I was reading through the expanded epilogue after the strange desire of doing a Dark!Harry story post DH, epilogue included and something came up.

After looking back at things it seems that the whole series is not about Harry, it is about the Weasley family. And I believe that the reason for that is that JKR was dirt poor before she started writing HP and she can relate very well with them.

1. Harry meets the Weasleys, who take over his life from the second he steps into the magical world. (Hagrid and shopping don't count)
2. Harry's best friend Won-Won leads to him basically being adopted by Mollywobbles and her spawn.
3. Harry saves Gin-slut from a well deserved death, a ''lovely soul bond is formed blah blah

And many other minor points throughout the books.

But the big issue, and the one that drew my attention to the matter is Harry's family tree. I don't know if anyone mentioned this before but every bloody important person seems to be married into the unholy Weasley clan.

Fleur Delacour, from wonderful, gorgeous, aristocratic French marries the ''coolness'' that is Bill Weasley. Hermione marries Won-Won, Harry marries the STD Weasley. Basically every important character has married into the clan, ready to pump out more freckled abominations. The Noble House of Potter has gone to hell, the Delacour family ancestors must be rolling in their graves.

All that is missing, thankfully, is to have Arthur Weasley as MoM.

What do you people think?

 

As depressing as the notion is, I think you're on to something. Harry may be the title character, but he's nothing more than a lens through which to watch the Weasley's.

In a really twisted way though, you have to admire the hicks. Without a redeeming quality between them, they managed to snare the most powerful, the most intelligent (canon-wise), and most gorgeous wizard and witches into their hovel. Not to mention that Molly Wobbles took down Bella, and as a family represent the surviving core of the Order of the Phoenix.

Honestly, it's enough to make you heave.

 

Well, in a way, it's actually pretty fitting.

Harry has a lot of things: wealth, power, fame, etc. But he's absolutely miserably until he meets the Weasleys.

After all, the Weasleys represent everything Harry does not have:

-close-nit, big family
-warm, loving parents



I feel like the issue isn't so much the focus of the story on the Weasleys, so much as the moral of the story. And one of Rowling's morals (aside from the good > evil thing...) is that money/fame isn't everything, and that love is of paramount importance.

Thus, I don't feel that she created the Weasleys as a means of personal insertion/relation to the story.

Rather, the family is a good way to get across her message of the importance of love/loyalty. After all, Rowling's intended audience comprises of impressionable little minds, and she probably feels a sort of responsibility to preach nice, fuzzy messages to them.

 

As I read through the books, although I was frustrated at the way Molly wanted to turn Harry into Ginny's love-slave, by making him meek and docile, the Weasleys were just there.

But seriously, looking back at it, the Weasleys are the family JKR has invested most in. So many pages wasted on them, when there were so many others worth taking the spotlight.

Do you think her being poor had any relevance to the matter?

EDIT: Just saw the post above

That is just the problem though. You see, her audience is no longer formed of impressionable little minds. The Philosopher's Stone came out in 1997. That is a 10 year span. People who started reading Harry Potter then are much different now. I think she failed to realize that her readers grew up as she wrote the story.

Although I loathe to make the comparison, Tolkien wrote the Hobbit as a book for children, and Lord of the Rings adjusted for the children who read the Hobbit, but were now adults. As a result the Trilogy is far more complex than the Hobbit.

 

I guess it wasn't so much a failure in realization as it was an unflexibility in the plotline.

She had everything planned out at the beginning: despite the years it took to write the books, she was still following her basic outline of what the plot/morals/purpose of the book would be.

The series began with children as the intended audience, and didn't really evolve during the long writing period: at the end, the children were still the intended audience.


I don't think the comparison to Tolkien is entirely fair. There was nearly a 20 year gap between the Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy. Tolkien intended the latter to be for older, more mature audiences, and the former to be for children. But Rowling never had that shift in intent.

It is, then, understandable that to the very end, despite canon Harry's maturation into an adult, the ideological undercurrent of the story is still focused on the lessons to be passed on to a much younger audience.

 

I forget were I heard it, but I believe that The Hobbit was actually written for Tolkien's son in World War I or II (I forget) were each letter comprised of a chapter to alleviate his mind from the dreariness of war. Interesting trivia if nothing else.

But I agree in a way that Rowling's audience (us) grew up, but honestly, after all the bitching everyone does (including me) about the storyline, did you really expect anything different? If anything, HBP was a surprise with the Horcruxes, but in the end it was a children's series; just a long and drawn out one.

Besides, against the grain of everyone and everything here, I like the Weasley's; the first three books showed them to be humorous, and upon rereading the series, they've brought a good few laughs out of me of things I didn't catch when I was younger. Its actually a slightly comical series in the beginning.

But I fucking hate fangirls.

 

JKR didn't have that shift in intent because she failed to realize that the majority of her readers were the same ones who picked up the first book ten years ago. While her sticking with her original goal of writing a children's series is commendable, let's face it, JKR doesn't have the same level of experience in writing as Tolkien to be flexible enough to have adjusted the series as she went along.

When put into perspective, yes, the comparison is somewhat unfair. Tolkien was a well-respected professor of literature at Oxford; he also created several complex languages in addition to the more well known "Elvish" of the Lord of the Rings universe. Rowling just sliced and diced a bit Latin in HP.

 

I know the comparison is unfair. If the people at lotrplaza would hear me besmirching the Master's name as such I would be crucified. I seriously dislike the Weasleys, save for the twins, so my opinion is slightly biased.

However, we deviated slightly Swimdraconian and Sanctimonius! Do you agree/disagree with my original assessment of the Weasleys?

