Cat, Rat, and Dog

[sunnyskywalker]

I keep forgetting that this is a chapter title in PoA, and it's high time I speculated about it.

On the surface, it's about Crookshanks, Wormtail, and Padfoot, but it's also an allusion to a nasty little poem that circulated back in (I think) the 1470s: "The cat, the rat, and Lovell our dog/Ruleth all England under the hog." The cat and rat were guys named Catesby and Ratcliffe, and they and Lovell had a lot of power under this king whose crest was a white boar. This king was Richard III.

Richard has gotten a lot of bad press over the centuries: he's the nasty hunchbacked evil uncle who murdered the poor little princes in the Tower. The problem is in the evidence. Nobody ever saw the princes' bodies (that we know of). Nobody knows exactly when or how they were murdered. Nobody can even prove they were murdered. Furthermore, several other people had opportunity and motive to do it. That doesn't mean they weren't murdered, or that Richard didn't do it, but reasonable doubt, you know. Also, Richard definitely did fight on horseback in battle, and reportedly very well, so he almost certainly couldn't have had a withered arm. (Though if there are cases of one-armed men controlling big warhorses while hacking away at opponents, I'd love to know how they did it.)

That means a lot of what we "know" about Richard might be unreliable. And if it's hard to figure out something as simple as whether he did or didn't murder his nephews, imagine how hard it is to figure out whether he was a horrible guy, or an okay but sometimes rash guy, or what. Again, he could still have been a nasty murderer. The point, though, is that we don't know.

Now the HP connection: there really is a "hog" ruling (wizarding) Britain, isn't there? Hogwarts specifically has "winged boars" by the gates. Who rules Hogwarts? Albus (white, like Richard's boar) Dumbledore. He's also the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards. Besides managing the educations of multiple generations of witches and wizards, Dumbledore is very, very politically powerful. Fudge used to ask him for advice daily, and even when Dumbledore is temporarily kicked out of the Wizengamot, he still has allies and influence. Also, in HBP, Dumbledore has a withered hand. Yeah, I know I just said Richard couldn't have, but it's part of the mythology. Dumbledore sometimes gets bad press in the Daily Prophet (though there isn't a wizarding play vilifying him that we know of) and has made some decisions which put people in danger. He may have killed Quirrell - we don't know, because Quirrell was about to die anyway, and Harry was unconscious, but it's possible. And as morgan_d points out, we only have Dumbledore's word for it that the Flamels were perfectly agreeable to dying. In an interesting twist, instead of Dumbledore being accused of killing two princes in a tower, the Half-Blood Prince kills him on a tower.

Furthermore, who is Dumbledore's right hand? Minerva McGonagall, cat animagus, helps him rule Hogwarts. His left hand is Severus Snape, whom Sirus Black called Lucius Malfoy's lapdog. Before Snape patched things up with Voldemort, Voldemort thought Snape had gone to Dumbledore for real (well, who knows...); Snape had stuck close by Dumbledore throughout Voldemort's absence and done many things for him, so for all we know, Voldemort accused Snape of being Dumbledore's dog in an insult parallel to Sirius's. (Speaking of Sirius, Dumbledore is also in charge of that dog animagus. Sirius isn't helping Dumbledore rule anything, unless you take him as representing the Order of the Phoenix generally. And back in the day, Sirius got away with everything, even pranks that almost got people killed. He "ruled" the playground that way.)

The rat is a little more troubling. Is it still Pettigrew? Maybe Snape is a rat as well as a dog? I guess since Snape was a spy and ratted people out, and then betrayed somebody, he could be a rat. If it's Pettigrew, there are all sorts of possibilities. TotallyEvil!Dumbledore and SecretSpy!Pettigrew are pretty hard to make work. Though just because the rat is one of the people ruling "under the hog," that doesn't mean the hog has to be the rat's boss, I suppose - he could just be ruling by helping Voldemort rise while Dumbledore happens to be more or less in charge of wizarding Britain. But that would mean that "rule all England under the Hog" would mean different things for the different people referenced, which is too complicated. Maybe it's supposed to be more general - that these three people have important roles in the fate of the wizarding world while Dumbledore is in charge, not that they necessarily "rule" in the everyday sense. (ETA: Or maybe the rat is someone unexpected, or someone new like Slughorn...)

I really wonder now whether Harry will find cause to doubt Dumbledore's motives when he starts searching for Horcruxes and finding out more about Voldemort's background, especially since Dumbledore is no longer around to explain his actions.

But if JKR is trying to link Dumbledore and Richard III, then why? What does she mean? That Dumbledore is Ever-So-Evil? Doubt it. That he tries but makes huge mistakes? Very possibly. Or maybe that we just don't know everything Dumbledore has done or what his motives are, and we never will. Did he kill Quirrell? Did he use questionable means to "persuade" the Flamels to destroy the Stone? Is he nice but flawed or callous and manipulative? Will we ever know for sure? Dumbledore is very associated with history, I think. He owns the Pensieve in which Harry sees past events three books in a row (GoF: DE trials, OotP: Snape's memory, HBP: Riddle backstory). He knows a lot about everyone's histories, and occasionally tells Harry bits of them (like Snape's debt to James in PS/SS). He hints that Harry and Hermione should go back in time in PoA. He's written about in books, and on chocolate frog cards which usually feature dead people like Merlin and Hengist of Woodcroft. People often talk or write about things he has done in the past - he fought Grindlewald in 1945, he discovered the 12 uses for dragon's blood ages ago, he did amazing on his OWLs all the way back in the 1860s. He was born before the US Civil War, if you really want to get a sense of his age. His research partner was 666 years old. Dumbledore is a historical figure in many ways. Especially now that he's dead. We (and Harry) had enough trouble figuring out what he was up to and why when he was alive, so how hard is it going to be now? Maybe Dumbledore will always be mysterious and unknowable. Maybe that's the point. Maybe we (and Harry) are supposed to learn that we won't always be able to figure out how history really happened (or the present, for that matter), and just have to deal with it.

