Equality was just an excuse
Okay i was rereading Any Way The Wind Blows last night, from there on i went into deep dive. i read up so many lovely and amazing insights about the three books and my mind opened up to certain things I obviously missed on first read.
Like everyone i want to dig up that Mage and stab him with needles until he begs for forgiveness and then we all stab him more and send him to nadir.
i just realised while reading all these takes and insights, that the mage used Equality as an excuse! He took the historical books from old families, he raided houses and created his police all to make sure equality was in practice. None of this was his true motive ever! He just wanted to control the school and by extension Simon.
Simon’s birth is anything but about equality! I always wondered why Lucy fell in love with this man! Yes we all concluded it was because he manipulated, isolated and gaslit her into the idea of us against the world. But there must be a starting point right? On how Lucy was warmed to him and was slowly made to think eloping with him was the best option? Us against the world doesn’t happen overnight, a person needs steady flow of manipulated facts as brain food which leaves them blindsided and cut off from rest of the world.
i think it started because of Jaime Sailsbury. Lady Ruth tells us, Jaime was not accepted into the school because of his reading and writing issues. Wartford has always been careful about whom to take in before the Mage hijacked it. Magic is difficult and needs aptitude and also depends on innate ability, if you are below average you have a hard time, as we learned from Daphne’s passing remarks via Baz, and how Mr. Bunce too suffered from that inferiority complex not being magically brilliant, hence they both fell for Smith-Richard’s words. But when you are even below average and not let into the magical world, there will people who are upset or angry or sad behalf of you.
At some point in their school days, Lucy must have expressed her upset or anger about Wartford’s policy. She must have felt her brother deserved a chance. Then young Mage’s idea of changing world and making it equal must have impressed young impressionable Lucy too, and people like her who had someone with low magic abilities or were low magic ability holders! So I think he slowly fed her ideas of how he was going to change the world! Bring equality to all magical creatures and open gates of Wartford for everyone.
But if he truly believed in equality he wouldn’t have made the love of his life a sacrificial lamb. He just wanted a equally strong blood line to birth the chosen one. Lucy comes from an old magical family that has an Excalibur passed down as heirloom! By no means Lucy was weakling or inferior blood! He needed that magical gene-make-up to have this chosen one. Because it would be hard to carry on a pregnancy where the child was conceived on powerful ritual runes and spells under some equally diabolical moon night! The mage needed Lucy because she was from a lineage to carry full term. But to win her over he showed her the equality dream, made her believe his way was the only way and only their golden boy could end the nonexistent treat to world of magic!
All he ever wanted was power! Since he couldn’t take down old families and have his own system that easily, he began to exploit an noble idea of equality to corner the old families ( by no means they are good either). He opened Wartford to magical creatures to deliberately tip the power scale the old families had held. Yet none of it was done with heart of an educator who felt the need to protect or provide care for the not gifted!
The mage is a piece of rubbish and we should’ve set him on fire!
