I can't remember which fic I read it in first, but years ago, there was one I was reading, and it talks about 'bloodline gifts', in the form of metamorphs or animagi; and then some additional things like certain families having talents for necromancy, or enchantments, and so on - due to certain bloodlines focusing on certain areas of spellcraft, their magic 'evolved' over time to better suit it.

This then came with the whole marriage contracts and line-fusing, but the point was that by marrying a Prewitt into the family every 7 generations, you could be guaranteed to have healthy children; or by marrying into the Blacks you could assume that at least one of your grand-children would either be a metamorph or an animagus; or that a child with a Crouch will be a Polyglot.

On the other hand, a muggleborn?

They bring no magical talents. They don't bring any connections, or wealth, or prestige;, or anything they might have been able to learn from the family's book of shadows. They bring their individual skills (from being taught in the same school as everyone else); and maybe they might have their own slight shaping of magic, but in a single individual, it would be hard to discern.

I've also seen (once, and can't remember where this was) that muggleborns act as a "power-up". They don't add any new gifts, but they make the existing ones slightly more likely/quicker/powerful. So whilst you could speak with Snakes, your children could speak with all slithering creatures (not sure whether worms would have anything interesting to say though); or your minor bloodline talent for fire spells appears in all your children, rather than just the firstborn.



You can start adding extra things into that too - the "dark" families are hoping to breed back to the magical singularity, back before it fled the world with the Fall of Atlantis. People still talk about Merlin as the most powerful wizard, and myths and legends abound of historical figures worldwide. But in recent times, magic has been quiescent - since 1900, only three truly powerful wizards have arisen in Europe. By breeding strong bloodgifts, and by spreading them, it will be a second era of wonder, and will unite the disparate magical systems across the globe.


Of course, the problem with having a true and sensible ideology for the pureblood faction, you have to have a reasonable reason for the 'Light' faction to oppose them.

Maybe the 'light' feel that the ancestral legends are only stories, Merlin was a myth, and the Aurelians are just trying to force the world to bend to the whims of misinterpreted old stories, when the true magic is friendship, freedom, and love (although trying to be less blunt in relation to real world conflicts).

You then have a conflict between a side who believes in personal freedom, and one that believes in a familial and cultural duty. Muggleborns would of course side against the Pureblood faction, as they don't have the weight of their childhood storybook heroes resting on their shoulders, they don't understand that the glory of magic is dying, that once the old enchantments are broken, there's no way to replace them (the entirety of the Mannfredi line were wiped out during a bombing attack in the muggle's "Great War", whilst on holiday), and they were the only ones who'd managed to trade their versatility of casting into longevity of enchantments.

Maybe the Light don't disbelieve, they just want magic curtailing - there's a reason Atlantis fell, that Tír na hÓige was cast 500 years into the future (and everyone's waiting for the 29th of February 2152, to see what happened to the inhabitants); and that Torca erupted. The old magics were feral - a rabid dragon that wizards and witches could cling to the back of; but couldn't direct, control, or understand. The modern magics, the refined and gentle magics, are the true measure of civilization.

 

There was also this fic I read, where dark and light magic are difference forces and drawn from different sources; dark magic is semi-sentient and flows from the earth(or some such thing), and the original dark wizards were the followers of Morgana Le Fey who started practicing it.

In this fic, the type of magic you can practice is genetically determined, "dark" families only have an affinity for dark magic, and "light families" can only practice light magic. The main character, a dark wizard Harry stumbles across the research of Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets, and the conclusions are that constant breeding between dark and light families would eventually weaken the magic that flows in the blood, as dark and light magic are sort of opposing forces, inter-breeding weakens the magic and results in weaker descendants.

