Have you ever wondered why Percy Weasley's relentless ambition didn't land him a spot in Slytherin? Join Professor Wamble as he peels back the layers of one of the most polarizing characters in the Harry Potter series, probing into Percy's complex journey from rule-abiding prefect to estranged Weasley family member. Together, along with the survey responses, Professor Wamble traverses the convoluted path of Percy's choices, the Ministry's own blind spots, and a Weasley family dynamic that's both enchanting and heartbreaking.
Listeners contribute their perspectives, enriching this exploration of Percy's need for recognition against the backdrop of his upbringing by Molly and Arthur Weasley. By the end of the episode, you might find yourself armed with a new understanding of Percy, and perhaps, a touch of empathy for the boy who sought to honor his family name, in a world where the rules are not always black and white.
Link to Survey on Fred & George
Link to Survey Mailing List
Have you ever wondered why Percy Weasley's relentless ambition didn't land him a spot in Slytherin? Join Professor Wamble as he peels back the layers of one of the most polarizing characters in the Harry Potter series, probing into Percy's complex journey from rule-abiding prefect to estranged Weasley family member. Together, along with the survey responses, Professor Wamble traverses the convoluted path of Percy's choices, the Ministry's own blind spots, and a Weasley family dynamic that's both enchanting and heartbreaking.
Listeners contribute their perspectives, enriching this exploration of Percy's need for recognition against the backdrop of his upbringing by Molly and Arthur Weasley. By the end of the episode, you might find yourself armed with a new understanding of Percy, and perhaps, a touch of empathy for the boy who sought to honor his family name, in a world where the rules are not always black and white.
Link to Survey on Fred & George
Link to Survey Mailing List
Welcome to Critical Magic Theory, where we deconstruct the wizarding world of Harry Potter, because loving something doesn't mean you can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julian Wamble and today, oh today, we are diving into the perils of Prefect Percy. Have you ever wondered why Percy was so unable to see the corruption of the Ministry of Magic when everyone in his family was telling him that it was there? Or how come he was so unwilling to stick with his family when he got his job? It felt so easy for him to just forsake them for the sake of status and this is an important one for me, because I'm a Slytherin. One of Percy's chief characteristics is his ambition, and yet he was not sorted into Slytherin, and we know that he's willing to do whatever it takes to rise to the top.
Julian Wamble:Something is off, y'all, and I don't know what it is, but we are diving into it. But first you know that we have to take the next 25 seconds to bop along to this theme song. I heard it. I am a poet. The critics are coming in and they are saying that bop along to this theme song is groundbreaking, it's revolutionary. And so now you need to bop along to this theme song, y'all. I hope you bopped along. Someone asked me if I could give a tutorial about what this bopping along was supposed to look like, and to that I say there is a clip in the first episode of this podcast that is on YouTube, where I am showing you exactly what kind of bopping along I'm talking about. I don't know that I could duplicate that. You know, my therapist always tells me to live in the moment, and that was a moment, and I can only live in it once and so if you are needing instructions, directions, guidance, suggestions, I suggest that you head over to YouTube. It's the mommy issues or Molly issues episode. If you scroll in just a little bit, you will see moves that will shake you to your core. Whether that's for a good or bad reason is really up to you, but you will feel something.
Julian Wamble:I am so excited about this episode because you know, I knew that we had strong feelings about Percy. He is a part of the Weasley clan, who is a family that we love so much, and that we have very strong feelings about each and every one of these characters for one reason or another. I did not, however, realize that those feelings were going to be Herculean in nature, the strength with which you all brought your support for Percy. Your vitriol towards Percy is aggressive, and it was amazing to read through your comments and to look at the data from the survey, because, unlike Molly and Arthur, who, I mean there was mostly a bit of consensus about there is some consensus about Percy and spoiler alert, it's not great. And so I am so excited to dive in and really just try to understand who Percy is, because I think that there are a lot of things about Percy that we can connect with. I said in a TikTok that when I was younger, I really disliked Percy. I felt like he was an absolute disaster. But the older I've gotten, the more I've been able to find some level of empathy for him, and in reading through these comments and doing my own kind of thinking about it, I really found something that connects me to Percy, and I can't wait to share that with you because I think that it's something that will connect with some of you as well.
