Professor Julian Womble (0:00)

Welcome to Critical Magic Theory, where we deconstruct the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Because loving something does not mean we can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julian Womble, and today we've got a twofer. A bogo. Except you're not really buying anything. You're just getting two characters and one. You get what I'm saying? Why did you just pretend that you didn't get what I was saying? You got it. You got it. Don't be so judgy so early in the episode. We just started. Please, friends, please. We're talking about Andromeda Tonks and Regulus Black, y'all. I was skeptical. I'm gonna be truthful with you. I was skeptical because many of you said, I want this episode. I want to do an episode about these two. I want separate episodes for each of them. And I said, we don't have enough. We meet Andromeda once and we only hear Tale of Regulus. I said, we don't have enough. And I was scared because I was like, it would be a trash episode if I tried to do one for each of them because we just don't have enough. And I think it was Jim and a couple of other people, but I think Jim is the one that I remember on Patreon who said, what if you just put them together? And I said, huh, what an idea. Who doesn't love a deal? Who doesn't love a twofer? Okay. And so I put together the survey, and many of you who took the survey acknowledged the fact that it was really difficult because we don't know enough about either of them to really form a fully fledged picture of who they are. And so diving into their characters is really hard. So you'll hear that there are a lot of don't knows for these characters, but you'll also hear that there are a lot of people who took the time to really do two things. One, separate Fanon from canon, and two, extrapolate out from what we know and what we've discussed from other episodes about other characters in terms of trying to create a narrative for who these people are. And to that, I say thank you and 10 points to whatever house you're in, because you all really brought it as you often do. And I am so grateful. I think that this episode is going to be a lot of fun because it's going to take us on a journey that we normally don't get to go on, which is kind of going into a space of hypothetical, which, you know, we normally do not do. But we kind of are forced to here. Have you ever wondered whether Regulus actions make him a hero? Did Andromeda leaving her family mean that she was forsaking pureblood supremacy? And why did Andromeda and Regulus both forsake their family and potentially their beliefs? We are diving into all of it today, and I really couldn't be more excited because I think this journey is going to be one that we've not gone into because we're really going into some murkier waters. And I also think that both of these characters introduce something that really will prepare us as. As we think about Sirius Black in the next episode, which is this idea of what it means and what it looks like to leave your family because of some divergence in your beliefs and the way that you've come to understand who you are as a person. And what I'm really excited about is thinking about what leads people to that place. Like, what led Regulus to a space where he said, you know what? What you're doing, Voldemort isn't right. What led Andromeda to say, I'm gonna stand by my man and leave my family, the only family that I've ever known. We're getting into all of it, but first, you know what we have to do. Loosen up your shoulders. It's time to bop along to the theme song. Let's go. We need to talk about Harry Potter. As always, I hope you danced. It's good to have cardio, y'all. You have to make sure that the body is moving. As always, I want to thank those of you who joined us on the Patreon for. For our post episode chat. Many of us had a lot of thoughts about the episode and about Bellatrix and the things that came up for us that we weren't ready to think about. And it was so much fun, as always, to really just kind of be in conversation with you all and for you all to be in conversation with one another. I think one of the things that I enjoy as a professor is kind of just throwing things out there in the classroom and then having people just kind of either get really mad at me. I've had students yell at me. If you've seen any of my social media posts, you know that, like, my students get very passionate about Harry Potter and some of my takes are a little bit incendiary, if you will. And so I love that you all can do that too. And so if you are interested in joining that conversation, know that the Patreon is there for you. Patreon.com criticalmagictheory you can join for free to join into the conversations. If you are in the position to be able to support financially, there are lots of different perks. You get to hear my rants, you get to hear my raves. We're actually doing our first virtual meetup for the chronic overthinkers on July 20th. And y'all, it's gonna be a time. I can tell you that already. It's gonna be a time. And so if you are in the position and you are interested, please check out the Patreon, check out the options, check out the things. But if that is not available to you, that's totally fine. You can join for free and be a part of the conversation or just witness the conversation. I was talking to a friend of mine and we were. She was saying to me, you know, I've never joined anyone's Patreon. And I said, listen, the Patreon is really where the drama happens. And if that's your vibe, then go and check it out. And another one of my friends who is also on the Patreon was like, listen, that is where it gets so real. And so if that's your vibe, you know, if you, like me, love drama, then check it out because that's where it's at. We are actually having our very first virtual meetup of the chronic overthinkers on July 20, and I am so excited because it is about to be so much fun. Anyways, I'm just throwing it out there. If this is your vibe, if this is a thing that you would be interested in, just check it out. No pressure. Also, we have one more episode before I'm gonna take a bit of a break. It turns out that rest is good for a person, and I have so enjoyed making this podcast and putting it all together, but I think I'm going on vacation. I don't think I'm going on vacation. I am going on vacation. And I want to be able to enjoy said vacation without the stress of having to put together a really solid episode for you all while I'm away from all of my accoutrement. And so I'm gonna do the Sirius Black episode, and then I'm gonna take a little bit of a beat. I'll know exactly how long that's gonna be in the next episode, but then we're gonna move after Sirius Black. I haven't decided yet, I think, and I'm interested to hear your thoughts. So please feel free to share on the Patreon. I think we'll move to James Potter next. I think he's the next pureblood. It's a kind of natural progression into the Marauders. And so I think he will be the one that brings us back into for the next semester, if you will. I can't believe we've been doing this since January. What a world that we're living in. And so just think of this as a bit of a summer break. This is also an opportunity for those of you who are new and are just catching this episode to go back and catch up. This is also an opportunity for you to send it to your friends who may be interested in this. Like, this is just our time while I'm on vacation. I'm gonna be reading a lot of fanfic because that's what I do on vacation. So if you're not following me on social media, particularly on TikTok, which is probably where I'll post most of this, it's roffw on TikTok and I will be sharing my journey. I think I'm gonna read Remain Nameless. Everyone's been yelling at me about it, particularly after the Draco episode. And I think it's a solid segue into things and then we'll see what comes. But that's what I think I'm gonna do. So for those of you who are excited about that, if you don't follow me on social media, I might post those videos on Patreon just because. Why not? But so either way, that's incentive if you want to see my reactions. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty dramatic if you haven't figured that out yet. So, honestly, it's probably gonna be absurd. I also have very strong feelings about Germany. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. So anyways, that was a segue. No, that wasn't a segue. That was a something that wasn't a segue. Okay, whatever. You get it. I initially didn't think that I was going to do this section on my favorite moments that involved the characters because I thought, well, we really don't have a lot of instances with these characters. But what I am going to do is talk about kind of just moments where we get to kind of meet them or introduce to them and why I find them fascinating. And the first one is with Andromeda when Harry meets her in Deathly Hallows. And it just made me think about the reality of what it must look like to look like Bellatrix. We spent a considerable amount of time talking about Bellatrix in the last episode and the way that she is just this kind of fanatic for Voldemort and what it must be like to be someone who has stepped away from that particular belief and is also married to the very population that is being persecuted by this person who your sister is so intricately tied to. It made me think about what that means for her, how that might have motivated some of the choices that she was making, the need to kind of distinguish herself. Because even if they're not twins, when you look like someone, people have very clear expectations of who you are and who you're supposed to be. And so how then do you negotiate kind of carving out your own identity in a space where people are placing your beliefs and your identity onto you based on who you look like, particularly when you are younger than that person. And it just made me kind of think about the motivations that Andromeda had to do what she did. And we're gonna get into that later on in the episode. But it always is so jarring in Deathly Hallows when Harry shows up and Andromeda is in some ways resigned to the reality that she looks like Bellatrix. And she's not necessarily surprised by Harry's reaction to her. And it takes Harry a moment to really kind of recalibrate the way that he sees her. And she still is so kind and she helps him and she does all of these things. But the difficulty of that cannot be overlooked. I think that this is one of these instances where we're going to be in a space where we're going to have more answers. No, we're going to have more questions than we have answers about these characters. And to that end, when I think about the moments where we get to meet Regulus, the one that stands out to me the most. And by meet him, I mean we get to, you know, hear tale of him or, you know, get some sense of who he is as a person. The one that stands out to me is really the letter that he leaves for Voldemort in the basin where he put the fake locket, y'all. Can you imagine being 16 years old? You are a Death Eater. You know that Voldemort is, like, out of his mind. And you said, you know what? You did something, or I had a change of heart. And so in addition to taking the locket, which could have easily have just been the only step, you took the locket you left. You said, no, that's not good enough for me. I'm going to take the locket, I'm going to duplicate it and put a fake one in. And then just to make sure that you know it was me, just to make sure that there is no question as to who did this, I'm going to leave you a note. And that note is basically going to say, I want you to die. And I know that you're out here trying to make sure that you can't. And I am working to assist whoever is going to come to make this thing. I want to make sure that it happens, y'all. The gall of it all, the audacity. And to me, that only comes from someone who has been born and raised to believe that they are untouchable. Because that is not only just the kind of gall of a teenager, that's also the gall of someone who has said or been told, you can't touch me, even though he low key knows that Voldemort can. And I love that because that's the kind of drama and madness and absurdity that I live for. Foreign so the way that we're going to structure this episode is we're going to start with questions about Andromeda, and then we're going to move into questions about Regulus, and then my reflection is going to be a conversation about both of them and the things that they have in common. One thing in particular, but no spoilers. Okay, so let's begin with Andromeda. When I asked what word best describes Andromeda, the top three responses were brave, independent, and loving. The invocation of bravery here I find to be so interesting because I think so much of the way that we understand, particularly, and I'm assuming that this is in reference to Andromeda's leaving her family to go and be with Ted, is an understanding that the Black family is a dangerous place to be. What is clear is that they are ruthless. They are not willing to sacrifice their family name for love or concern. And so in instances where you put those things into jeopardy, you are in jeopardy. And so there is a bravery that comes along with saying, I've had enough of that. I've had enough of all of these things. And the way that I am going to step away is not even just leaving the family behind because I don't believe with your beliefs, but rather going a step further and marrying someone, falling in love with, allowing myself to have emotions and feelings for someone who I have been taught is below me by every metric imaginable. And I think that this also feeds into the notion of independence, in that I think you have to have an independent way of thinking, to even get yourself to a place where you would consider dating someone like Ted Tonks. Now, I mean, okay, that's a more generous interpretation because the other interpretation could easily be like, well, unless you're doing a bit of a fetish thing. But it's hard to know whether or not that's true. We'll talk about that later. We'll talk about that later. And then loving. We see that she is such a loving mother. We see that she's a loving grandmother. Right? We understand that she takes care of Lupin and Tonks child Teddy after they die and she loses her husband as well. And I think that someone who has the kind of capacity that she has to, even in the midst of grief, be willing to take care of this child from a union that by all accounts, and I actually am intrigued by this because many of you brought this up in your comments about whether or not she actually approved of Lupin and Tonks getting married. And I don't know where you all got the idea that she wasn't pleased with that. And it might be canonical. And if it is, please feel free to let me know on the Patreon, because I don't remember that. But some of you brought this up. And so then to go so far as to still raise her grandchild is, I think, speaks volumes, particularly coming from the family that she comes from. I think we can see kind of what a meaningful departure that act is for her relative to her family. Let's get into our arithmancy lesson for Andromeda. For this episode's arithmency lesson, we had about 166 responses. And for the first question, which is, is Andromeda a good person? About 81% of us said yes. About 19% of us said don't know. And about 6% no. No 0.6% said no. Someone wrote Andromeda to Tonks seems like a good person because of her involvement with the Order of the Phoenix, you know, allowing them to hide out at her home. Also, she seems like a good mother, which we can deduce from when we see her worry about Tonks and just in general with her husband. It seems like they raised Nymphadora with love and of course because she was willing to be disowned by her family, probably at first, mostly for her love of Ted Tonks. But I'm sure she probably didn't agree with their pure blood supremacist views as well. Someone else wrote for her as a good person I said yes. She probably knew her marriage would get her disowned