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Are you guys actually talking about offing one of the most powerful beings in Winter and talking about net gain? Really?

Here's a thought experiment: After Lea's reeducation Mab offs Maeve and replaces her. The events of Changes come around. Harry and Co. die in a blaze of glory because Lea wasn't free to act. She couldn't kill any LotON , turn anyone into hounds, enchant Susan's clothes, etc. etc. etc.

 

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What if that isn't going to matter, though? We're a little over halfway to the apocalyptic trilogy at this point, so we know shit is going to go down in the future. Maybe, maybe a decade or two from now, which is nothing to someone like Mab.

Lea won't be free to interact with humans is she becomes Lady Winter, sure, but what happens if instead of trying to take the world on by themselves, the Black Council rips open the Outer Gates and unleashes the Outsiders instead? I'd be willing to bet the ability to enchant clothing would be a helluva lot less valuable than a godly powerboost then.

 

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Maeve's power is her own + the Winter Lady mantle.
Lea has been directly stated to be the second most powerful Sidhe in Mab's Court.
Maeve had trouble controlling Lloyd Slate.
Therefore, Lea + Winter Lady mantle > Maeve + Winter Lady mantle.

Sounds like a net gain for Winter to me.

 

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In terms of power, sure. As someone quoted above, more power = more restrictions. Maybe Mab doesn't want to corral Lea quite that much.

Not to mention, just a little while back Lea went under some... reeducation after she got a little uppity and sought to overthrow Mab. This was because of the athame, yes? Without the Winter Lady's mantle, Lea is the second most powerful fae in winter. Giving her the Winter Lady's mantle would be both a boost in power and added incentive to off Mab (since the Queen to Be is just the future Queen that is, after all).

 

When do the queens change over? Is it when the Queen who who gets killed ?

 

I'd guess it's when the old Queens die, from whatever causes. Then the line just moves up.

 

This, Basically.

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I honestly doubt that Mab will want to give Lea that much power, considering that she already tried to usurp the throne once in VERY Recent memory. Whatever the reasoning for killing Maeve will be (if that actually is the end game, it could all just be a shell game instead), I doubt it will be that. Lea is what she is, powerful and cunning and dangerous, but she is NOT a Royal.

 

doublepost FTL.

 

Abdication. The Queen-Who-Was just says "Fuck it, I'm tired of this" and walks off, then they all go up a level. IIRC, it's only happened once in all of recorded history, and it was the Summer side that did it.

Edit: When one of the Queens die, the mantle goes to the nearest potential receptacle (which is how Lily got it in Summer Knight). I think the progression is skipped in that case, but there's no examples in canon to verify that unfortunately.

 

To be fair, that was the Lady's mantle, and the Lady is the only one without a clearly designated successor. It's entirely possible that the other Queens work that way too normally, and the succession only comes into account in the abdication scenario you mentioned, but I think that if a higher up Queen died then the succession thing would come into play.

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Which is not really all that critical to my point, tbh. Even without automatic succession, Winter Lady Lea would still be the most powerful Fae after Mab's death, and so my point stands.

That brings up a potential support for your view, though. We know that the athame made Lea arrogant enough to try an attack on Mab of some sort, but if the Winter Queen's mantle would have simply passed to Maeve after, wouldn't that create a whole new problem for Lea? It's possible she was confident that she could kill Maeve too, but it's also possible she expected the mantle to pass to the nearest eligible fae (which, if she'd be using the athame, would be her).

 

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In terms of what the readers know your absolutely correct, in terms of the story though while you are barely a handful of people in all of creation know what really happened. What they do know is pretty simple
1. The Red Court was blindingly massive with powerful hitters going all the way up to god like hitters older than recorded history with the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night.
2. The Red Court seriously pissed off Harry Dresden and actively did everything they could to murder the shit out of him culminating with the kidnapping and attempted murder of his daughter.
3. Harry showed up and literally within an eye blink each and every last goddamn one of the entire Red Court of Vampires on the face of the earth drop dead.
4. Harry and everyone he cared about walked away from whatever happened unscathed.

These were not small fries, they were capital grade hitters and Dresden annihilated them. Even if we know how it happened as readers I guarantee you 95% of the entire supernatural community will fear shit so hard they get launched off like a rocket if Harry so much as glances at them. I think its one of the bigger reasons Mab wanted Harry as the Knight more than ever. She might know differently but to every last enemy she has the new Winter Knight is one of the deadliest bastards to ever walk creation and if that doesn't make them reconsider any conspiracies they might have against her than I cant even slightly grasp what would.

Also on a separate note, am I the only one who is dearly hoping we get to see the Mothers open up some whoop ass on people? If they can 100% erase someone past, present and future with a stray thought then Id kill to see what they could do when they're up, angry and actively trying to kill someone.

 

Agreed. If Mab going crazy is potentially world ending, the Mothers going all out is a cataclysm the likes of which only Sue has seen before.

 

I know and it would be awesome to see , I keep having this scene in my head of while Harry is the Knight he gets ambushed in Faerie by high end Black Council hitters and he has to retreat and comes across the Mothers cottage where Mother Winter invites him in for being polite and then when the Black Council catches up Mother Winter gets annoyed at their lack of manners, snaps her fingers and erases his entire bloodline in every direction.

 

Aren't the Mothers like the Archangels in that they have the power to destroy worlds, but they can't actually do anything with said power 99% of the time? I can't remember whether or not it's because they're legit restricted like the latter or they just don't care.

 

They're highly restricted and they have Intellectus. They only interfere when the Courts become dangerously imbalanced, as they did in Summer Knight.

 

I had the impression that the Archangels where in an even higher weight class.

Though I also had the impression that whereas the active courts (Mab and Titania) can influence mortal seasons through their balance of power shenanigans, the Mothers sort of are the seasons. Like the best answer in Dresden terms for "Why is it getting colder?" is like "Mother Summer is getting tired/sick" (or at least as good an answer as axial tilt). That was just what I got from the scene in Summer Knight, just my interpretation though.

 

My interpretation is bigger than that.

The Ladies represent Spring/Autumn - the times of change.
The Queens represent Summer/Winter - The height of each season's power and the extremes of natural weather.
The Mothers represent Life/Death - The base concept behind Summer and Winter, and the most powerful.

 

According to DFRPG, supernatural heavyweights fall into fallowing categories:
1. The Almighty
2. The Faerie Mothers, the Archangels
3. The Fallen, Old Gods, Old Ones
4. The Faerie Queens, the Erlking, dragons, the Archive
5. Outsiders, Angels, the Faerie Ladies
6. ancient demons, Knights of the Faerie Courts, Denarians, Knights of the Cross