 

They are quite frankly the most annoying family in HP verse. MollyWobbles killing Bellatrix was a joke and the worst part of the whole series. If I ever write a fanfic there would be very few Weasley survivors or any at all.


Homer

 

​

 

Yet everythig she does is about money and fame. JKR is a hilarious spree of contradictions all thrown together.

 

One of the frustrating things about the books is that, despite the time the Weasleys spent 'hogging the screen', so to speak, Ginny was still practically unknown when she swooped in and made Harry's chest monster go apeshit*. If JKR was going to insist on that wretched pairing, at least she could have set it up properly.

Anyway... I don't think it was ever explicitly pointed out in the books, but this generation of Weasleys is also related to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black through the Prewetts. Lucretia Black married Ignatius Prewett and we know Molly was a Prewett. Since Percy's middle name is Ignatius (not the most common name, even among wizards), it makes the connection fairly obvious.

Yet another link to a famous and wealthy family for the dirt poor but well-connected Weasley tribe. They're like the ultimate star fuckers of the Wizarding World.

*That is to say, when Molly (or Ginny, at Molly's encouragement) started dosing Harry with 'love' potions. I don't care what anyone says, this is canon.

 

That brings new ideas to bear. Harry Potter realizes the extent of the Weasley Octopus spreading its diseased tentacles throughout the magical world and vows to eliminate any wizard or witch that has any relation to the Weasleys. Erase their names from history. Start the Weasley genocide.

Emperor Potter in his tower above Diagon Alley speaks into the fireplace:

"Auror Moody, execute order 66."
"It will be done my lord."

 

Oh no. He did not have wealth, power and fame before he met the Weasleys. He was a miserable twit of an abused child. The joy at knowing the Weasleys had nothing to do with how things like wealth, power and fame wasn't what he wanted. The joy he felt was because he didn't have a mother figure or a father figure or friends or anything. He thirsted and was happy with muddy water when he could have had sparkly mineral water.
Quite an important difference.

To the OP, agreed, if Rowling had her way we'd see the Weasleys controlling the magical world within 10 years through the power of spawning billions of cool and unique mary sues.
Now the moral of the story is obviously that poor people have big hearts and character. Then the question obviously is, why are people poor in the first place? Because obviously poor people will quickly marry themselves into the rich and powerful.. not.

 

This is the main reason for my dislike of the Weasley family

They are like the sun with which every sub plot orbits.

Book 1: Harrys best friend is Ron, Bill was the last Gryfindor seeker that had any success

Book 2: Ginny in the chamber and being tricked by a book, going to the Weasleys house, Rons wand and their flying car that got Ron and Harry to school.

Book 3: Weasleys go to Egypt, Sirius spots scabbers in the paper, Fred and George give over the map to Harry

Book 4: Weasleys go to the World Cup, take Harry and things kick off. Harry falls out with Ron, Ron in the Lake, Harry giving his winnings to the Weasley twins

Book 5: Arthurs injury, Weasleys inhabiting the Order headquaters, Molly being over protective of Harry, Fred and Georges dramatic escape from Umbridge,
Percy being a tool, Ron as keeper, Ginny at the DoM

Book 6: WWW opens, they suddenly supply the ministry with basic defence attire that surely have been invented already, they supply the dark powder that lets Draco do his stuff, Ginny and Harry, Ginny as a brilliant replacement for Harry seeker, Ginny in the slug club

Book 7: Hermione gets Ron, Harry gets Ginny, Fred dies, George loses an ear, Molly and Arthur trying to find out what the trio are doing and stop them, the Weasley wedding, Murial and the goblin tiara which crops up later to explain Goblin property laws.

Obviously some of these are reasonable and to be expected, but just about everything that happens in the books involve the Weasley family and it is annoying and one dimensional. But why does it all have to do with the Weasleys? Why did it have to be Arthur that got attacked? It could have been anyone Harry knew from the order! Why did scabbers have to reside with the Weasleys and they go to Egypt. I know it is a kids book and easier to understand when everything is kept amongst a few core characters but it makes me not like the Weasleys

 

One little peeve. It was Charlie who was the last decent seeker, not Bill. You're right though. At the rate she was going with the Weasley worship, I wonder why she bothered to name the books Harry Potter.

1. The Weasleys: An introduction
2. The Weasleys: A daughter in peril
3. The Weasleys: A dangerous pet
4. The Weasleys: The business (I)
5. The Weasleys: Molly taking over management of a house she had no right to touch with her chubby little fingers
6. The Weasleys: The Business (II)
7. The Weasleys: A string of suspicious marriages

It seriously pissed me off in the 5th book were housewife Weasley was acting as if she owned Grimmauld Place. Honestly, the differences between a hovel and a manor are easy to spot, and as such she could not have been confused, despite her minor intellect.

Sirius should have slapped her back to the cooker when she started prancing around his stuff.

EDIT: Never mind, we know why Molly was ''Cleaning up'' Number 12 Grimmauld. She was stealing the family silver. It is obviously the only way she was able to pay for a wedding later on...

 

Calling it "JKR's obsession with the Weasleys" is somewhat fitting, but I see it more as JKR's obsession with giving Harry a 'family' and demonstrating just how different they are from the Dursleys, Harry's other 'family'.

As bad as it is, I think JKR gave the Weasleys a decent balance between interesting family members with varying personalities (lots of people hate Ron/Ginny/Molly while liking the twins/Bill/Charlie).

And JKR's obsession with the Weasleys has got nothing on fangirls' obsession with the Malfoys.

 

If people start comparing JKR with rabid fangirls, she has seriously hit rock bottom.

 

She already has. A long time ago. When HBP came out. I'm still piss about that book.