and she went through with it regardless. Even though I can imagine it was very upsetting and difficult of a situation to be put in. I would suspect, based on serious lore, that she was brought up with the same pureblood bigot beliefs and that she goes against them and is openly thinking freely outside of her pushed family belief system. All points to being a good person. Also, she doesn't try to disown or prevent etc. Tonks from marrying Remus, even though we know there is so much prejudice surrounding werewolves. So we love an open minded, non bigoted queen. And we do. Although some of you again have said that maybe she had some of this. And that's the thing. It's not clear to me whether or not that's Fanon or canon. Please sound off on the Patreon about this, because I think this is an important point and I think there are ways for us to think about it and not in ways that would compromise whether or not she is a good person. I think that when it comes to thinking about Andromeda as a good person, what's clear to me is that she cares a lot about her family. I can't imagine how difficult it is to find a place in yourself that allows for that kind of love to exist when you came from a family that did not offer that to you. And I think maybe this is one of these moments where because she has that kind of capacity, she was so drastically different from her family members. What feels true to me as well is the fact that, like, it's really, really hard for bad people to raise good kids. Like, it's a. To kind of both as a child, kind of unlearn or recognize the ills of the space that you've come out of. And I think that when we look at the way that Ted and Andromeda raised Nymphadora, I think it's clear to me that there is something in Andromeda that is not in Narcissa. Right. I think that because Draco, again, there are lots of things, but Draco is a jerk. There's no denying it. And obviously Tonks is older than him, but even just the energy, the spirit, the kind of vibe suggests a very different kind of upbringing. One that does involve love and one that does involve this kind of stronger sense of kind of what is right and what is wrong. And I think to me that suggests a very different, A very specific way that we can understand who Andromeda is as a person in conjunction with Ted, that allows us to kind of feel very good about saying that she is a good person. And this is something that many of you brought up in your comments, kind of pointing to who she is as a mom as a way to kind of point to the fact that she is a good person. And this is something that we've seen in other episodes. We saw it in the episode on Narcissa, we saw it in the episode on Molly, where the way that we have come to understand these, particularly these women, is in our understanding of how they raise their children. And I did a bonus episode on Patreon for Mother's Day about Narcissa and Molly. And one of the things that we find right is that Molly was seen to be not as good of a mother as Narcissa, despite the fact that we love her kids more. But people didn't like the way that she was mothering them. And so it really did affect the way. Way that people viewed her. And I'm not convinced that that works in the inverse. That's a different conversation. But it does strike me as interesting that many of us pointed to Tonks as our justification. Now, this could be really born out of the fact that we just don't have enough about Andromeda to make any other assessments. And so we're just using whatever clues we have, which I completely understand. It's deduction, my dear Watson. It could also be that some of this is just the way that we tend to judge women, particularly moms. And so I don't know. I mean, I think that either way, the answer is interesting. And I do agree with the assessment that she is a good person. I just find it fascinating that many of us pointed to kind of motherhood as a way for us to be able to arrive at that particular conclusion. But again, that could simply be because we don't have enough about her. And also, that definitely matches with the understanding that we are meant to get from JKR about what makes women good people. And a lot of that is tied up into their children. So even if we arrived at that conclusion, in some ways, it's because we're conditioned to in these books. But I digress. The next question is, is Andromeda Tonks a good sister? Admittedly, I have some thoughts on this, but anyways, we'll get to that in just a second. About 60% of you said don't know. About 22% of us said yes, and about 18% said no. Someone wrote, I was inclined to say she was a good sister. To Bella and Cissy because they were supposedly very close while at Hogwarts. Someone else wrote, for Andromeda, as a good sister, I had to say, don't know. We have no idea what her relationship with her sisters was like. I can definitely imagine tension existing there for some time and following her leaving the family. They're completely cut off and we don't really know how she feels towards her sisters. Someone else wrote, I'm not sure she's a good sister. I feel like we don't have enough information. How hard did she try to get her sisters on board with her relationship? How hard did she try with her parents? How much did it hurt to leave? Did she continue to try to reach out and they ignored her because of her choices? We don't know. Again, here we are, more questions than answers. Someone else said, I said no to this one because I'm sure if we asked her sisters, they would say no and something along the lines of blood trader would come out. I put no for this one just based on everything we know. But I would be curious to know if she tried reaching out and talking to her sisters, possibly about their pure blood supremacy, because that's not just her getting out by trying to make her sisters understand and learn and grow and change their viewpoints, which would change my answer from no to yes. A lot of the questions that we get here are questions about the circumstances under which Andromeda left and tried to kind of reach out and potentially use this as an opportunity to help her family learn and grow. Now we can understand to a certain extent why we might think, well, like, that just simply would not work. And I think that there are lots of reasons why. Right. We get a sense from Sirius that his family was very absolute in their pure blood supremacy, and so there was no mobility or potential for movement on their end. But one thing that stuck with me was, and I know this is gonna be controversial, I think people are not gonna like this particular take. And that's okay. You don't have to agree with everything that I say, but the reality of the situation is, y'all, Andromeda left them. She didn't have to date Ted. She knew going into this relationship with him that, like, this was not gonna go well. And maybe she thought, you know, so this is love, and so they would figure it out. But by all accounts, she came from a fairly loveless family who was obsessed with pure blood supremacy. Like, she had to have known in her hearts of hearts this was not gonna go well. And she still said yes. And she had to have known what that was going to mean because she's not the first member of the family to be excommunicated for their beliefs. And so I just. I don't know, I find myself kind of torn here because I'm like, you made a choice, and I don't disagree with the choice you made. But, like, whatever happened to sisters before misters? Is that a thing? It just strikes me that we cannot remove her decision to leave, to enter into this. We can't remove it from the equation. And again, I don't condone what her parents did. Listen, y'all, okay? Because I feel like some of you are, wherever you are, either getting ready to run to the Patreon and furiously write to me, being like, you're wrong. And that's okay, too. It just strikes me that there is something about this, that she made a choice. And I think if the tables were turned and let's say they had the same ideology as the Weasleys, and, like, someone left and went to go get married to a pure blood