They don't protect us from Winter because they're meant to do so, they protect us from Winter by having exactly enough force to counterbalance the forces that Winter isn't using at the Gates. So they're both kept occupied.

At least, that's my impression.

 

My understanding of the situation was that it was basically a situation of Mutually Assured Destruction. If Mab goes insane and tries to take over the world or pulls the forces away from the gates, then Titania as her exact opposite can destroy her (and die herself in the process). Then the next queens in line take over and hopefully do a better job. Or fail in which case the universe dies.

The question of what happens if Titania goes mad is a thornier issue. It could be argued that the really major supernatural powers know that Mab is keeping everyone safe, and if Titania actually did something unprovoked that would endanger Mabs defense of the gates, then Winter would suddenly gain several powerfull allies. And if all else fails, Mab can presumably do the MAD thing too, and hope that her successor can hold the gates.

The Mothers also add another question. Are they really just retired queens that don't do much? Or somekind of emergency backup system that kicks in if both Mab, Titania and both the ladies are wiped out and the gates are about to fail.

I seem to recall (can anyone confirm?) a WOJ that stated that the duty of defending the universe changes occasionally, and winter did not always have the job. If so maybe some major disaster did happen back in the day which would be comparable to Summer going crazy, and the current order of things is a result of that.

Finally it might be worth considering the idea that maybe the mindset of the Sidhe is alien in such a way that protection from Summer is not required. Mab for example apparently wants to protect the gates and thats her primary purpose. Fair enough. However since Mab is totally inhuman, she would probably see nothing wrong in forcibly drafting 99.9% of the human population to fight against the outsiders as cannon fodder.

Summer exists to prevent things like that. However since Summer does not have a primary directive like Winter does, its possible that they don't do anything massively destructive simply because unlike winter, they have no reason to. Atleast not without outside influence. Ofcourse what motivates summer to protect humanity is the question. Are they just programmed to, or is there some as yet undiscovered reason?

Oh, and I would presume that the existence of the outer gates is somekind of universal law or something, and that sealing them shut might be comparable to say removing gravity from the universe or somesuch. Mab suddenly having more troops would not really matter in light of everything changing.

I would speculate that either Harry manages to do something to help Winter resist some powerfull attack and maintain the status quo, or there is another shift and Winter (and possibly Summer) are annihilated and someone new takes over the protection of the gates (maybe Humanity?).

 

The impression I got was that Harry's narration was unreliable when he was talking about Summer. By the time Harry learned that the Fae exist he'd already been trained as a Warlock's enforcer, beaten down a Walker and been indebted to the Leanansidhe. After that he basically spent the next decade living in fear of being transformed into a hound every time he entered the Nevernever. After that his first real introduction to the Summer Court was Aurora going insane and trying to end the world.

So yeah, his view on the Fae may be very slightly warped by his own experiences with Winter. Summer may not be all kindness and light, but they're not anything like Winter either.

 

You also have to consider the individuals involved. Taking the changlings away from Lloyd was definitely to spite Winter, and later for pawns in the master plan, but it was also a genuinely good thing to do. Dresden on the other hand, is a very powerful individual and nothing makes a Winter or Summer act more Fae then dealing with power.

 

This seems like the most likely explanation. Keep in mind that everything he learned about the Fae came from pretty biased sources--had he ever really met anyone from Summer before SK? And he didn't even know about the Queens before that. Hell, prior to CDs, he didn't know anything about the purpose of the Summer Knight, either, or the purposes of either Court, or a lot of other stuff.

And for all his talk about Winter and Summer both having their dark sides, the evidence doesn't really back him up a whole lot, really. Summer's not all sugar, spice, and everything nice or anything, but nothing anyone in Summer has done off Outsider juice compares to...well, anything Winter has done.

So call it Harry being an extremely unreliable narrator.

 

This was actually a really good point. Who have we actually seen of summer?

Aurora was infected by the Big Bad and presumably does not count. Her followers were pretty nasty but one would presume that since Aurora was the boss, they were either also infected or she just chose the worst of the worst.