Julian Wamble:As always, my goal here is to just invite us to think about some of our favorite characters differently. If you walk away from this episode and you feel more strongly about your disdain towards Percy, I love that for you. My goal is to maybe shift you in a different direction. Perhaps and maybe, who knows, it's happened that by the end of an episode I feel more resolute in my feelings about a character, so maybe I'll walk away being like and I never liked him. I don't think that's gonna be the case, but feel free to feel what you feel. Part of critical thinking is a recognition that sometimes your mind isn't changed, but you've thought more about it and you have more to say, and so I hope that, if nothing else, I give you more to say.
Julian Wamble:In the last episode I started a section where I talk about one of my favorite moments that the character that we're discussing for this particular episode is in, and it was tricky for Percy. I'm not gonna hold you, it was not easy, because I think there are a lot of moments where we see Percy kind of doing Percy things, bossing people around, running around, kind of being an adult and really just never really experiencing or at least we very rarely get to see him as a student, as a child, as someone who gets to enjoy himself. But there is one moment that I have always really enjoyed and it's in Prisoner of Azkaban, when Gryffindor wins the Quidditch World Cup and the text says that Percy is, quote jumping up and down like a maniac, all dignity forgotten. This resonates with me when I think about Percy because, again, it is such a rarity that we get to see him as a kid who gets to enjoy things like his house winning Quidditch, and the idea that he was so overwhelmed with the emotion that he just kind of abandoned all pretense and all kind of decorum for the sake of just being present in the moment and enjoying himself is something that we rarely get to see from him. In my deep dive into thinking about Percy and reading through your comments, one of the things that really stood out to me and that really resonates with me is that Percy really doesn't get to be a kid.
Julian Wamble:In a lot of ways, I think that part of his personality is this kind of habitual rule follower and that there is this perception that when you're following rules, that means you can't have fun. And we see on the other end of that spectrum Fred and George, who are seemingly always having fun but have little regard for the rules, and Percy seems to be someone who is so often constrained in his behavior because of the belief that if you are a rule follower, you don't get to have fun. And I think we see this kind of continued on if we think about Hermione as well. She is someone who is often constrained by the rules and constrained by her perspective on what it means to be a good person, a good student, a good citizen, and she and Percy kind of share this. The difference is that Percy doesn't have a Harry and Ron who are very much in the vein, though not quite as far to the pole as Fred and George. But we do see that Hermione kind of gets the invitation to step away from the rules and enjoy herself because she has friends like Ron and Harry.
Julian Wamble:And so this moment where Gryffindor wins, I think that there is something so beautiful about him breaking the rules y'all. I think that for someone like Percy, who is so often debilitated by his desire to follow the rules, to be willing to gamble a little bit, to be willing to lose himself in his celebration, that for me is really stunning, because it's a surprising moment for Harry, who is kind of in the throes of celebration, to see someone who is so straight laced and kind of stiff collared, letting his hair down a little bit, and really being a part of a community and being part of something, as opposed to just kind of telling everyone what to do, and I love that, I absolutely love that. It's out of character for Percy and maybe we don't see it often, but it's nice to know that that exists in him in a way that can come out in the right moments and that also, I think, explains a bit of kind of his redemption arc, because I think it's easy to believe that he is someone who just kind of only cares about the rules and nothing else. But this moment and other moments later on kind of give us a hint of what kind of dwells inside of him and what can happen when he allows it to come out. ["the Last Song of the Year"].
Julian Wamble:So the next thing that I wanna talk about is your responses to the question of what word do you think best describes Percy. So this will come as no surprise to any of you that the top word was ambitious, and when I think about this word, I think that a lot of what we tend to think about ambition, particularly in these books, is colored by the way that JK Rowling talks about ambition. So we know that ambition is something that is associated with Slytherins, which inherently in the minds of people who are reading these books, who are kind of programmed to see Slytherin as bad and Gryffindor as good, it means that ambition is not a good characteristic to have. And I think that that is such a fallacy because so many of the characters in these books that are not in Slytherin and are, you know what we would consider to be our quote unquote good characters or our heroes are ambitious. Fred and George are ambitious, hermione is ambitious, harry is ambitious, ron has ambition.
