Oh Taure, you shrewd motherfucker you. This is full of win, never thought of it this way.

 

So I was reading through the thread, and a couple of questions came I up that I thought were interesting.

1. So theoretically Voldemort wins the war in Britian: What now? Even if he has won the war in Britian, I do not believe he has enough manpower to invade anywhere else, especially if an united front is posted against him.


2. How would a traditional wizard war be fought? We are seeing a rebellion against an incompetent government which is shown as having no control over the situation (kinda stupid). If there was a war between two competent powerful nations, then would the war be fought the same? Probably not.

Thoughts?

 

I see it as happening very quickly, then going quiet. A lot of chaos and high casualties in the first couple of days, then everyone who survives goes underground. Society pretty much disappears, and it turns into a guerrilla war.

Of course you have the problem of Muggle involvement. Wizarding nations map pretty accurately on to Muggle ones, so far as we can tell. The countries are the same. Which implies that when nations go to war, it's wizards and Muggles at the same time. The concurrence of Grindelwald and WWII further adds to this. So I suppose in a "total war between nations" situation the wizards would get the Muggles involved too - somehow - and that would be a lot less quiet.

 

This I don't agree with. I think that muggle and wizard politics would not be entirely the same at all.

It is highly doubtful that Wizard and muggle politics correspond, with the deep seated hatred of muggles by some purebloods.

 

It depends on when magical society sprung up. As far as I can see from canon, wizards are seperate. They have their own bank, their own government, their own hospital, their own laws, and their own prison. If the House of Lords was vapourised at any point in the series, I doubt magical society would notice in the slightest.

If magical society evolved alongside muggle, then yes, the magical nations would likely map onto muggle. But if they evolved seperately, and in their own time, then I can see there being very little correlation. Mountains don't matter. Rivers and seas don't matter. Wizards have instant travel between any two points, so geography isn't likely to affect them.

I raised it in an idea in the plot bunny 2 thread, but I could see magical ministries being either roughly mapped to continents, or even globally. Maybe not, and maybe not from canon, but I could see it in a fic without thinking the author was retarded.

 

As far as I know the statute of secrecy came into effect about 1000 years ago. So the countries would most likely be similar to what they were at that point. However we see in the quidditch world cup that the countries like Bulgaria etc... All match up to modern countries. So I think that for the most part they will follow muggle boundaries but there will be some minor differences.

 

The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was enacted in 1689/1692, though I'd say it was merely the capstone of an unofficial process of withdraw which had been going on a lot longer.

Wizarding countries do seem to match their muggle equivalents in canon. Burkina Faso, for example, has a Ministry of Magic according to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, despite the fact that the muggle country was only renamed that in 1984 and only gained independence from France in 1960. There are also Indian and Pakistani Ministries of Magic if the wiki is to be believed.

 

This.

you can use GB as an example, but you have to remember it has perfect boundaries. Some countries might end along mountain ranges, or rivers, or just a specific point. Britain stops when it runs out of land (ignoring the England/Wales/Scotland divisions). And from what I can, there is no Scottish MoM, just the British one, and the Irish. No specifics on whether N. Ireland counts as Britain or Ireland.

 

Ah. I thought it was 1089 but my point still stands. For the most part the borders are the same with small differences like Trannsylvania.

 

Actually, the point doesn't still stand. Which was the point.

There are undoubtedly similarities, but there's nothing in canon to suggest Ireland couldn't be a unified magical nation, for example. And Sesc's mention of Germany is an awesome one - I'd love a fic to explore the Magical Principalities of Bavaria, Saxony, Wurtemmburg and Hannover. The shakeup of world politics with a magical spin - which countries hold on to imperial roots (Sweden or Spain, for example? Still a monarchy, once a world power - would make an interesting feature in a story if it clung to 18th-century fashions instead of elder ones as Britian appears to).

I also wonder what the significance of The Bill of Rights is with the International Statute of Secrecy? Could be an interesting avenue to explore.

 

I would consider a united Ireland to be a small difference. The point that I was making is that you wouldn't see drastic changes like a unified African magical government, or China wouldn't rule the rest of Asia.

Yes there may be differences like you suggest in Germany, or elsewhere, but for the most part they will be small.

 

I mean what, if ever? I seemed to have tremendous issues while reading HP on trying to figure out exactly what Voldemort's ambitions are. His obsession with Harry makes sense, given the prophecy and Voldemort's own fear of death - but why exactly did he ever want to be in control of Britain in the first place? He's just this unexplained villain. I'd like to read a fic that really explores Voldemort's motivations. If someone was able to write a story that details Voldemort's birth all the way to his death against Harry and actually develops reasons for Voldemort's actions in a way that isn't necessarily logical, but flows as a story would, I would cry.

 

My view of this whole thing is that the only real, honest-to-god wars wizards experience are the ones they have with other magical species. Regardless of motivation, the other magical species either lose or draw when coming up against them for one simple reason: wizards are their own supporting infrastructure. To wit, food, shelter, water, gear and accessories can be carried by the wizard without the need to have these goods ferried across the countryside.


That means that there are no supply lines for the enemy to harass, drastically reduced deployment costs, an almost negligible delay in reinforcing whatever positions need to be reinforced and an enviable ability to deny the enemy most indirect lines of attack, thereby obtaining & retaining the initiative.