supremacist, we would not be as supportive. And so it's like, we wouldn't say that she was a good person. We wouldn't say that she was. You know, we just wouldn't. We vilify Percy for much less. Okay, you know how I feel. I just. It just strikes me that some of this is kind of for the plot in terms of the way that we understand the choice that she made. And if the tables were turned, we would be having a very different kind of conversation, and we wouldn't be looking to Bellatrix and Narcissa to be the ones to do what we would consider to be the right thing. And I'm stuck on the fact that Andromeda made the choice. And I. Again, I don't disagree. I think you should choose your happiness, particularly when you're doing it in the face of, like, a supremacist power structure. But when it comes to questions about her being a good sister, I'm like, you left them. You might not have wanted to, but you also didn't have to. You could have done what people have done for a very long time and just been like, love you, babes, but I can't. I don't wanna leave my family. I don't wanna leave, you know, the life that I've known. And I might regret this for the rest of my life, but, like, family first. And she did not do that. And I wonder the extent to which. That's the thing. It's that betrayal. Not only just that she decided that she was going to go off with this Muggle born man, but that she chose him over them and that I don't know. There's something about it. There's something about it. Maybe my answer wouldn't be no full out. Maybe I would have just put don't know because I don't fill out these surveys. I don't want to skew the results. Maybe I would have just put don't know because there's something about it. I know you all are gonna come and roast me in the comments and honestly I can't wait. The next question is is Andromeda Tonks a good pure blood? 55% of us said no, about 27% said yes and about 18% of us said don't know. Someone wrote I do not feel she is a good pureblood if we base this off of pure blood supremacist views because she married a Muggle born and did not adhere to the blood purity rules, not to mention her aiding and abetting the Order of the Phoenix against the Death Eaters. Someone also wrote, after attending Hogwarts, Andromeda married a Muggle born Ted Tonks and during the Second Wizarding War she and her husband were allies of the Order of the Phoenix. These choices make her a bad pureblood though. I admire her for going against the wishes of her prejudiced family. Regarding her marriage and fighting against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, one more person wrote, I don't think Andromeda meets the definition of a quote unquote good pure blood. Certainly not the supremacist definition, but for those on the side of good she did not join the Order or fight in the Wizarding War. She married Ted going against the supremacist views and she allowed Harry and Hagrid to stop off at her home but did nothing else for the cause or even to protect her husband. She could have used magic to alter his appearance or move him to another country to protect him, but she didn't. When magic is supposed to be the solution for everything, it seems like she didn't even try. As always, this question brings the right amount of chaos and madness to this episode. I am so obsessed with it because I think that this is a really hard question to answer because I think it depends on how we understand as always what it means to be a good pureblood. But in the case of Andromeda it really does also beg the question of how do we understand her relationship with Ted Tonks and what it means for what she believes as it pertains to pure blood supremacy. Because if we are of the mind that her marrying Ted is the thing that means that she has kind of forsaken all of the pure blood supremacist beliefs, then it stands to reason that, yes, she is standing in the face of pure blood supremacy. And I think there is something to be said about the fact that she marries him and was dating him in the first place. That is important and can't be overlooked in terms of what that means for, you know, what she believed in the first place about pure blood supremacy. Because the fact that she was even willing to entertain the idea that this person who was probably not even in Slytherin. Hold on, Stand by. I'm gonna go check that. I'm back. So apparently, according to the Internet, he was sorted into Ravenclaw house. So not only did Andromeda leave the Slytherin house, she also was with said what? Who was Muggle born? And I don't want to minimize what that means in terms of where her head must have been at. The way that she had to have reconciled her understanding of pure blood supremacist beliefs, the fact that she understood based on at least what was going on with Bellatrix, who probably had to marry Rudolphus at a fairly young age, we don't know. But I can imagine that that's kind of how it works in old school, very patriarchal families. So she had an understanding of what the expectation was and she still decided to make her own choice. And that is super, super important. But I do have a bit of a difficulty and a bit of an issue. And I've given voice to this before in the Draco episode, when we take someone's relationship with an individual who may be kind of marginalized and assume that that means that somehow their own beliefs and their own biases and prejudices vanish into thin air. And this is something that has been brought up to me on numerous occasions by Dr. Donna, who is an amazing person who is on TikTok and also on the Patreon. And I went and found the comment that she left on a professor's note, which for those of you who don't know, is basically just when I get on Patreon and rant and I did one on the Black Sisters on May 9 and she wrote, we don't know that Andromeda unlearned anything. We have seen people get with and be with, quote, unquote, minorities and see their people as exceptions to whatever minority status they have had. We just don't have the evidence. Her love for Ted and her family could be just as selfish and self interested as Narcissa's. And I don't disagree with that. I think that there is a way that a person can be in relationship with someone and not change their beliefs. And we see this time and time and time again on a number of different identity dimensions. And so I'm always reticent and hesitant to kind of give credit to an individual who is kind of dating outside of a particular identity because it doesn't necessarily mean the thing that we want it to mean. And so we don't know. We don't know if Andromeda really changed. And I asked this question to people on the Patreon and I asked, does Andromeda leaving her family for TED talks means that she's changed, right? Has she stepped away from pure blood supremacy? Natalie wrote, I don't think we can allude to a change per se, as we never truly knew what her thoughts or opinions were before. However, the fact that she married Ted Tonks, a Muggle born, suggests to me that she never truly bought into pure blood supremacy fully. I couldn't imagine someone with the views of a Malfoy or Lestrange marrying a Muggle born even if they had changed. That's a bit of a stretch. The Dark side of Me has a rebuttal to that. And that would just be that there are a lot of people who date outside of whatever group that they're told they cannot date to get back at their families. And a lot of people do this and a lot of people can still fetishize individuals to whom they're married. Like there is a world, and I'm not saying it's this one or even in this context, but there is a world where you can do that and it's really to stick it to your family. And that kind of points back to kind of what Dr. Donna was saying anyways. Katharina also writes, I don't know if her marrying Ted automatically means she's changed. She could have also thought everything her parents said was crap to begin with. I think her marrying Ted shows she didn't care or necessarily agree with her family's beliefs, but I have a feeling that there was a lot of unlearning that needed to