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selenakDisclaimer: I haven't had the chance to watch the latest OuaT episode yet, so please don't spoil me for it in the comments. Also, it's been years since I read the Potter saga, so any inaccuracy is due to memory failure, and I apologize in advance.
This said, I love this prompt. It's not an obvious comparison, but if you think about it, the two do have their parallels. (And contrasts, obviously.)
I should add another disclaimer right here and now because if I remember correctly, Dumbledore used to attract considerable fannish ire for, depending on the reader, his questionable mentor policies, Slytherin discriminations and/or not supporting Sirius and/or Snape enough. This isn't going to be an anti-Albus D. post. Mind you, the affection I feel for Dumbledore is largely because Deathly Hallows for once and all proved that the ambiguity in his character was intended. Otherwise I would have found him simply a somewhat frustrating example of the Wise Old Mentor Who Needs To Be Offed Before The Final Battle trope. But Deathly Hallows is that rare example where a character after his death gains in layers and interest, and indeed made AD one of the Potter characters I was retrospectively most interested in. (BTW the way Dumbledore's backstory is revealed, bit by bit, first via Rita's gleefully scandalous biography which to Harry's horror sounds a bit more convincing than the defense from Albus' old pal, then by Aberforth's memories which are bitter but not bashing the way Rita's tell all was, then Snape's memories, and finally by Harry putting his memories of Dumbledore in context and encountering him one last time is a neat way to do it. JKR catches a lot of grief for the long forest wanderings in DH, but rarely credit for what I thought was a great way to reveal something about a key character who isn't around and can't be resurrected.)
So, the Headmaster and the Dark One. (Wait, would this be a viable crossover 'ship?) One of the first similarities that come to mind is that they're both very powerful beings who adopted excentric mannerisms partially designed to distract, but which are actually also expressions of something in them. Dumbledore's sherbot lemons, Rumplestilskin's high pitched giggle (note that this is utterly absent in Gold both before and after the curse is lifted); they're not simply masks, imo. The poor human wool trader didn't have the giggle or the dark sense of humor yet; we see and hear it for the first time in the relatively recent Dark One when he is flippant about having killed his servant in order to avoid his son's horror about this turn of events. If young Albus of lofty ambitions and passionate relationship with a future Evil Overlord was already prone to collecting frog cards and offering sherbert lemon drops, nobody mentions it, but old Dumbledore, who turned down the ministry of magic not, as the reader comes to realise, due to being above politics but because he doesn't trust himself with the power, does this all the time. He has a sense of the absurdity of life that's also a release and a refuge from the horror (and his part in it). (When Harry asks him what he saw in the Mirror of Erised in the very first book, Dumbledore makes a joke about socks, and it fits with the benign, not taking himself seriously wizard. In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore, facing other magical creatures mirroring the past back at him, is no longer able to joke but cries out, though Harry won't understand quite what Dumbledore is watching there until Deathly Hallows and his conversation with Albus' brother Aberforth.)
They start out very differently, of course. Or do they? Rumplestilskin's centuries long quest for power has its roots in the experience of utter powerlessness and humiliation over and over again, but also in the way he's lost his son by choosing said power at one fatal moment. By contrast, young Albus is an academic star and on the fast track to wizardly glory. He feels somewhat embararassed and shackled down by his family, true, but generally he's living the kind of life a younger, human Rumplestilskin would have regarded as completely enviable. (If anything, abandoned-by-his-father Rumple would have thought Albus was ungrateful to resent having to take care of his sister.) If anyone looks like they're destined to become a future evil overlord in their youth, it's Albus, making excited plans for "the greater good" with Gellert Grindlewald because they can and they're that concinved of their own superiority. But when it all changes, it's due to an incident not too different from Rumplestilskin holding on to his dagger and losing Baelfire only to regret it for the rest of his life. Deathly Hallows doesn't postulate that Dumbledore's entire subsequent life was driven by atonment for his sister's death, but it does suggest the guilt over this was what put an abrupt end to what could have become megalomania (and did become just this in his friend/love-of-his-life (if you accept Word of Author post book) Gellert Grindlewald) and changed Albus into someone who'd never seek power again.