Beyond that, we have the gruffs. The giant gruff seems pretty honorable and polite to Murphy, and when Harry lets him leave after he is down, he seems surprised that Harry as Winter emissary shows mercy. Then there is the Eldest Gruff, who is clearly a good guy and does everything in his power to help Harry. We later even learn that he has been counseling Titania to not go after Harry.

Then there is Titania herself. She is summoned in the latest book, and despite being enraged and grief-stricken over Auroras death, she still does not kill Harry and even offers help of sort by giving Harry the name of the bad guy.

Then there is Mother Summer. Mother Winter wants to eat Harry and would have if he had not passed a test requiring the use of soulfire(!). Mother Summer takes him on a stroll and is polite and offers advice/assistance as best she can.

Finally we can look for the way the forces fighting the outsiders are arranged. Winter is the one who are fighting the outsiders, but there are actually those of Summer there aswell. The medics and healers who take care of the wounded.

Fix also mentions in the latest book that unlike the Winter Knight who has historically gone around killing people, the job of the Summer Knight is to try and stop the WK from doing so. Now I somewhat suspect that the Winter Knights who lose to the influence of the Mantle and go crazy are the failures and the true purpose of WK is not to become a monster, but even so that gives a more positive view of Summer.

Heck, Fix is not exactly a major genius and he still seems pretty decent in Cold Days. Can you imagine what he would have been like if the influence exerted by the Summer Knight mantle would have been like that of Winter. Fix would have been a major psychopath by then.

Bob does mention that if Summer gained too much power it would be bad for the world due to increase in diseases and the like, but that seemed more like breaking of a universal balance which does not really count when it comes to deciding if Summer in general are evil.

It does make some sense I guess that Winter would be the harsh side. I mean the whole winter motif aside, they are basically in a constant neverending war against horrific enemies, and they know peace will NEVER come. I guess that would breed a certain mindset.

 

Seems to me the Summer Fae don't kill or hurt people for pleasure, like the ones from winter might. But they'll sure as hell kill you if you stand in their way.

And we've never really seen any of the Winter Sidhe lose it the way Lily did in Cold Days, when she thought Fix died.

 

I figure it's because Winter Sidhe on the whole don't really understand love and affection that well.

Spoiler

I mean, the only ones we've seen show any real fondness for anyone are Mab and Lea, and even then that didn't stop the whole 'kill my daughter/I want to turn you into a dog' thing. Tough love isn't just a phrase for Winter. I literally can't think of any other Winter Sidhe that has displayed even a modicum of affection for another being besides themselves.

 

This is off topic from the Sidhe but I just sat down and actually flat out read all of the last WoJ compilation and I noticed Jim talking about the Titans from Greek mythology. Given the way he phrased that thing about how to imprison a Titan anyone else besides me betting they're all down there in Demonreach as well? I'd love to see even a partial list of the crazy shit that's sitting in a crystal cell down there.

 

Well, the partial list is as mentioned in canon. Nightmares, Nameless Things, Dark Gods and Immortals. Think of any being in mythology which is supposed to be imprisoned and chances are it is there.

 

Harry's going to be stealing from Hades in the next book, so we may hear something about Titans then.

 

Ehhh not really, when I said list I meant actual names. What was mentioned in the book was just a long way of saying "really scary shit."

Also fair enough, I forgot about that Aek. I'd be interested in seeing what the Greek gods have made of themselves nowadays.

 

Regarding the Fae (Winter in particular) guarding the outer gates, I remebered, I think from the Side Jobs story with Thomas, the brief mention of the Oblivion War attempting to earse the Fae and being stopped by the White Councils by publishing Grimms' Fairy Tales.

It made me wonder if either of these actions occured due to other motivations. Such as a Rashid type character knowing that if the Fae were no longer around the Outer Gates could fall (assuming no-one else took their place). And/or the the actions or the resistance was being directed by the Big Bad mind-controling Outsider?