Most other magical species, on the other hand, do have to deal with the classical everyday logistical problems we all know and love. And with the wizards' ability to apparate and disapparate fairly quickly, coming up with the idea of raiding the enemy supply lines and killing/burning everything in sight is obvious to even the dumbest ministry official you could find.


So there's an immediate advantage the wizards possess in any conflict, one which would be called unfair by anybody they oppose.

But what if they're up against other wizards?

First, I would like to point out something that should be fairly obvious from the word go: wizards rarely, if ever, go to war with other wizards. How so? Well first, immediately after the fall of Voldemort, why wasn't Magical Britain invaded by a 'peace-keeping' force when there would have been almost no resistance whatsoever to such an organised invasion?


Second, a relatively small group of Death Eaters managed to take over the government despite facing two organised militias, namely the aurors and the Order of the Phoenix. How come? Well, their opposition did not use lethal means of fighting as a first instead of a last resort. So while the Death Eaters could bribe their way back into the fray, their enemies caught a bad case of dead and were subsequently taken out of the fight.

It would be similar to fielding a bunch of people with riot guns against a squad of heavily armed veterans, not something you do if you have even the most rudimentary idea of how to fight a deadly enemy.

So what are we actually looking at when it comes to a wizard war like the one in canon? There is one type of warfare that corresponds to that seen in the books: a tribal war. Simply put, you have three distinct 'tribes', the purebloods, the half-bloods and the muggleborn.

The purebloods are losing the fertility battle badly, with having more than two children being seemingly rare amongst the purebloods while muggleborns and half-bloods form a pretty substantial chunk of the society the purebloods are supposed to dominate.


The half-bloods, what with being the offspring of either or both tribes, strive to remain largely neutral as a group and leave the decision of who to support up to the individuals.

The muggleborns are, despite being somewhat numerous, also the least organised of the two factions. They do, however, know about technology and how to use it, which may counter the penalties imposed by ignorance and lack of organisation if used correctly.

The purebloods, in an effort to maintain their position as local rulers, raid the muggleborns and their affiliated half-bloods, killing them and taking their stuff. The muggleborn and half-bloods, along with a few pureblood sympathisers, retaliate. Then the purebloods retaliate in turn. And thus, a cycle of violence is born. The purebloods massacre a few muggleborn to cull the numbers and the muggleborn kill a pureblood scion or two to help their sympathisers gain the political influence & prestige needed to deny the belligerent purebloods access to key support structures. The purebloods try and stay one step ahead in this game by killing the sympathisers, though this costs them a lot of support and risks the lives of those involved rather heavily too.


This continues, ad nauseam, for several years/decades/centuries, a recurring process that reinforces itself a little bit more with every passing cycle until one side loses or the cycle is broken somehow.

This is how war is fought between wizards; local, tribal and personal. Murder, rape, torture, ambush, it all becomes fair game the longer the fight goes on, slowly depleting the numbers until the purebloods either up the number of sprogs that make it to adulthood or die out. Because that's how the game works out; numbers win out every time. The tribe with the highest number of births wins. And the purebloods are competing against a potentially massive number of incoming muggleborn, should a particularly shrewd muggleborn switch all the sperm in a sperm bank with that of his and his mates'.


So after the traumas of the twentieth century, wizarding Britain's pureblood base is severely depleted while all those magic-affiliated families and family members that went into hiding amongst the muggles cheerfully continued to have kids. By the time the final battle rolls around, the purebloods are on their last legs, desperate and willing to gamble all in a final fight over whose tribe wins/loses out against the other.


Either the battle for/against Voldemort ultimately gave the purebloods control over the wizarding world and the muggleborn-half blood females needed to replenish pureblood numbers quickly, eventually allowing the cycle to restart later on, or the belligerent purebloods lost and the sympathising purebloods-half-bloods that chose the muggleborn side of things became the new dominant political force, since their sympathetic stance allowed them to break the cycle and start the replenishment of the three tribes whilst dealing with any stragglers from the opposing side.

As for the kinds of war that we are more familiar with, I don't really remember any references to wars between wizarding nations.


That could be why Dark Lords exist, in the end; they are proxies through which an enemy country can undermine its opponents without risking an all-out war of magic like they probably had long ago. Given how few references there are about wizard v wizard combat (actual, bona fide combat, not that prissy duelling) to anything bar fights against Dark Lordsz, those early wars must have left quite an impression.

I believe that Wiz v Wiz is simply impossible on a larger scale, since given the mind-boggling array of choices magic presents individual wizards & witches for fighting other people/creatures/thigs, mounting an effective attack/defence to counter even just the most likely probabilities would be an exercise in frustration. And if you throw units like Voldemort or Dumbledore into the mix....

Needless to say, boosting internal strife into proxy wars would definitely be the way to go as far as wizarding warfare goes. Otherwise, the results could potentially be bad, as in 'world war 2' bad. Imagine, the collateral damage of fiendfyre in urban London. How many thousands could potentially die by that one spell before it dissipated or got stopped somehow? Or what would happen if a smart bugger stuck a portkey onto a 5 megaton warhead and magically activated it before the portkey itself activated? Oops, bye bye FOB Hogwarts, hello smoking, weirdly glowing crater where a part of Scotland used to be. And that's just the dumb ideas. Imagine the ones someone like Grindelwald could come up with... No, proxy is probably the final word in wizarding warfare.