Julian Wamble:And so it's so fascinating because I think that there is such a negative connotation with the idea of ambition and we see these books really promote the notion that ambition is bad, and I think we see Percy in particular, embody the kind of negative aspects of ambition, which is I'm so ambitious that I'm going to leave my family behind for the sake of my ambition and I'm going to look down on them because I want to excel. But I think there is something about ambition and wanting to better oneself that isn't inherently negative and doesn't necessarily lead one to abandon one's family for the sake of one's ascension to higher levels. I don't love that ambition is characterized this way, because I think that it really does take away from the fact that, one, there are a lot of characters in these books who we love, that are very ambitious, but also that having a desire to do better or better oneself does not mean that it has to come at the cost of the people and things that you care about. We also see him described as selfish, which I think is pretty self-evident in a lot of his choices, but I do think that selfishness is informed by something that is very deep-seated within Percy. I think that it's important for us to think about where this selfishness is coming from. I guess the question that we have to think about is when does choosing oneself become selfish? Is it at the moment where it's at the expense of those people around you, at the expense of your family, at the expense of your friends? Because I guess someone could make an argument that Percy's decision to go no contact with his family comes from a place of choosing himself, because he's caught up in a world that he, as a child, had very little say in and, as an adult, has much more say in the way that he wants to live in the space and the way that he doesn't. And so there are questions about when. Does one's actions manifest in a selfish way, or is he just choosing himself in ways that we don't necessarily resonate with, or in ways that we don't like? And the final word is driven, which is a different word than ambitious, but it's the same thing, at least as far as I conceptualize it. I would love to hear from you if you disagree with the idea that, to me, being driven and being ambitious are the same thing, but the connotation of the two, particularly in these books, looks different. Right Like I can imagine a world where people would say Harry and Ron and Hermione and Fred and George are all driven, but they're not ambitious, and I just wonder what those distinctions are. All right, it's time for the Erythmen's C lesson.
Julian Wamble:For those of you who are new to the podcast, this is where we dive into the answers to the survey that I put up for every character. It's the same questions every episode and we just dive in. We dive into the statistics, we dive into the percentages, we dive into the open-ended responses. The first question for Percy Weasley was is Percy Weasley a good person? 49% of you said yes, 22% of you said no and 29% of you said don't know. This is a really tricky thing to unpack relative to the way that we talk about Molly and Arthur, because Molly and Arthur make questionable choices, but we know that they are on the side of good insofar that they are fighting against Voldemort and his tyranny.
Julian Wamble:Percy's alignment with the Ministry of Magic makes the ability to see him as a good person more difficult, particularly when we see characters like Umbridge come out of the very institution that Percy is upholding and the fact that Percy is not listening to his family when they're trying to make it clear. As a result of this kind of complicated position that Percy is in, there are a lot of complicated feelings about Percy. Someone wrote good person. Yes, we truly don't see anything that suggests otherwise. Yes, his behavior towards his family is expletive, but there is no outright cruelty towards them or others. If anything, the fact that he is there at the battle and fighting with the twins shows this.
Julian Wamble:Someone else wrote I never liked Percy much. I think he was ambitious to the point that it irritated me and he came off as self-important and like he thought he was better than other people. But one thing I admire about Percy is that he did what he thought was right and when he realized he was wrong. He said he was sorry. That is more than many people do in their lifetime, and to admit a mistake as big as the one he made takes a lot of courage. And this is what I'm talking about Within this one character who, admittedly, we don't really get to see that much. There are so many things happening, and we talked in the last episode about this dichotomy of Does not being a bad person make you a good one. Percy contains so many things that are so easily defined as bad, but again, I wonder kind of what motivates these things for him?
Julian Wamble:Someone writes I feel Percy is a product of how he was raised. He was desperate to prove himself and get out of the situation he grew up in. He valued a secure job and the money which that brings. He also loved that he pleased his mother. Someone else wrote at his core, percy is a good person. He means no harm, but his drive and ambition oh there they are together To have a life different from his parents puts him in direct opposition with his family and, for a while, his core values. It really is important to think about how we are defining good people. Is it who they are throughout the entirety of the series, how they end, how they begin. At what point do we understand Whether or not a person is good? The next question is is Percy Weasley a good son? Now, this is where we see the negativity into the chat. So about 49% of you said no, 36% of you said yes and 16% said don't know.