Slytherin also apparently discovered that Mud-Muggleborns weaken and dilute the magical strength of both dark and light families, as they are genetically different from both. Thus resulting in Slytherin`s ambition to wipe out Muggleborns, upon seeing the damaging effect they have on magical strength(and wizarding customs?), Slytherin was motivated by a desire to keep magic in it`s pure form and powerful and prevent it`s dwindling. If this breeding and intermixing is left unchecked, there will be a time in the future when wizards will be quite weak compared to those of the present and past; their spells, magical strength etc. will be quite weak, and so will their ability to perform powerful dark and light magic.
Naturally, this horrified Salazar, who was also against the inter-mixing of light and dark families.

 

One idea I have toyed with is that big part of the pureblood movement is about magical land/property. The idea is that active magic slowly impregnates everything close by, and a plot of land where wizards have lived for hundreds of years becomes inherently magical, and can support more powerful enchantments and is more fertile land to grow magical plants and creatures on. Case in point being Hogwarts, which is the most magical place in canon to the point of the castle being almost sentient by itself.

Now, enter 19th and 20th century. Muggles multiply and start building railways and roads and cities and suburbs all over the place. Strict enforcement of the Statute of Secrecy means that some old families have to relocate so that muggles can dig their precious gardens up to mine coal. The number of muggleborn children increases rapidly as the muggle population grows, and the somewhat small nuisance of giving them free education in Hogwarts as per the thousand year old agreement/disagreement between the founders becomes a significant burden that forces poorer families to reconsider the education of their children.

And then as a final nail to the coffin some "progressive" wizards from old families with significant estates start marrying with the muggleborn, ending the centuries old tradition of keeping those extremely valuable magical areas in hands of the small group of intermarried families.

 

Dumbledore categorized the early Death Eaters into three general groups - the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking glory, and the thugs looking to indulge their base instincts. What's interesting is that none of those sound ideologically-driven in any meaningful way. The Death Eaters began as a personality cult, drawn not by what Voldemort's vision offered, but what he personally could offer. He was strong, strong enough that people would think twice before moving against those under his banner. He was glamorous, with that glamour being shared by those who act in his name. He was brutal, and gave license for his followers to perform whatever cruelties their twisted minds could imagine.

I think in fleshing out Death Eater motivations, that should always be center stage, that Voldemort personally offers you something. The movement is nothing to you. You may not even know the name of the guy next to you - Karkaroff could name fewer than ten of his fellows when trying to save his own skin. What you do know is that they likely don't get what you get from the Dark Lord - if you're a Pettigrew looking for the strongest protector, you look at a Bellatrix or a Crouch Jr. as psychotic, placing no value on your life or even on their own. If you're Bellatrix, you look at the Pettigrews as craven cowards, and on the Carrows or Greyback as especially bloodthirsty mercenaries. Neither values the Dark Lord and his ideals like you do. And even others who sound the same notes as you can't be trusted; they're just jockeying for position, rather than acting out of true devotion like yours.

And if you're Greyback, then you don't give a fuck about anyone other than yourself, you just want that excuse to rip people's throats out, and it doesn't matter if they're Mudbloods or scions of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, their blood's equally warm when it splatters across your face.

So you can't trust your fellows. Only the Dark Lord has your loyalty, because only he understands what drew you to him - he can read your thoughts, after all. This lack of esprit de corps also explains why the Death Eaters fell to pieces so quickly after Godric's Hollow. If they were a movement dedicated to an ideal, then they could have selected a replacement and carried on. Or else they could have collapsed into infighting between factions. But they didn't even do that, because without Voldemort, there is no movement, no empire to partition. There's just individuals dying, getting arrested, or scattering to the four winds.

So when writing your Death Eaters, think of them as individuals first, and as devotees to a cause tenth, if at all.

 

What @TRH said does seem to align with canon the most, but I agree with you on its lack of appeal.