ETA: Richard III gets compared to Snape a lot more than he does to Dumbledore. A few links: ricardienne's Calling all Snape-defenders!, another entry of hers, and Red Hen's Loyaulte Me Lie, which only touches on the connection tangentially. I also recommend ricardienne's Reasons why JKR is a Yorkist for more interesting HP/Wars of the Roses connections.

Comments

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

YGTMTTRD=You're Giving This More Thought Than Rowling Did ;-)

First, a couple of corrections to clarify things: Richard ruled from 1483-1485. According to the HP Lexicon, JKR has said Dumbledore was born in 1881, probably in July or August (which means he's probably a Leo, too, like Rowling and Harry).

Also, nobody ever accused Richard of being deformed in any way until after his death, when Henry demanded history be rewritten to legitimize his kingship. There were several people who had much better claims on the throne than he did, so he spent a lot of time trying to make himself out to be the avenging angel who rescued England from the monster Richard. (See below.)

I agree that Snape is a lot more Ricardian than Dumbledore is. (1) He's a short or average size guy with long dark hair, like Richard. (2) He's tormented and nearly killed by a bunch of guys whose house colors are red and gold. Red was the Lancastrian color (i.e., the color of Henry's family), and white (silver) was the color of York, Richard's family. (However, Richard's shield as Duke of Gloucester featured a red and gold lion motif, interestingly enough.) (3) He's kind of tightly-wound and meticulous, which Richard looks in the famous painting of him in which he's fiddling with his ring. (There's a nice ring connection for you between Richard and DD, BTW.) (4) He's killed in a cowardly way by his enemy's lieutenant (Nagini), while his enemy stands back and watches. Richard was killed by Henry's men while Henry cowered behind a bunch of guards and watched. (5) Richard was the ruler of Yorkshire while his brother, Edward V, ruled England. The name Snape may come from Yorkshire. (6) Both Snape and Richard have been accused of committing a lot of murders and torturing that they almost certainly did not do. (7) By contrast, there's no question the Tudors committed genocide against the remaining York heirs after they took over, yet they're regarded as good guys. The Marauders committed several years of attacks against anybody they saw as a threat, yet they're regarded as good guys. (8) A lot of references are made to Snape's crooked yellow teeth, and he threatened Trevor the toad. After his death, Richard was slandered as having been born with a full set of teeth and having eaten live frogs. (9) Snape wanted to marry a woman with red hair, and Richard actually did. (10) Snape is the most controversial character in the Potterverse. Richard is the most controversial ruler in English history. (11) After Richard's death, the city of York wrote in its records, "This day was our good King Richard piteously slain and murdered; to the great heaviness of this city." That sounds like something a Snape fan would write about his death.

[sunnyskywalker]

Thanks for the date - I didn't have the poem with references to hand when I wrote this in 2006, and "sometime in the 1470s" was my best guess.

Oh, I agree Snape fits better as a parallel, and certainly don't think Richard was Sir Actually Appearing In This Book in any way. (Though that would have been cool if he showed up as a ghost or something, assuming he was a relevant-to-the-plot ghost.) The part I thought was interesting was that she tossed in enough allusions at random that it fit Dumbledore just well enough to predict the "looking back, Harry realized he didn't know whom to believe about Dumbledore's past, and suddenly had cause to doubt his motives" bit that appeared in DH. Going only by her interviews at that point, I wouldn't have expected her to raise quite so many doubts about Dumbledore (must have been her subconsious talking in this book). It's backwards - Dumbledore probably* not be as good as his reputation suggests, against Richard probably being better than his - but again, the general idea is close enough to go, hm, maybe doubting the reputations of old/historical figures will be important, and there will be contradictory sources, some of them quite dubious.


*I'd say definitely, but Rowling would probably disagree.

[sunnyskywalker]

ETA: With Rowling having the whole setup for Snape/Richard and Dumbledore/Anti-Richard, with readers having reasons to doubt the sources telling us what to think of both of them, she should have done something cool. Alas.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

"She should have done something cool" is the epitaph for this series. ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Sad but true! I mean, here she has two sets of supposedly linked characters - Voldemort/Harry, the orphans mind-linked because of the whole prophecy and curse thing, and Dumbledore/Snape, also linked through the effects of that prophecy (although not quite as closely). And just as supposedly Good Orphan Harry is the opposite of Bad Orphan Tommy, you have Snape as the unfairly maligned Ricardian!Richard and Dumbledore slowly revealing himself as the scheming, withered-handed Shakespearian!Richard. It's a special kind of talent to not do something interesting with that.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Richard is the most controversial ruler in English history.

Well, maybe- or unless you count Oliver Cromwell. ;-)