Julian Wamble:Percy's relationship with his parents is one of the big sticking points for a lot of us, particularly his relationship with Arthur. I struggle with this because when we think about what Percy does and two episodes ago we talked about Molly and how she kind of really promotes this Hogwarts to ministry pipeline and Percy does that he lives up to that. Someone wrote is he a good son with the Weasleys? I don't think that's even possible. Molly and Arthur don't seem to care about making their lives better. Percy wanting more immediately made him get looked down upon. Also, bill and Charlie both left as soon as they could. What does that say about the Weasleys as a whole? Someone else writes I think he gets a bad rap, but he literally did everything his mother wanted.
Julian Wamble:This is an important concept, particularly when we contextualize where Percy sits in the family. Percy is doing whatever he can do to get the attention of Arthur and Molly because in the position in which he sits, he is someone who is Is easily forgotten about, and I think that there is something to be said about the fact that when you are the kind of straight-laced, rule following child, it's easy to be forgotten about because your parents aren't yelling at you because you need to get a haircut or you have a dragon Tooth-Earing, or you are breaking the rules and blowing up toilets or running around with you know, one of the most famous wizards ever, or getting possessed by Voldemort. Percy has none of that. He's the child who Molly and Arthur don't have to worry about and to that end I think it means that he's the one who kind of gets the least amount of attention, and we do see moments where he gets that attention from them. But I think that some of the tension that we see that informs the way that you all view him as a son Comes from the idea that he's done a lot of what it is that his mom particularly wanted, but doesn't really get a lot of the accolades for it, unless it's being leveraged against some of the other people. And again, I do recognize that he gets a new owl and that there is some acknowledgement. But when we, when we juxtapose the way that he is treated and the acknowledgement that he gets relative to those kids who are kind of breaking the rules or Going against the grain, someone wrote, I think, as a child and a teenager, percy tried his absolute hardest to be a good son.
Julian Wamble:He was studious and worked very hard, especially compared to Fred and George, and had ambitions to follow in his father's footsteps Something none of the other Weasley children did and be the perfect son for his parents. I think Percy's attitude towards his family, and his parents in particular, would have been quite complicated during his time at school. Following the footsteps of Bill and Charlie and succeeded by Fred and George, percy would likely be seen as the very clever and hard-working, yet boring brother. But Percy is still ultimately a Weasley with the iconic flaming red hair which would come with a lot of prejudice from other pure blood students. There are a lot of ways in which he is ignored and that all of the things that he's done to kind of meet the expectations of his parents is honored with gifts and some accolades here and there. But relative to the other siblings is is nowhere near as much kind of attention, whether it be positive or negative. If what you want is Attention, and you see that the way that your brothers are getting it are, you know, by acting out and all of these things, it just strikes me that Percy Really struggles to really keep the attention of his family because he is the good kid, and so I think, in a lot of ways, percy is a good son. I think the choices that he ultimately makes complicate the idea of it, but at its root, percy does exactly what it is that Molly wants, and he is Bringing honor to the Weasley name by following the rules and enforcing the rules in the highest order, and he's living up to the legacy of his older brothers. I don't know what more we could ask for him as far as being a son than what he's already provided. The next question is is Percy Weasley a good brother? Well, we had strong, strong strong feelings about this one 61% said no, 25% said yes, 14% said don't know. Now I think that this again, I don't know y'all. I maybe I'm just a Percy sympathizer, but you know what? I'm just gonna read what the people say and then We'll just allow that to inform the discussion from here on out before I dive into my feelings about this.
Julian Wamble:Someone writes the way the twins, ron and Jenny, treat him while they were growing up Definitely makes it seem like he gave up on trying to be a good brother. Someone else wrote I Feel like Percy tries to be a good brother, but he only knows how to help by trying to encourage them to follow his path of being a good student. They don't get along because they have different personalities, which isn't a bad thing. This is fascinating. And then one more person writes he is shown to be a caring brother, particularly to Jenny. When Percy tells off Fred and George, we perceive him as a fun-hating, strict older sibling because Fred and George are hilarious class clowns. When Fred and George shut Percy in a pyramid, it's funny because they're getting back at their boring brother. But as someone with a brother who would absolutely do some things like that, it is irritating at the best of times and upsetting at the worst. We don't. We just don't see it as that, because Fred and George are just funny, charming guys.
