More things I was right about

[fpb]

12) Umbridge was not a Death Eater to begin with, but she pretty much became one - not officially, but they cannot have had a more devoted collaborator - out of sheer power lust and vindictiveness. I bet she was working out ways of getting even with the Centaurs until Voldemort died.
13) Umbridge was loyal to nobody except herself. All those fics that presented her as a Fudge loyalist were dead off the mark. She ignored the murder of one Minister and the complete takeover of the Ministry.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I think it was something new - although of course the ending of GoF had made it clear, among other things, that one did not advance one's career under Cornelius Fudge by being pro-Muggle. Molly says in so many words that Arthur has been kept from advancing his career because he is too fond of them. ACtually, that would be yet another thing on which I was right: in It Was All on Account of the Little Russian Girl I had a twenty-years-younger Umbridge who, far from being anti-nonhuman, postured as a supporter of downtrodden non-humans.

[chthonya]

Hmmm. You're probably right in that it was never specifically stated, but it's not a big stretch from her crusade against werewolves and other nonhumans to an equal dislike of wizard 'halfbreeds' - especially for one on first name terms with Lucius Malfoy. So her characterisation in DH didn't come as a great surprise to me.

That said, Umbridge is one character I've not been able to get my head around - I can't understand what drives her.


Oh, and Happy Birthday for a few days ago!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Damn right they are nearly the same. As for your being unable to understand Umbridge, that only shows that you are not open to certain sins of the intellect. The way I described her in It Was All on Account... was actually intended to round off the portrait of a mental degeneration in which personal vanity and the search of value through personal power (because otherwise one's life is not felt to have any value at all) are joined with a storehouse of hatred which can be aimed at any object with equal self-righteousness. The common point is the lack of value in one's life; that value is sought by taking on a smooth and false exterior, by demeaning others so as to feel superior, and by seeking power so as to be able to do so more effectively. How many young revolutionaries, frothing at the mouth with the misdeeds of the evil conservatives, have become old conservatives, willing and ready to use any means at hand to squash opponents? People search for power because it gives a credible approximation of respect, and they search for pretend respect because they want to silence the suspicion that there is nothing in them to respect.