happen. Even if she didn't agree with what she was being told at a young age, it was still ingrained in her and I'm sure slipped up sometimes and she had to do a lot of unlearning and new Learning she was indoctrinated from the moment she took her first breath. There's a lot of work that goes into deconstructing that. Lin Shi wrote. I think her leaving the family and then going on to fight for the Order shows that she either has changed from the black family's ideas or she never really bought into them in the first place. Or a little bit of both. I think her helping the Order shows more than both her leaving the family and marrying Ted, though, since there can be be many reasons to why someone might want to leave their family and the quote unquote, one of the good ones mentality can always be present. There it is. Okay. Lynchi brought it to us. The idea that it is possible that Andromeda exceptionalizes Ted. But I think that when we look at Nymphadora and we see what she is fighting for, I think we can extrapolate out that her beliefs about, you know, pure blood supremacy were not something that she got from her mom's old life, that it's something that she got from this new life. And I also have to say that, you know, part of this in the nuances that we're finding in this kind of finely grained understanding of what motivates Andromeda is us really having to kind of push because there's no way in the world that J.K. rowling would have had this level of nuance and understanding in her writing because she doesn't believe that women can be multidimensional. We've said this before. I'll say it again, and I'll say it a lot more. And so we are putting this into the world and we're putting this into Andromeda. But I do think it is important for us to realize that there is a world in which the way that she had a relationship with Ted Tonks, maybe prior to Nymphadora being born, is one where she could have been with him and still held at least some of, maybe even the majority of her beliefs and just said, this one is a good one. And maybe her family just didn't buy into that and she was like, fine, whatever. But I also think it's important for us to realize that, you know, being in a relationship with someone outside of your identity group does not absolve you of the potential prejudices and biases that you have, particularly when those prejudices and biases are socialized into you. And if you are not actively doing the work of unlearning that being with someone is not the equivalency to doing that work. It is time for us to move on to Regulus. When asked what word best describes Regulus, the first word is brave, the second word is conflicted, and the third word is regretful. Again, bravery makes sense to me here. We're talking about a teenager who went against not only his familial beliefs, but also a very homicidal psychopathic person and did something that literally no one else had done, which is stand in the way of Voldemort's Horcruxes. He hid it. Voldemort had no idea where it was. And that's outrageously brave. And some would even go so far. I mean, this is one of these moments where I'm like, huh? Because it's definitely giving Gryffindor like, level bravery without much thought. I mean, he took some precautions in that he duplicated it and things like that. But it's definitely giving like seat of your pants level bravery and not the Slytherin level, like, well thought out, determined idea of it. Right? Because there had to have been other ways to do this and he just didn't. And this is something that many of you brought up in your comments as well, about the way that he went about kind of standing up to Voldemort, conflicted and regretful. I think that these are things that obviously he must have had some level of regret. But the question is regret about what? And this is a thing that I think, you know, my understanding of the kind of Marauders Era fanon is that they imbue Regulus with a lot of things that we may not be able to find in canon because we don't have a lot of it. And I think that clearly there is some conflict and obviously his actions reflect some level of regret. But I think that the question we have to kind of grapple with, and I think my reflection will help us do that a little bit, is what does he regret and where does the conflict lie? The first question for Regulus is, is Regulus Black a good person? About 42% of us said don't know. About 19% said no, and about 39% said yes. Someone wrote Regulus a good person. I had to say no to this one. Even though him finding out about the Horcrux thing before even Dumbledore is a slay and it is on his part. Shout out, creature. I have to go on canon for this. This boy was a Voldy. Stand by the looks of it. The stuff hanging in his room from the news about him and killing muggles, etc. From order of the Phoenix. We know from his mother's portrait that they are all about the so called nobility of their house, which leads me to believe he was a pure blood supremacist who saw Voldemort's disregard for the family's quote unquote property creature and somewhat vindictive attitude, as you have alluded to in some previous episodes, towards the pureblood families as major disrespect. I think he's definitely a complex character and discovering the Horcruxes to attempt to take out Voldemort is unarguably a good deed, but one which I don't think was motivated by good intentions. We're going to get into that. We're going to get into that. But I think that this is where we have to kind of grapple when it comes to Regulus. Again, this idea of the one thing that we really know about him that kind of falls into the category of quote unquote good is this Horcrux situation. And to what extent do we allow that to color the rest of what we know about him and his past as a Death Eater? Someone else wrote, Regulus may have had a change of heart once the going got rough, but he did not change sides until he was already part of the evil regime for a time. Did he try to destroy the Horcrux? Yes. Does that redeem him from his part in the terrorism that was the Death Eaters? No. Someone else wrote, for Regulus, I have a harder time determining if he is a good person, though I did say he was because at the end of his life he made a huge value switch and sacrificed himself for noble reasons. However, he grew up knowing Sirius was not in support of the pureblood agenda and he still chose the quote unquote easy path by going with the black family beliefs instead of his own. From what we know, he was committed to Voldemort's cause until he wasn't. And that is also hard to excuse. But his sacrifice does seem to make up for some. Here's what I'm going to say. If I had to answer this question, I think I would have put no. I think we have to be careful to allow one good deed to be the thing that paints the way that we view the rest. And also what's fascinating to me here, and I'm let's talk about this in the post episode chat, is how come y'all are not capping for Regulus the way that y'all do for Draco? They are arguably the same age and are up to the same stuff. And yet many of us are much more critical of Regulus. And I am intrigued by this because, like, is it the blonde hair? I find it fascinating because many of us were willing to kind of make excuses for bad parenting being brought up in this way and all of these things. For Draco, we have two episodes dedicated to that. And yet here there are a lot of questions about, you know, who he is. And we're examining his decisions of joining the Death Eaters. And maybe the question or the. The delineation here is the fact that many of us perceive that Draco's joining of the Death Eaters was not one of his own personal choosing. But it's hard to know if Regulus was right. Like, one of the things that we simply don't know is whether or not this was something he did by his own volition. Was he encouraged to do it by his parents? Was this something that he felt he needed to do to counteract serious leaving? There are a lot of questions that we don't have answers to and I really do find it interesting. And maybe it's because, again, we