3

In the Harry Potter universe, Merlin is well regarded as arguably the Grand-Daddy Poobah of Wizards, having a number of honors named after him, including chocolate frog cards.

enter image description here

There are a lot of sources of the history of Merlin in the Potter-verse; for a quick rundown, this theory video does a good summation:

In the Potter-verse, it was said that he studied under Salazar Slytherin... but this contradicts the "real world" history of Merlin being born to a human noble woman, and sired by a supernatural entity/dark mage. Slytherin was infamous for his "pure blood" fanaticism, and even created the Chamber of Secrets as a means to remove Muggle-borns from the school. This would be nonsensical, given the canon-acknowledged "most powerful wizard of all time" not only came from that house, but was at least implied to be half-blood.

All of this provokes the questions:

1. Was Merlin in the Potter-verse a half-blood, and is there any (canon) source to support or disprove this?

2. If he was half-blood, how can "Mudblood" prejudice be "a thing" when the GOAT of the Wizarding world himself was a half-blood?

3. Even if Merlin wasn't half-blood, his Order was founded on the very basis of creating laws to protect all humans, magical and non magical, and using magic to benefit both. Why then do "pure blood" wizards overlook this if its canonically on record that this is what their top Wizarding legend aspired for the magical world to be?

Improve this question
5
  • 5
    hp-lexicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/… - There's no good evidence that Merlin was a Muggle or a half-blood himself, but plenty of evidence that he was a Muggle sympathiser.
    – Valorum
    Sep 18, 2021 at 3:29
  • 1
    Don‘t mix up „half blood“ and „mudblood“… a half blood with at least one magical parent is not as good as a pureblood, but accepted - even in house Slytherin as quite prominent examples (Tom Riddle, Severus Snape or Dolores Umbridge show)…. Only mudbloods where both parents are muggle are frowned upon by the extremists…
    – Tode
    Sep 18, 2021 at 20:55
  • 1. the person who made the video you've linked as a resource isn't particularly thoughtful or insightful, he's conflated Merlin (a figure supposedly from a pre-Christian time on the cusp of the Christianisation of the British isles with the Witch trials & persecution of Witches (which occurred far far later than the time Merlin was supposed to have lived) & concluded he was terribly selfless & patient with muggles not to have taken offence (over this thing that hadn't happened during his lifetime).
    – Pelinore
    Sep 18, 2021 at 21:13
  • 2. ^ prior to Christianity those claiming magical powers (like the Druids) would as often as not been greatly respected (like, umm, the Druids, again), they were for the most part effectively the religious leaders of the day that Christianity replaced // in short, the narrator of that video clearly isn't really the most critical of thinkers so you shouldn't really rely on his opinions overly much, just saying :)
    – Pelinore
    Sep 18, 2021 at 21:19
  • I've marked this as a dupe. Any significant info about Merlin (e.g. his blood status) would be immediately replicated over to the other question if it existed
    – Valorum
    Sep 18, 2021 at 22:10

0

Reset to default