If so, it is interesting to wonder what other events we have heard of/seen potentialy have far deeper motivations. Also shows the depth of the writing (if intentional).

BTW - First post, hope it contributes something positive.

 

This is an intriguing theory. I'm not sure how true it is, but the implications if so are rather interesting.

The only thing I can think of counter to it is that I don't believe the Fae will disappear when mortals no longer remember. If memory serves, it will just make them unable to enter/interact with the physical world.

In other words, they'll be stuck in the Nevernever. It would put Summer out of a job, but Winter would still be doing their thing.

 

A good point, I cannot remeber if it stated either way. I wonder if the Fae just being stuck could still have a weakening effect? Do all Fae start as Changelings or are some born from two Fae parents (or however they are created), "pure" Fae for lack of a better phrase. This would at least lead to reduction in bodies to throw into combat.

On another note, it is interesting how little the threat is know at large, similar to the Oblivion wars. On the one hand, the knowledge would put all the super natural groups on guard, but the chaos the knowledge could bring could also be disastrous.

I remeber the shock when it was discovered that Peabody was controlling the council, however minutely. I cannot imagine what the fallout would be if it was known there was a being that could completly control almost anyone, regardless of age or skill, with seemingly very few even capable of detecting Its presence let alone removing It. Dresdens reaction to his friends when he learns of Its existance is telling.

That would support the Gatekeeper being a official position (cannot remeber if confirmed already) rather than just a title for Rashid, at least one wizard to "protect" the council from It and indirectly move the council against the enemy when needed.

 

Mab was apparently the one who arranged the publishing, not the White Council. She even has a book signed to her in her castle. Harry reads it in Cold Days and thinks that Mab might have been concerned at the lack of mortal fairytales during the industrial age.

While White Council apparently does publish some books, its only books about evil magical sponsored rituals that work like vending machines. Its stated that publishing books about those is a good way to neutralise such rituals, since if its published, thousands upon thousands perform said ritual and basically suck dry whatever pool of power there is, and each get virtually nothing. Whereas if only one or two people know that ritual, they can actually get decent power with it and do real harm repeatedly. Publishing books like that is apparently a good way to neutralise such rituals then.

The bad guys in Backup had such a book with such rituals that just happened to also mention the name(s) of some monster that they did not want forgotten. The idea was that Harry would get the book and give it to the Council. The Council would see the ritual as being bad and want to pull its teeth by publishing the book. And while that might work, it would ALSO mean that everyone would learn about the monster Thomas&co were trying to make forgotten. Apparently the bad guys in Backup did not have the physical resources to make sure the book was spread everywhere (even with the internet? huh?), so they tried to use Harry and the White Council to do it for them.

Anyway, Grimms fairytales are not full of evil magic ritual descriptions like that, nor does Mab have any need to trick the White Council into publishing books. She IS more than powerfull enough to do it for herself, and it would not surprise me if she was aware of the efforts of people to make mortals forget.

It should also be mentioned that by WoJ we know that the Archive is actually the boss behind the whole oblivion war. The Archive gives orders, and when the group is successfull, it keeps a memory of whatever critter has been doomed to oblivion for a thousand years to make sure its truly gone and watches anyone trying to write about the critter. Then, the Archive itself forgets and the critter is gone for good.

Since the Archive almost certainly would fully know that Winter is currently vital to the defense of the world due to their fight against outsiders, it would presumably not try to doom the Sidhe to oblivion. That might also explain why the two brothers responsible for Grimms' Fairy Tales did not have convenient "accidents", despite the fact that the Archive thanks to her unique magic would have been fully aware that they were writing a book to make the Sidhe well known in the mortal world.

Thomas did think about the idea of sending the Sidhe to oblivion, but when it comes to that was he sadly is just a low-level lackey. What he thinks and what his boss the Archive (who he does not even know he ultimately works for, due to the cell like structure of the group) think are two very different things. Odds are if Harry tells Thomas about the outer gates and the role winter plays, Thomas too will see the necessity of the Sidhe.

 

Just a tiny one I found: