Unless he broke the Sixth Law. Merlin came about a thousand or so years after the Archive was created. The Delphic Oracle was just the Archive using her powers to predict the most likely future, iirc.

 

Or he was really, really old when Arthur was around. It's quite possible considering how old Rashid appears to be. There is also a chance that they have ways of skipping the boring parts of the human history.

 

Don't some legends have Merlin aging backwards? Usually it's to do with youth and old age.

But one (re?)interpretation of that, might be that he comes from the future and keeps hoping further and further back into the past.

 

You could bypass it by standing in the middle of a mall and shouting it through a megaphone for awhile. The Hunters can suck it, in that case, because killing all those people would draw way too much attention.

 

Just gave me a plot bunny, belief is a very powerful thing in the Dresdenverse, The White God, The Sidhe, Vadderung, Skinwalkers etc all gain power from belief and knowledge of their existence, and the same can be said for The Oblivion War.

Following Oz's chinese whisper joke, imagine a being that has had cells of two people believing in it for over 1000 years, possibly even 100's of cells and units of people that BELIEVE in one unified scary ass creature. Now count the Chinese whispers into play, an entity almost schizophrenic and formless because of how it changes, it's strength varying due to different peoples perception of it's power.

Could have potential!

 

This topic reminds me of the Sith. If you're going to have a two-man group doing nothing but passing on evil names, why not have them also pass on other types of forbidden knowledge? Perhaps there are types of magic similar to The Archive keeping it alive.

 

That's already canon.

Spoiler

It's the driving force behind the whole Santa with Odin's face thing. Most likely, there's times/places where one aspect is stronger than the other(s), and that is what determines the controlling personality.

 

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I wouldn't be surprised if he was, we've already seen that magic was pretty much Merlins bitch and the "rules" for how magic is supposed to function didn't slow him down for a nanosecond.

@Dovaekiin- It could be that as well we've already seen Merlin is insanely good with magic related to time what with him creating Demonreach in what was something like five timelines at the exact same time past, present and future. At this point I don't think anything at all can be ruled out when it comes to what Merlin might be capable of.

 

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I read that scene as Merlin going back to the island at specific times (much as I suspect Rashid does) to set up the prison, then heading off to somewhere with a time dilation effect to make sure he can survive to the next time he's needed.

 

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No, that would be building the prison on five different occasions in five different times. I thought it was emphasized that Merlin built it in one occasion that happened at five different times at the same time. i.e. He only actually did it once, but that one effort coexisted at five separate points on the timeline.

 

Thats how I saw it.

 

Sadly, pretty much all the questions are unintelligible, but the answers revealed a lot of cool stuff.

 

This sounds like a very odd mixture of Greek and Christian mythologies. I mean, are there two different hells, one from Greek mythology and one from Christian? Because it appears that there are two different sets of hell-beings, one from each mythology. Or are they same under different names? Or is this just very badly thought through?

 

Another name of the Mother Winter is Baba Yaga? Definitely fits her well.

And Mab has become the Queen about 1000 years ago? Since we know she is the first Winter Queen, it also means that this system of ruling the Courts was established rather recently and that assuming the Courts existed earlier. But I think it makes sense if we think about a power vacuum made by whoever started putting prisoners in the Demonreach. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if Merlin was behind the creation of the Courts.

 

Actually, we don't know that Mab is the first Queen--that was never stated. We know Mother Winter has never retired, though.

According to an earlier Word of Jim, the Faerie Courts have been around since the beginning of recorded human history, at least. Not sure how we're measuring 'recorded human history' though, so call it 10000+ years at least?

 

Generally accepted school of thought is that "recorded human history" starts with ancient Greece.

Some definitions reach all the way back to Babylon, but that's kinda stretching it IMO. Post-unification Egypt is about as early as I could see being satisfactorily called "recorded history".

 

My mistake. I assumed too much from the fact that there is the second Mother Summer, but not the second Mother Winter.

Also, I do wonder a little about blood ties between the Queens. Maeve and Sarissa are real daughters of Mab. And Aurora was probably a real daughter of Titania.

Assuming that Mab and Titania are real sisters then how they both became queens? And who is their mother? The Mother Winder called Mab her daughter, but I'm not sure if she meant it literally and don't remember if the Mother Summer did similarly when talking about Titania.

I think there is some twist involved in all of this and maybe a reason why Titania doesn't talk with Mab.

And another interesting fact from WoJ is that Fae can have a soul. It's just very unlikely and pretty much unheard-of. We will see how Molly manages.

 

It's heavily implied, if not outright stated, in WoJ that Mab and Titania ascended to their mantles with a ritual much like the Darkhallow.

My thoughts on the matter is that either Mab did it first and Titania followed after as a matter of sibling rivalry/competitiveness, or they did the ritual together on some Fae, and Mab absorbed the Winter half while Titania got the Summer half.