do know or at least have a lot more assumptions that we can make about how it is that Draco ended up in the Death Eater fold in ways that are not necessarily true. But, y'all, I'm sure you all will let me know. I have no doubt that you all will let me know. But in the meantime, between time, I've got some questions. One thing that I can say is that whether or not Regulus's joining of the Death Eaters is the way that we come to understand whether or not he's a good person. The fact that he was such a fan of not only Voldemort in terms of what he represented but what Voldemort was doing tells us something about who he is. But I also want to invite us to grapple with the question that you all. And that my students, when I teach my class always throw back at me which is, he's a child, so how do we get to hold him accountable? Many of you use this very same defense when it came to Draco. And now it seems we've abandoned it. And it's me. Look what you all have made me do. It's me bringing it back. But I have questions about how much of this is actually him and how much of this we can fault him for as an individual who was so young who admittedly had a lot of things at home that would have pushed him in this direction. Including serious leaving. How do we reconcile this reality with a lot of the way that we've come to understand whether or not he's a good person? Look at what you all have made me do. And for the record, I don't want to hear any commentary about my criticisms of Draco and. And how they apply here. Of course they do, but I'm the one asking the questions, not you. Another very difficult question to deal with based on what we know about Regulus, given that we only get it from Sirius's perspective. Is, is Regulus Black a good brother? About 41% of us said don't know. About 47% of us said no, and 12% said yes. Someone wrote, we also do not see him be a good brother. He cut Sirius out of his life, and when he had a change of heart, he did not go to Sirius or anyone, which may be due to his need to be secretive of his betrayal, but ultimately contributes to him not attempting any type of amends with his brother. I am glad you did not ask the question of heroism for either, though. I think the answers would have been very interesting. They would have been very interesting. But it's hard for us to reconcile what heroism looks like in the context of characters that we really don't get to see a lot of. And we kind of tapped into it, and we are going to continue to do so. Someone else wrote, I also don't think the Black brothers had a good relationship growing up anyway because their parents probably pinned them against each other. So it's safe to say Regulus wasn't a good brother to Sirius to the same degree that Sirius probably wasn't a good brother to Regulus. This resonates with me because I think one thing that we do get from Sirius in a lot of ways is the high amount of resentment that he seemingly has for Regulus. And I think part of that comes out of the fact that Sirius saw in Regulus what his life would have been like if he had just told the party line. And I think that there are a lot of things about that that would make you upset and resentful. Even if you know that your family's beliefs are and you don't agree with them, they're still your family. And especially when you're a young child, having to deal with the fact that, like, your parents do not love you or certainly don't love you enough to accept you as you are, and then to see a sibling who is able to garner that love and support that you've always wanted, we can Imagine so simply and so easily how that would have made Sirius feel. And then on the part of Regulus to think about, you know, to be the child on whom so much now falls because your older brother didn't do what older brothers were supposed to do. In all of these different, you know, lore and fantasy worlds, the second brother pretty much does whatever they want as long as the older brother does what they're supposed to do. And so now Regulus is growing up feeling like he has to be the one to fill in the gaps left by Sirius and what that must have been like. And again that resentment that probably exists between the two of them for reasons that are so far outside of their own control and really do fall to their parents for creating such a toxic environment wherein they feel like they have to be competitive with one another. It sounds like absolute disaster of a context to be in. Someone else wrote. Regulus is described as a typical male, second born spare. He isn't as attractive or tall or charming or intelligent or courageous or rebellious as his older brother. When did all this come out? We've got a serious stand on our hands and this leaves a mark. Even Slughorn lamented that even though Regulus was part of his slug club, he always wished he had gotten Sirius. Sirius tells Harry that his parents always compared them as brothers against each other. So when Sirius rebelled, Regulus worked to become the perfect model of a pure blood by his parents standards. They said what I said, which is how we know that they're correct. No, I'm joking. But I think that so much of their relationship as brothers is conditioned and colored by their desire or lack thereof of meeting their parents expectations. And so it's very, it's giving Cain and Abel, it's giving this sense of I can't succeed as a person to our parents if you are succeeding and vice versa. And what does that mean for the way that they come to understand their relationship and you know, the way that they see one another. And then when we think about what this means for, you know, why it is that Regulus didn't necessarily go to Sirius, that is a lot of stuff to undo. And we have to remind ourselves that Regulus was still very young and also trying to make a name for himself and stand out in ways that would separate him from his brother. And that is the plight, I think, of a lot of younger siblings just in general of recognizing that whether your older sibling does something good or bad, it all falls back on you. And I think that that is something that you know as an older Sibling. It's not something that I really began to think about until I was much older and real that this was the thing that was happening to my little sister. But a lot of her decisions were made in some ways with a recognition of not wanting to be compared to me for good or bad. Right. And so a lot of that then means that, you know, Regulus is trying to create a name for himself whether it be in Death Eater circles, with his parents or even in his rebellion. And so that's so much of the dynamic and the way that we see, see these two operate. Particularly Regulus though, seems to be in defiance of Sirius. It's time for a little chaos. The next question is, is Regulus Black a good pure blood? 24% of us said no, 30% of us said don't know and 46% of us said yes. Someone wrote, I think Regulus was a good pureblood because he was invested in maintaining the black family status. He was a good student, a good Slytherin and he made his mother proud of him. Someone else wrote, this one was difficult to answer based on how little we know about Regulus. We learned through Sirius and the Order of the Phoenix that unlike him, Regulus readily mirrored all of his parents blood supremacist beliefs to the extent of joining the Death Eaters to impress them. These actions all speak of someone who is a good pureblood willing to uphold good pureblood values. I do think, however, that it is important to consider Kreacher when answering this question. I believe that Regulus care for Kreacher and his willingness to die for him while not undoing all of the other choices he made in the name of pure blood supremacy places Regulus lower in the ranks of good purebloods than those like Bellatrix and the Malfoys. This is an interesting perspective because I think that oftentimes we forget about the way that purebloods treat creatures, creatures with a C, not creature with a K. And I think it's important for us to think about the fact that in the same way that we can't quite extend the level of kind of grace to Andromeda in terms of whether or not she stopped subscribing to pure blood supremacist beliefs because she married Ted Tonks, I'm going to invite us to think about and use that same logic to think about what this means for Regulus and his relationship with Kreacher. Now I know, I know that thinking about it through this lens may take away some of the kind of pathos that we tend to have when we think about the relationship between Kreacher and Regulus, particularly in the context of Creature's Tale and Deathly Hallows, which is one of the most beautifully heartbreaking chapters in the series. However, I think that there is room for skepticism here in terms of how we understand that relationship and what that means for his subscription to Pure Blood Beliefs. Because, again, you can exceptionalize creatures. We see Hermione do it. We see even Harry kind of does it with Dobby. This is a possibility and doesn't necessarily change the way that we understand this character's belief structure. It may have played a role in his willingness to overthrow Voldemort and kind of stand against him. But I'm not comfortable necessarily attributing this particular action as an indicator that he is not interested in upholding pure blood supremacist beliefs. And I'm going to get more into this in my reflection, but I think that it is important to highlight the fact that this relationship is meaningful and does show his ability to, at least in part, even if there is some sense of exceptionalization happening here, to suspend his beliefs about where he is in the hierarchy for the sake of Creature. I think that's important, and I don't want to throw that away. But I also do want us to be a bit. A bit more skeptical or maybe less willing to allow that to be the thing that guides us into the direction of thinking that he is no longer a Pure Blood supremacist. This dovetails very nicely into my Patreon exclusive question, which is, is Regulus Black redeemed? One of the big parts of these stories is what Regulus does when he takes that locket. And a lot of people across the fandom use this moment as a way to absolve Regulus of his past with the Death Eaters. And so I was intrigued to see whether or not people on Patreon bought into this. About 55% of people said yes, 15% said no, and 30% said, don't know. I was nice this time and actually gave a don't know option, which I normally don't do on the Patreon, but I did. And so we can see that the vast majority, not the vast majority, but the majority, says that they believe that Regulus Black was redeemed. Tabitha writes, I said yes. Regulus actively and knowingly sacrificed his life to try and kill Voldemort. If that doesn't redeem someone, I don't know what does. Eric writes, I said yes. The marauders were 21. Ish When Voldemort fell, Regulus was even younger than that. When Kreacher's story takes place, as someone who is possibly still a child, Regulus realizes the true horror of what Voldemort is. The lake full of bodies had to come from somewhere and resolves to take the only path he sees to stop it. His ride in that little boat to the mist shrouded island was no less bravely cold blooded than Harry's walk into the woods. Maybe even more brave because he wasn't helped along by the people he loved. What a beautiful image and also what an interesting parallel of a recognition that you go into this knowing the likelihood that you are going to die. And that means that you approach this with a level of selflessness. But again, the difference here that I think is actually very meaningful is that Harry knows he's going to die, but he's doing it for everyone. What was Regulus going to die for? I think that that's the question that I am interested in unpacking and hopefully, fingers crossed, will be answered, at least in part in my reflection. But everyone was not convinced that this action had redeemed Regulus. Kiera Q wrote, one good deed is not enough to redeem a man from a lifetime of wickedness. I've always thought this line was excellent and applicable to humanity. I know it's from the Pirates of the Caribbean, but it seems oddly appropriate in this instance. And it is because I think that it speaks to what the conversation has been as we've kind of been diving into Regulus, which is how much weight do we put on this and how do we reconcile past actions with one good action? Bisha wrote, is Regulus redeemed? I'm unsure because we're missing so much canonical context from his story. On one hand, we have no insight into his actions leading up to and as a Death Eater, so it's hard to determine if one decision, no matter how significant or impactful, can outweigh years of evil decisions. Carmen wrote, you know, I think so. I understand that one good deed does not make him a good person. However, for him to be willing to die and not make his House elf die in his stead like any other pureblood would do, says something. Also, to go to such great lengths to thwart at least a part of Voldy's plan for whatever reason also says something. Sure, we don't know his reasons and we don't know if it was a purely selfless act, but the fact of the matter is that he gave up his life in that particular pursuit and that the loss of his life, danger behind that one good deed should be factored into whether or not he is redeemed, at least to me. I hear you. I hear all of you, because I think that as a Gemini, which many of you are not surprised to hear, because of my love of chaos, but as a Gemini, I tend to see things from both sides. So I can understand this particular kind of tricky space to be in. Because again, where do we place that weight? I don't think I'm going to give an answer. But what I do think I'm going to do is give a question. Oh, God, I'm so diabolical. When we talked about Narcissa, one of the larger conclusions that we came to as we tried to grapple with what she did to thwart Voldemort and all of the pure blood supremacist beliefs that she had was we kind of came to a conclusion. If memory serves. Please feel free to correct me that you can be a person with bad beliefs who does a good thing, but that does not make you a good person. And I think that the same thing applies to Regulus here. I know I said I wasn't going to give an answer, but I'm giving one. I think the same thing applies. We can hold in conversation the idea that Regulus took part in and supported horrific things as a Death Eater and did a singular good thing in terms of trying to thwart Voldemort. The idea, and I don't want to take away from what he did because it is really, really important. But so was Narcissa not telling Voldemort that Harry was alive? And we still were able to kind of reconcile the fact that she is a person who had really bad beliefs for one reason or another. I think that part of our journey thus far has really invited us and kind of pushed us to recognize the complexities of these characters. And I know that there is a human desire to try and absolve them completely, but maybe that's not necessary for Regulus. Maybe we just have to reconcile the idea that this is just true. He is a not so great person who did a great thing. We've now reached the moment in the episode where I'm going to give a reflection. I've decided to do a reflection that kind of incorporates both Andromeda and Regulus. And I really want to kind of deal with the question of why it is that they decided to turn their backs on their families and their beliefs. One of the things that is true for both Andromeda and for Regulus is that they had to kind of grapple with who they were in relation to their families and what was important. Now, there are meaningful differences here because I do think that whereas Andromeda's decision to leave her family and marry Ted Tonks is a very specific one insofar that it does require at least some revision of your belief structure, even if you are just exceptionalizing or fetishizing, you are living your life with this person. So there is a way that you have to come to understand who they are that might be counter to the way that you understood them before. That's not