that the Ministry's authority somehow grants him the power to do this. Still, it's a pretty impressive spell, covering the entire nation. Also, I think infiltrating and taking over the ministry already counts as at least good planning and probably skill as well.

Another example is Voldemort's performance during the Deathly Hallows "seven Potters" battle. He kills Mad-Eye Moody easily enough, and surely would have killed Harry himself if his wand had not unleashed magic spontaneously.

We also see that Voldemort was able to break in to Grindelwald's cell. It may be that it wasn't protected strongly, but that seems unlikely; wouldn't Grindelwald have had followers who would have wanted to break him out after he lost?

Finally, Voldemort was able to duel McGonagall, Slughorn and Shacklebolt all at once -- while they were protected by Harry's sacrifice. Three powerful sorcerers were totally unable to cause any harm to him even when he literally couldn't hit them. And even with this protection, Voldemort finally defeats all 3 simultaneously in a single burst of rage.

 

Interesting, I don't remember that at all from the books. I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned. Dumbledore always seemed to encourage the use of his name, Voldemort, instead of You-Know-Who.

 

I always assumed the Taboo was piggybacking off the Trace - still a skillful piece of magic, but an enhancement of the work of others, not something entirely his own invention.