Julian Wamble:Does being a good brother, particularly older brother, mean supporting the shenanigans of your siblings, or Does it mean trying to guide them in the direction that has seemingly worked out well for you. Now I'm an older brother, so this is an important context and I think that what is true is that your parents when you were growing up as an older sibling are not the same parents that your younger siblings get. They're just not and In a lot of ways, you find yourself Trying to impose a lot of the strictures and the rules that were imposed on you from those parents that you had on your younger Simplings, because these younger siblings are running amok and I know that there are some younger siblings listening to this. My younger sister will probably listen to this, I don't care. Running amok and you know it's true. I, you know it's true and I'm sure that I will hear about this via email or in the comments.
Julian Wamble:Percy is, as one of the comments said, trying to do the best he can to help them succeed. We see that one of the first moments where we meet Percy is he is helping Harry figure out how to navigate Hogwarts and how to pick classes, and I think that at the root of what Percy wants to do is that he wants his Family to succeed. He wants them to come out of the spaces that they're in. He is, after all, very much like Molly in a lot of ways, and I think that he has just this desire to really kind of elevate his family, and the only way that he recognizes that as being true and valid and possible is by following the rules and going down a very specific path. And, just like Molly, I think he's struggling with the fact that none of his siblings beneath him Want to do it this way, and I think that that becomes even more frustrating the older he gets and the more successful he becomes, because I think that he's like I'm doing it right. What are y'all doing when we try to think of him as a good brother? I think he's being the best brother. He knows how to be with the tools that he has, and and it's frustrating to us because the characters that we love are the ones who he tends to castigate Because they're not following the playbook, and so I wonder if Some of this is in our own bias in favor of Fred and George in Ways that make it more difficult for us to see the validity in some of what Percy is offering.
Julian Wamble:Is Percy Weasley a good pureblood? 51% said yes. 19% said no. 30% said don't know. This is a hard one because, as always. We're kind of torn between what it means to be a good pureblood. Are you fighting against kind of pureblood norms like Arthur, or are you supporting and upholding pureblood supremacy?
Julian Wamble:There's a conflation, I think, with the way that Percy Kind of occupies the space as a pureblood, because we know that part of the reason why he wants to ascend is because he is missing the idea of, because he's missing some of the piece of the privilege pie. When you are one step away from being at the top of a social hierarchy, you know what you're missing. We often say things like if I was X, I would have Y, and I think that Percy embodies this more than anyone else in his family, because he recognizes the position that they're in as purebloods. He knows where they should be sitting, he's constantly surrounded by the mouth voice, he's seeing all of the things that are happening for the mouth voice and other pureblood families, and I think he's frustrated because he's like, if I just had X, I would have Y, and so that when we see him Abandon his family for the sake of his job, it's all seemingly in pursuit of trying to get to that pinnacle place of pureblood supremacy, without necessarily though and I think this is an important caveat giving up on his beliefs about the position of Non-magical people and muckaborn people. We know that he dates penelope clear water, which does not mean that he is not a pureblood Supremacist that's not what I'm trying to advocate for, but it does show that he is not so willing to Jettison all of his kind of ideological beliefs for the sake of rising through the ranks in Society and at the ministry, and that should be pointed out.
Julian Wamble:Someone wrote he does seem like a good pureblood because he doesn't seem to question authority until the end. Someone else wrote he tries too hard to fit in with other purebloods to make up for the stain of his family name. He ultimately decides to fight for the good side, but he has a redemption arc that isn't discussed about enough and I think that these are important because it's true that we see him really aligned with pureblood people in Ways that suggest that this is really, really important to him. I can understand people's kind of belief that he, in his kind of not questioning the rules around Him, that he is upholding a very pureblood society where he benefits, then that is true, right, like he can't shake that privilege of him being a pureblood person, and in fact it seems like he's chasing it and by not questioning the authority and the powers that be, he is Upholding it even higher because he's not pushing back against the strictures that would even confine his girlfriend, and so, again, his dating Penelope does not absolve him from the potential that he is really Reinforcing some really negative ideas about pureblood supremacy. Someone else writes he tries to fit in with a class of purebloods His family's financial situation doesn't allow him to associate with. He has so many issues, but that's not an excuse for his lack of values.
Julian Wamble:Percy struggles with the allure of pureblood supremacy and the power that comes along with it, and one of the things about privilege and Supremacy is that no one talks to you about the ills of it, when you can just live in it, and it really, and especially and we talked about this before when the idea of pureblood supremacy looks like Death Eaters and Voldemort. It's really hard to reconcile within oneself the role that you play in Upholding a pureblood supremacist society. Cornelius fudge is not a death eater, neither was Barty Crouch Sr, but they did not do anything to dismantle the system at work, and neither is Percy, because Percy is just trying to go along, to get along so that he can get a check and Rise through the ranks and we see that it works for him. He becomes the deputy assistant to the Minister of Magic in like record time. This is a place where I think ambition can be the downfall of someone when it comes into conflict with how you behave and navigate your own morality. It's Percy Weasley a hero? Um well, 66% said no, 19% said yes and 15% said don't know.
Julian Wamble:Someone wrote Percy is a hero for seeing the air in of his ways and joining the final fight against Voldemort, but he took a bloody long time to get there. Again, what is heroism? I won't say whether or not I think Percy is a hero, but I do think that it is a very courageous act to admit that you are wrong and to say that to the people who have not necessarily treated you all that well. And I think that this is important, because Percy was not treated great by his siblings. They derided him, they made fun of him, they bullied him because he worked hard and operated differently than they did. And we can say like, yes, they were jokes and it wasn't that serious. But I think we have to think about it from Percy's perspective and all of the way that he is treated by his parents, by his brothers. It feels like an outright rejection of who he is as a person. I can imagine that that makes it easy to turn your back on your family and so then to do that work and recognize that you have done something wrong, and then to go back to those very people who still, regardless of whether you are right or wrong have made you feel insignificant and unimportant and erroneous in a lot of ways and say I'm sorry, I was wrong, I'm here now. That is brave to me. What does that make him a hero? That's up to you.
Julian Wamble:Is Percy Weasley a good friend? This was a hard question, because we really don't get to see Percy as a friend. We don't really get to see him behave in any sort of friendly manner other than to Penelope. We don't see him with any other friends To me. It strikes me that you know his rules are friends and that manifests in the results, where 52% of us said don't know, 34% said no and 13% said yes. So most of us are in a space where we have no way to really think about this, and a lot of us wrote in the comments that we didn't have enough information to really see Percy as a friend, and I think that that's accurate.
Julian Wamble:I think that JK Rowling wrote him as a person who is so dedicated to rising through the ranks that he really just kind of doesn't even have time for anything else. And again, this is one of those moments where I think this is a portrayal of ambition that is unfair to ambitious people, because you can be ambitious and care about other people other than yourself, you can care about having friends and having a life, and that ambition and being driven don't necessarily stand in the face of that. But I think that for Percy because we really only get to see him through Harry's eyes and we only really get to see him in the capacity as prefect, as head boy, as older brother we don't get to see him as friend. We see him do friendly things, but even in those moments it's mostly to his siblings, and so there's not much to say about this for Percy. And that makes me sad because I think that if, given the opportunity, percy has the potential to probably be a great friend, it might be a bit difficult because he wants you to do it all his way, but I still think that there's the capacity to be someone who is a very caring and genuine person. When did I become such a Percy sympathizer? Well, well, well, what a turn of events.
Julian Wamble:We've now reached the portion where I reflect on the things that you shared about Percy in your comments and in your open ended responses and also try to culminate some of what it is that I believe explains Percy's behavior, and so I want to be clear that I don't want to absolve Percy fully. I think that his abandoning of his family is really really, really problematic and speaks volumes about the downsides of what one's desire to rise to the top can be. Some of you have asked me kind of, what is the motivation behind structuring the podcast that I have, where we kind of do it thematically via family and starting with Molly and Arthur, and part of the reason why I'm doing it this way was because when we get to talking about our characters like Fred and George and Percy and Ron and Jenny, we cannot do that without having a fully kind of fledged understanding of who Molly and Arthur are and what it is that they brought into their children's lives through their socialization. So in the last two episodes we spent a lot of time talking about Molly and Arthur's trauma. Arthur's desire to kind of get away from the way that people expect him to be because he's a pure blood, and Molly's desire to kind of re-elevate the family name by doing this Hogwarts to Ministry pipeline. And so in a lot of ways, percy is the culmination of his parents' trauma, in a way that his other siblings don't necessarily navigate in the same way, and so it's not clear to me why it is that Percy is the one. But there's always one right. And I think that Percy really, really, really just wants to make his parents happy, and I think that at the root of what he's doing is this belief that, just like Molly, if I do everything right, if I become head boy, if I become a prefect, if I go into the ministry, if I work hard, then I will be able to rise in the ranks and I will be able to bring honor back to the Weasley name and not necessarily have to sacrifice my ideological beliefs. Now, this is naive, very much so, but I think that His kind of belief in the rules is something that was instilled in him, and he is just the only one who seemingly doesn't necessarily shunt that particular belief.
Julian Wamble:I think for Percy. He worked so hard to not be forgotten because, with seven kids and you being the straight-laced one who your parents don't have to worry about, because they know that you're going to do what you need to do in order to succeed they know that you're going to be successful because you've gotten 12 OWLs, which is unheard of, and because you are a hard worker and you want this, so they're not going to invest as much time and energy. They'll congratulate you, they'll give you the adulation and the accolades that you want, but not necessarily the attention that they give to their other kids, because you don't need it. You're perfect, prefect Percy, and that's one of the perils of being an overachiever is that sometimes all the reasons why you're overachieving are the very reasons why you're not getting the attention that you desire so much. And I think that he ultimately just wants Molly and Arthur to see him. And what he does notice is that by stepping out this is just coming to me stepping out of line, everyone gets attention Fred and George. Ron Gin doesn't really step out of line, she just gets possessed. So that's different.
Julian Wamble:What if? What if? Percy's desire to jettison his family is his kind of warped understanding of what it takes to actually get Molly and Arthur's attention. What if he thinks that this is his version of breaking the rules? Allah, fred and George, because they always get attention from Molly and he has not been getting attention for following the rules, certainly not in the same capacity as they have. What if this is his kind of attempt at breaking the rules and he just goes too far because he really doesn't know how to do it very well and he doesn't understand the boundaries?
Julian Wamble:For Percy? His rules are his security blanket. They don't let him down, they help him stand out in certain moments and they have given him things that allow for him to be successful. He gets a good job, he gets good grades, he is doing the things that ultimately Molly wants, but at the price of his morality, and I think that this is part of the thing that really intrigues me about Percy is that he is so smart and so aware, but he hasn't learned that there comes a moment where the rules can stand in the face of your morality, and so when you are so blindly loyal to the rules and to those who enforce them that you have to make a choice about whether or not you are going to jettison what you believe for the sake of success, or forgo success and hold on to what you believe. Everyone else in Percy's orbit is fortunate enough to be able to have. Their ideology and their beliefs about rules stand in direct relationship with one another, but for Percy they stand in conflict with one another.
Julian Wamble:One of the big critiques that I read a lot was Percy is so blindly loyal to Fudge and to Crouch and doesn't really think about what he's doing because he's so blindly loyal. And I can't help but wonder can we fault Percy for his blind loyalty to the ministry when we see his parents giving that exact same energy to Dumbledore, who is, as many of us know and have talked about extensively, very problematic in a lot of ways? Yes, dumbledore is on the side of right in so far that he is fighting against Voldemort, but there are moments where Molly and Arthur are making choices without any explanation from Dumbledore and they just do it. For a lot of Percy's life he has watched his parents blindly follow someone, and when he decides to do it, they tell him it's wrong because it's not that person. Now we have all been children who have wanted to stand up to authority. It is ironic, of course that Percy's desire to stand up to authority is also kind of working in tandem with the fact that he is aligning himself with authority figures who are problematic on a number of dimensions. But in reality what is true is that Percy has no idea that fudge is as much of a problem in so far that he is like promoting ideas that are dangerous to the wizarding world. He has no idea that Bartycrouch Sr broke his son out of Azkaban, out of where Out of Azkaban, swapped him with his wife, put him on the imperious curse, that he used a memory charm that pretty much destroyed Bertha Jorkens' mind and then sent her on her way. He doesn't know any of that, and so he is putting his faith in people who have amassed the kind of success that he wants and who have done it by being straight-laced and following the rules. As far as he knows, in the same way that Molly and Arthur don't know that when Dumbledore was young, when he was out here ready to upend the wizarding world and do this whole wizarding first business, percy gets it honest. We just wish that he did not do it at this particular juncture. This would not be as much of a problem if it weren't when Voldemort came back, and I think that we have to think about the fact that some of this is just his inability to really appreciate the trade-off of one's morality and their loyalty to rules, and when you couple that with the blind loyalty that we see his parents exhibit, without any evidence of anything from this man, I think it stands to reason that Percy's judgment of Molly and Arthur is not without merit. It's not necessarily correct, but I think that blindly following anyone is a problem, and we see both of those things come to bear with Percy and Molly and Arthur.
Julian Wamble:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Critical Magic Theory. As always, a special thanks to Mark Miller and Niles Luther for the amazing music, and I want to give a special shout out to Andrew Sims and everyone over at Muckalcast who were so supportive when I told them about the idea of this podcast, and particularly Andrew was so, so, so integral and helping me figure out how the heck to do this, and so I am so, so, so thankful and so grateful for their support. Next episode we are talking about Fred and George Weasley. Now, this is going to be one that's going to be tricky because they are so beloved. And so there's the Gemini in me is just like what can I find about them that like I can be critical about? So we'll see. Probably nothing, because I do, like many of us, love them, although there are some things about them that I find a bit problematic. But we'll get into that next episode and I can't wait because I think that this is going to be probably the strongest consensus that we have about any of these characters so far, and it's going to be so much fun.
Julian Wamble:I had debated about whether or not to kind of break up the survey into you know, fred and George and make it separate, but then I thought the way that they're presented to us in the books they're treated as a unit, and so it would make more sense for us to analyze them and kind of discuss them as a unit as well. Feel free, in the open ended portion, to talk about them separately if you feel so inclined. Speaking of the survey, the link is up in my link tree for those of you who follow me on social media. For those of you who do not, the link is in this episode's summary, so you should be able to click that and go directly to the survey. I am also working on a mailing list. So, again, for those of you who follow me on social media, you will see a link to the mailing list, which you can click and just put your email in and it will populate a Google sheet that I have For those of you who do not follow me on social media, one.
Julian Wamble:If you're on it, please follow me, but if you're not, please feel free to send me an email at criticalmagictheorycom with the subject line mailing list, and I will be sure to put you on so that we can all have the survey when they drop and we don't have to worry about waiting for FYPs or Explorer pages or whatever. Also exciting news and amazing someone who I won't name just yet, but know that she's going to get an incredibly large shout out is helping me make a website for the podcast, which will help us kind of coalesce all of these things together into one place and make it easier for us to be together in community. I'm also working on a Patreon, with some extra episodes and and access to the slides that I use when I'm making the episode, and also access to the results from the surveys, as well as opportunities for Zoom lectures with me. It's all coming together. I'm going to make an extra question for us to think about, maybe not on this survey, but definitely the next one that will Help us kind of figure out what other things you might want. If you have any suggestions, please feel free again to email me at criticalmagictheorycom with your thoughts about what you would like to see in a Patreon, so that I can put it in there if possible. I can't do everything y'all.
Julian Wamble:This has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and if you liked this episode first off, thank you. Also, please feel free to go and rate, subscribe, like, 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. Follow me at profw, at profw on TikTok, at profjw on Instagram, at criticalmagictheory on YouTube, and if you want to send me an email, as I've said many times already, please feel free to do so at criticalmagictheorycom. I will see you all in two weeks. Until then, be critical and stay magical, my friends. Bye.