necessarily true for Regulus. Right. He doesn't have to do any of those things because he can kind of exceptionalize Kreacher, if that is indeed the motivation that he had to do what he did with the locket. And so in many ways, I think that both of these characters give us a sense of what it takes and what the circumstances have to be in order for them to say, you know what? I gotta go. When you are young, you don't always recognize exactly the implications of the things that you were taught as a child until you get older. And then you really have to start to grapple with the reality of the world that you're living in and the one that you were taught. One thing that we know that is true for purebloods, and we see this with Draco and we see this with even Ron, is that you live in an outrageously segregated and siloed space, even within the already segregated and siloed space that is the Wizarding world. And to that end, when we think about what this means for the kind of dissemination of pure blood supremacist ideology, it's really, really difficult to ignore. Imagine a context in which before Hogwarts, Andromeda or Regulus would have really had to grapple with those beliefs. It was all they knew and it was all they were around. But upon entering in Hogwarts, when you're dealing with the notion of diversity of people on a number of different dimensions, you can imagine that one has to start asking questions or not. It strikes me that Andromeda is a person who started asking questions, and then you have to start really grappling with, is this actually beneficial to me to believe the things that I have been taught to believe? And it doesn't seem to me that Regulus necessarily makes this choice. But Regulus comes up against a very specific and similar kind of moment in his own life. Now, many of us say that Regulus decision to betray Voldemort comes from the fact that he had to give Kreacher to Voldemort. And Kreacher came back, and it's clear that he had kind of set Kreacher to die. I am admittedly very ambivalent about this particular take because I think that the thing that turned the tide for Regulus was, yes, what happened to Kreacher, but also the fact that he realized that Voldemort was really in it for Voldemort. When you realize that the person who you've been dedicating your life to is really just about trying to make themselves immortal and which has nothing to do with Pure Blood supremacy, which is the kind of guise under which I'm sure Regulus joined up, you can imagine how much that undoes a lot of the things that tie you to that person. So that when Regulus realizes that Voldemort is actually making Horcruxes and that has nothing to do with the mission of Pure Blood supremacy, we can imagine a context in which he's like, what the heck is going on? And why is it that Voldemort is doing all of this when he should be and could be doing other things? And obviously these things can exist in the same space. But it just strikes me that some of this may be very, very, very disheartening to a young Death Eater who figures this out in conjunction with the way that you then treat his beloved elf. And so, to me, it's one of these moments where, you know, as a young person when they say, you know, never meet your heroes, when you realize that the person that you've dedicated so much of your time to really isn't in it for the reason that you are. And now you have to kind of grapple with this reality. You can imagine how that would lead you to want to shift the way that you do things and do something so drastic, like take one of his Horcruxes, even though you don't know how you're gonna do it, and potentially die as a result of the choice that you make. In that same way, I think that Andromeda was equally in over her head and didn't really realize what it meant to be a Pure Blood supremacist until she had to start really figuring out what sacrifices she was and was not willing to make for the sake of this person that she loved. Whether or not she was exceptionalizing, Ted, doesn't really matter insofar that she knew the costs that she was going to have to Pay. And I think it is one thing to recognize those things in abstraction. It's a very different thing to have to grapple with the reality of it as a young person, whether it be young adult or an older teenage person, you still have to figure out who you are inside and outside of the way that you've come to understand the world that you live in. Hogwarts offers that opportunity, but it also creates a space, depending on what house you're in, to remain siloed. The fact that Andromeda left both Slytherin House and Pure Blood Supremacy in order to be and date, I mean, assuming they courted each other for a while, required her to kind of open her eyes to this other world that she had not yet been exposed. And one of the things that is true about segregation and siloing is that it creates a hotbed of ignorance because you just simply do not know any better. And when you open your eyes, you get the good and the bad. And I think that what we see for both Regulus, whose eyes were open to the fact that the Dark Lord was not really in it for Pure Blood Supremacy at all, because he's out here making soul catchers for the sake of staying alive, that does something to you because you put so much in it. And now that the scales are removed from your eyes and you see what it's really about and who he really is, now you have to start asking yourself the hard hitting questions. And it's not just Andromeda and Regulus who have to do this. We also saw this with Draco, we also saw this with Narcissa. They all come to a point where they realize that Pure Blood Supremacy is not going to be the thing that keeps them safe and it's not going to be the thing that makes them happy. And so they have to make a choice and they have to decide how they are going to live their lives. Are they going to turn a blind eye to the realities of the world and just stay in their siloed segregated bubble for the sake of their own sanity, for the sake of their own safety, for the sake of their own well being? Or are they going to push back and potentially be pushed away for the sake of the fact that they are now in a world that they want to explore and understand? It's giving Ariel from the Little Mermaid. Okay, but with a lot more dark things. But it is a fascinating thing to think about the way that both of these characters arrived at a reality that the world that they grew up understanding and the people who were in it that they revered are not what they thought they were going to be. And so, so much of this transition that we get to see from Andromeda and from Regulus feels very true to me as a person who had to kind of do a lot of unlearning when I left my bubble. And I think that that is what we're witnessing with both of these characters. And I think it's what we're going to see when we talk about Sirius in the next episode. Y'all, we did it. We made it through this episode somehow. Someone way. These episodes are really hovering around the like hour 15 minute mark and I don't know how I'm doing it. It's y'all, I'm blaming you, but I'm so excited and this was so much fun. Again, the next episode is going to be on Sirius Black and we're going to have a special guest. I haven't decided who yet, but if you are a chronic overthinker, be looking in your DMs. This has been an episode of Critical Magic Theory. If you liked today's episode, first of all, thank you. Please feel free to, like, rate, subscribe, follow all the things that one does when pods are cast. If you want to follow me on social media, please feel free to do so rofw on TikTok and Prof. JW on Instagram. Hold on. You gotta dance. Special thanks to Mark Miller and Niles we Luther for this amazing music. If you want to send me an email, please feel free to do so@criticalmagictheorymail.com if you would like to join the Patreon in the conversation, remember you can do so for free at patreon.com criticalmagictheory if you want to go to the website criticalmagictheory.com until the next time, be critical and stay magical, my friends. Bye.