History Headscratchers / TheDresdenFiles

** In ''Skin Game'', Harry started using logical and mathematical exercises to fight down the mantle'd effect. Perhaps the nature of the mantle encourages the knight to compensate for the mantle's effects by becoming coldly rational and logical?

** In ''Skin Game'', Harry started using logic and mathematical practices to fight down the mantle. Perhaps the nature of the mantle encourages the knight to compensate for the mantle's effects by becoming coldly rational and logical?

** I think that the reason that the novels are so ambivalent about the so affair is that they are told from Harry's perspective, and Harry himself gradually begins to realize the enormity of his decision. Harry has always been a very short-sighted person, who is focused on the here and now. Harry himself never really fought on the front-lines of the war, with the exception of the debacle at Chichen Itza. From what I can tell, the whole war was a disaster for both the Red Court and the White Council. The Red Court suffered ''massive'' internal civil strife that crippled their ability to focus their resources, no doubt excacerbated by an influence from the Nemesis contagion. The White Council lost most of their experienced soldiers, and sheer strategic and logistical nightmare that comes from all-out warfare caught the wizards off guard. Being organized like an academic learned society, constantly crippled by internal politics, and spread out among cities all around the world, they had great difficulty focusing their efforts. All accounts indicate that they could not maintain a long-term war, since producing vampires is a lot easier than recruiting wizards. Of course, even with all of these advantages, the Red Court was wiped out. They were wiped out due to their ''gross'' incompetence. Unfortunately, we don't see a full account of the outcome or the casualties of the war, since it doesn't matter to Dresden. He's very much a guy who is focused on the people close to him or the one's he can see. People who die half-way around the world just won't have the emotional impact for him.

* In ''Changes'', the bloodline curse is stated to work by killing the original target and all their siblings, then killing the original target's parents and all ''their'' siblings, then the original target's parent's parents and all ''their'' sibilings, and so on. It can jump over missing links in the chain (using it on Maggie would have hit Ebenezar, even though Margaret LeFay is dead), but it only goes up or sideways, never back down. Given that, how did it hit ''every'' Red Court vampire? Logically, it should have hit Susan (the original target), all the vampires Bianca sired (Susan's "siblings"), Bianca and every other vampire Arianna sired (Bianca as Susan's "parent", and all Bianca's "siblings"), Arianna and every other vampire the Red King sired (Arianna as Bianca's "parent", and all Arianna's "siblings"), and finally the Red King himself (Arianna's "parent", almost certainly has no "siblings"). That would have gutted the Red Court (since the Red King sired the Lords Of Outer Night and a sizable chunk of the rest of the Red Court nobility), but it shouldn't have hit ''every'' vampire.

* In ''Death Masks'', it's revelaed that the Fellowship of St. Giles developed tattoos that, when placed on someone infected by the Red Court but who has not yet turned into a Red Court Vampire, helped the infectee avoid becoming a vampire by glowing or turning red in order to worn the infectee that the "curse" was starting to influence their behavior. I'm wondering, could something be similar be done for Harry and Molly?

** ''Mortal technology is also capable of harming some of the larger threats..., all of these are modern-day weapons capable of threatening many immortals.'' I would hardly consider a nuke that much of a step-up. If the Nagooshi is in a city you lose the city. Given how wizard magic messes with tech it seems if you throw enough magic at tech it goes haywire so all of the advanced mortal weapons would be made useless. A handgun only killed Maeve because she was mortal at the time and all but admitted she had a death wish. Nuke Mab, she reforms later and curses the Earth with endless winter. Invade the NeverNever? You are assuming human technology will work deep within it. It was all but said the Outer Gates exist in part of the NeverNever that are normally impossible to get to or for mortals to survive in. The rules of physics that make mortal technology work can be changed in the NeveNever. And magic is strongest there so some nigh-omnipotent can strike at Earth all they want and nothing can be done about it if said entity is pissed off. At worse, you risk starting a war where all the other major powerhouses decided to destroy humanity on principle.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Are the red court actually defeated?]]
The bloodline curse kills all the ancestors of the person killed, wiping out most of the red court. However, it doesn't kill the *decedents*. The book strongly implies that the reason harry had to sacrifice Susan instead of any other random vampire was because she just turned and so killing her would kill the rest, while sacrificing another vampire turned previously wouldn't kill anyone turned after that vampire was turned. However, it takes Harry a little bit of time to get around to sacrificing Susan. It may not seem like long, but when you consider all the vampires in the entire world there is a very real chance that at least one of them happen to turn a vampire between the time that Susan was turned and when harry sacrificed her. After all 4.5 humans are born every second, while vampires aren't 'born' that fast they seem to be a decent percentage of the world (being far more common in places third world nations), and in the minute or longer it took Harry to kill Susan another vampire could have been sired. One lone one, but free to turn everyone it meets. It could be many years, decades even, before one surviving vampire can turn enough to create a real powerbase, but Wizards last a long time too. Maybe 40 years from now someone will come to have a talk with harry about wiping out all of his kind.

** Harry (born circa 1974) [[PubertySuperpower came to his powers in his teens]] and was able to watch TV without issue until then, which also explains why many of his pop culture references are so outdated. WordOfGod says that he also frequents [[DriveInTheater drive-in theaters]] while staying as far as he possibly can for the equipment and sometimes he sits on a bench near stores with a large TV at the shop window. His ability to [[SuperSenses Listen]] certainly helps him in both cases.