 

I wouldn't say it's just Voldemort that's bad, but that he's what turns a bunch of cravens, social climbers, and sociopaths into an organized whole. The impulses and antisocial attitudes were already there, but he gives them direction and the freedom to run wild. There's a percentage of every society that won't just herd their friends and neighbors into camps but do so with a smile, and people like Voldemort bring them out of the woodwork. Once he dies, they scatter, but they'll still be out there, waiting for another chance. I never thought Greyback changed his routine at all between the two wars, for instance.

That's not even addressing the bigotry over blood, which clearly reaches far beyond the Death Eaters themselves.

I will concede, though, that I started from what we knew of canon before anything else. Most of the other ideas in this thread either inflate things from canon such as Muggleborn culture clash, or else postulate stuff we didn't see in the books at all, like protecting traditional social rites or family magic or the like.
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Part of the problem here is that internal consistency in the worldbuilding is often not there, which makes it hard to figure out where the Death Eaters see themselves in broader society. Lucius Malfoy is the Minister of Magic's best buddy and is filthy rich, in a society that everyone complains runs on money and connections, and yet he can't seem to prevent Arthur Weasley, a low-level functionary with the respect of few of his colleagues, from raiding his house repeatedly, and so he has to go fence incriminating artifacts in Knockturn Alley. So do the Death Eaters, despite including recruits from some of the most elite families in the country, still feel oppressed by a system where they're already at or near the top? Maybe they are, but it feels weird.

 

I wouldn't be so sure that Arthur is as low on the totem pole as he seems to be at first glance. He has always been rather high up in his Department (Head, maybe? Not sure), even if it's a neglected one. He doesn't get much respect from most, true, but he does seem to have connections.

 

Even so, "You raided my house already and came up empty, please stop harassing me" would be a pretty small favor even in a far less corrupt society.
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For an idea less wedded to canon, something that could flesh out the argument about loss of wizarding culture, one thing that would have started showing itself in the 60's-70's in Muggleborns and then filtered through to wizard culture would be postmodernism, and revisionist interpretations of history. Perhaps in the past Muggleborn wizards were able to acclimate to their new society without major problems, but in the decades after Grindelwald, that started to change.

Suddenly, the newcomers aren't impressed by the wisdom of the Hogwarts Founders and the virtues they embodied, but instead obsess over ways in which they failed to live up to their stated ideals. They misinterpret the social hierarchy because to them, the only relationship that exists between people is that of exploitation, of the oppressed and the oppressor. They hear goblins lament about Godric Gryffindor's theft of his famous sword from Ragnuk I, and without realizing that goblins have a different conception of property rights than humans do, they accept the narrative at face value, and dismiss any attempt on your part to explain the situation as propaganda to whitewash Gryffindor's good name. And before you know it, one of those dupes is running the Goblin Liaison Office, where not only will he fail to resolve disputes properly through his insistence that all sentient races think like a human does, but his sense of historical guilt will allow the goblins to take him to the cleaners.

And on it goes. Be ashamed of your history, apologize for being who you are, because nothing is sacred and everything and everyone is power-hungry and corrupt. The cynicism never ends, and eventually it's not just the Muggleborns, but even someone as respected as Albus Dumbledore speaking out, talking about how wizards have profited off the sweat and suffering of other beings, and how the monument to cooperation and social harmony at the front of the Ministry is all a lie. If even the greatest wizard of the age has lost faith in who we are and what we've achieved together, what hope can the rest of us have?

But you can take heart, because there's still someone out there with the courage to dissent. He's of the blood of Salazar Slytherin, and he understands that a birthright requires you to live up to your forebearers' example, not atone for their crimes. He and his allies will take up the legacy that wizards were on the verge of renouncing out of misplaced guilt, and put the nihilists in their place.

 

Hmm. We always seem to make the purebloods the ones who drive the narrative in these kinds of stories. How about we switch it up?

The muggleborns are pushing for the wizarding society to reveal itself. No more hiding from their parents, no more lying to their partners and being forced to choose between cutting yourself off from one world or the other when your Hogwarts letter comes. It's inevitable that the wizarding society will be revealed, won't it? Just look at the rapid advances in satellite technology and surveillance. Won't it be better to control the narrative than to be outed accidentally?

Not to mention, you Wizards are unnecessarily paranoid - the muggles have moved so far past the "burn them at the stake" era of terror. They're enlightened, now, it's an age of science and rationality. We can trust them. Besides, if they do become hostile, the flame-freezing charm can be performed by any Hogwarts student. What have we got to worry about? We're stronger than them, they don't pose a threat.

What, are you worried that the muggles will ask us to solve their problems? Charge them for it! This will create a lot of jobs and opportunities. All the purebloods opposed to this just want to keep the status quo because it benefits them. Rise up, muggleborns!

... Meanwhile, the rest of wizarding society be like: holy shit isn't this Grindelwald from a different angle? This muggleborn faction doesn't need to be large or even particularly driven if you want to keep it about Death Eaters - but suddenly they've got a lot of talking points about why muggleborns are dangerous and morally should be targeted. I think a conflict where both sides have their extremists would be really interesting.

 

If you look at Pottermore the time of Voldemort's first rise to power is just shortly after the first muggle-born minister for magic was elected which caused a lot of purebloods to resign their positions in the ministry in protest and not long after that the squibs started marching to gain rights, which purebloods responded to by rioting which was dealt with by the Ministry.

Its easy to see how a lot of purebloods would feel like the Ministry doesn't properly represent them anymore, since they genuinely seem to loose quite a bit of influence. And then Voldemort comes along, a Wizard who clearly knows the of importance of proper families and who himself has quite a few friends with proper heritage, not to mention that his personal power even rivals the likes of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, making him really look like the kind of person able to reform the ministry as it should be from the perspective of many purebloods. Making it understandable why quite a few people agreed with him during thr first war, before he showed how violent he truly is.

 

I generally don't like looking at Pottermore, or at least take it with a sackful of salt, but this case does explain some things.

If you think about it, didn't Leeds or Leech (whatever his name was) Leach die or leave office under suspicious circumstances? It could be one of the first actions of the Knights of Walpurgis.

Edit: of course, Voldemort started recruiting openly in the very early 1970s IIRC, so he only had the core of what would be the Death Eaters in ~1968. It fits with Abraxas being said to have been involved with Leach's strange illness and death / stepping down, according to the wiki (which probably took it from Pottermore).

It also could be that Abraxas's death or 'death' to Dragon Pox had to do with all those suspicions of assassinating a Minister... Lucius having the Diary Horcrux also makes more sense if it had been entrusted to one of the core Death Eaters before being 'inherited' by his son Lucius. It also partially explains his eagerness to get rid of the Diary.

 

I think that's more about the inner circle.

An inner circle of psychopaths works because the inner circle know the "true" goals of the movement, the true goals that would repunge most new recruits, the true goals you have to carefully feed the lower ranks until they are in too deep to back out. We know this works because the nazis did it.

Hitler didn't run for election in 1933 on a platform of murdering every Jew he could, of invading the West, of invading the East, etc. But these are things his inner circle knew of, the true believers or the sociopaths who know the "real" enemy, their "real" capabilities, of why they "must" be destroyed, why the "must" take the entire nation to the brink.

The general public though were fed vague promises, promises of regaining German wealth, of regaining glory, of punishing the "enemies" that had led Germany to ruin, of taking back the lands stolen. New recruits when they be carefully fed the party lines, the glimmer of the true goals of the inner circle until they believed them themselves or were in too deep.
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I'm now trying to remember what I had planned for Grindelwald in a story once. I think it was something like if Voldemort is the fascist, Grindelwald is the communist. I wanted to have him being very sympathetic to muggleborns, like someone pushing against the conservative ideas of mainstream wizarding society they felt they choked under. While I didn't plan it, I now could see this as being the force that stirs up the conservative voices, leading to Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Two young men at the turn of the century discussing the revolution sounds a lot like communists at the same time period. They then part ways and Dumbledore goes on to be slightly radical liberal.

But, you know, canon Grindelwald isn't very sympathetic. His views are very muddled.

 

While I agree on not making it all about Voldemort, I think there's a lot of fun storytelling potential in playing with the idea that the Death Eaters are a very loose coalition largely held together by Voldermort's personal magnetism. Give them some messy internal politics and divisions that can lead to all kinds of conflict. For a couple thoughts:

* Death Eaters who want to use political maneuvering and intrigue to slowly push their agenda vs the extremists who want violent solutions
* More ideological Death Eaters who adhere to a philosophy vs violent psychos just looking for an excuse.
* When it comes to the old Pureblood families, odds are there are some historical feuds and alliances that can cause tensions.
* Use other preexisting divisions, like class. A Death Eater from an old aristocratic pureblood family is likely to have a different point of view from rural poor purebloods.

And so on. Basically, play with the idea that the Death Eaters aren't a single unified group so much as a coalition under Voldemort. While they're all working together, that doesn't necessarily mean they all believe in the same things and have the same goals.

It also gives a good way to fit in a lot of the seemingly conflicting motivations and actions of the Death Eaters, because they're not acting on a single gameplan. Malfoy would rather advance the Pureblood agenda through politics, influence, and connections, but struggles to make the movement look respectable when there are violent lunatics as his nominal allies. We can have "moderates" who have more reasonable objections forced to work alongside people who are just thugs. And giving them moderate-sounding talking points gives a good way to recruit and indoctrinate new members.

Really, just take a look at how actual hate groups work and start from there.

 

I would argue the more ideological Death Eaters would hate Voldemort and those loyal to him specifically for spilling magical blood so liberally, nearly ending the long, pure line of Longbottom just because a baby might pose a threat to him some day. The Inner Circle in my current series is mostly comprised of the dark wizard's worst enemies, and he's aware of it. He's just confident that he's clever enough to see any plot of theirs against him coming, and is content to use their grudging aid, since he can't get anyone else to help him with his designs. Death Eaters are basically broken up into blood purists and Dark Lord Dick Suckers. The blood purists are broken down into the more ideological, who marry pure and act the part, and those who really just use their pure blood to its fullest effect, having affairs with muggle women and obliviating them afterwards.
It's not really a moderate/radical divide. Malfoy is aware bloodthirsty fucks like Greyback and Bellatrix are necessary to the cause, sort of like the politicians of the Klan were aware of the rednecks carrying out the lynchings. There was no need to give any explicit orders for violent acts; they just trusted those inundated with the ideology to do the dirty work. They wore the uniform when they did it because it offered some tenuous sense of protection- cops who were also Klansmen would misplace the keys to their holding cell, judges would talk down their sentences, but they knew that wearing it wasn't a panacea. Striking too often or striking the wrong targets would mean they would be allowed to go to prison or be executed, which was advantageous to the clean-hands Klansmen because they would be clear of suspicion, if only temporarily. The leaders and the ideologues wanted the Klan to seem basically just, but also fearsome, which is a balancing act.

 

That pretty much captures what I was trying to say. The tricky balancing act could open up some fun storytelling opportunities. I could see a lot of fun being had with this in a Seventh Year or Voldemort Wins sort of scenario, where the more "respectable" Death Eaters are trying to set up a working government and build up political legitimacy, while the more violent members of the group want to just keep escalating the violence.

Tell the story you want to tell.

I would say that turning HP into a story where both sides have legitimate points is a pretty massive shift, given that the narrative in canon had pretty clearly defined good guys and bad guys. Since Rowling was not subtle about coding the Death Eaters as racist, it would also take a careful touch to avoid coming across as "You know, the racists have some legitimate points, let's hear them out."

I definitely like having conflicts be morally grey, but I'm not sure Harry Potter's canon conflict is a good place to do that.