And yet. Instead, he becomes a teacher, than a headmaster of the school where future wizards are shaped. Isn't this power, and the conviction of knowing that the greater good should be? One thing that Rumplestilskin and Dumbledore share is that not only do their narratives give them the mentor positions but they themselves do, with a very deliberate endgame in sight. Rumplestilskin mentoring Regina has, from the beginning, the purpose of fashioning her into a monster. He needs her to be one in order to fulfill his long term con and cast his curse. This doesn't mean he's the sole person responsible for what and who Regina becomes, or that she doesn't make her own choices, but he and his manipulative mentoring are certainly a large, large factor. Meanwhile, what Albus Dumbledore needs Harry to be is a sacrificial hero. The one to defeat Voldemort with the willingness to give his own life for this. And he does manipulate events and people to achieve this aim. Again, this doesn't mean Dumbledore is the sole reason, or that Harry doesn't make his own choices. (Also, as Dumbledore once mentions, it's Voldemort, basically, who picks Harry as his nemesis. It could have been Neville. But Voldemort instinctively picks the child mirroring his own half-wizard, half-muggle origins over the child of "pure" blood as the one he needs to rid himself off.) But in both cases, there has to be an incredible ruthlessness at work to be willing to shape and use a younger person that way. (I can't write "child" because Regina isn't one by the time Rumplestilskin first starts his active mentoring.)
Then again: the "determined master manipulator" image is standing on hollow feet, too. Rumplestilskin might have been playing most people in the Enchanted Forest for centuries, but he himself got played as well, and at least some of his ruthlessness towards Regina is fed by the fact he did fall in love with her mother Cora, that Regina should have been his child but wasn't (and the question as to what he would have done if she had been, if he'd been able to use her the way he did in order to cast the curse, remains unanswered), and he's prone to make the same mistakes again, believing he can have power and love both. Dumbledore seems to have been improvising at least half of the time, not just re: Harry, he makes emotional mistakes and wrong judgement calls (one of the most glaring examples: Severus Snape as a teacher in Hogwarts, which is one long exercise in Snape and the children making each other miserable even when one of them isn't the kid whose parents Snape is obsessed with for different reasons; I get why keeping Snape close was important both re: Severus and re: Voldemort, but still).
Both experience what it means to be not forgiven, and what it does. Dumbledore's sister Ariana is dead, but his brother Aberforth outlives him and though they remain in contact, Aberforth, who is the sole person knowing the full truth and in a position to, never forgives Albus. Harry does, during their last encounter, the only time Harry is in possession of all the facts and thus capable to. When Rumplestilskin finally does find his son again, he also finds rejection, and it takes a lot more until Baelfire/Neal forgives him; but then his son dies, due to another of Rumplstilskin's self shaped monsters, and the self justification for all those years he used to cling to is taken away, leaving once more: power.
With Dumbledore, I find one of his saving graces has nothing to do with Harry or his need to ensure that Voldemort gets defeated. It's the part where he doesn't want Draco Malfoy to become a murderer. Draco in canon does not resemble the infamous leather pants/master of sarcasm fanon version, but he is still a kid (an entitled brat completely in over his head) when he is charged with becoming an assassin and finds out the reality of Death Eater life is utterly different from what he thought it would be. Now Draco is absolutely irrelevant to Dumbledore's anti Voldemort plans. He also isn't a particuarly endearing kid, or a misunderstood woobie. (Just the previous year, Draco revelled in the bullying power being the headmistress' sidekick gave him.) But he is still an adolescent, and Dumbledore has his own biography to look back on when it comes to being a young man with delusions of grandeur making fatal misjudgements. So Dumbledore making sure that it will be Snape, not Draco, who kills him (both in the long term, i.e. making Snape promise when Snape reports to him about the whole affair, and in the short term, i.e. when Draco is actually standing in front of him and Dumbledore talks him down long enough until Snape can arrive) to me is one of the most humane things he does, precisely because it benefits no one but Draco. Dumbledore doesn't die saving the wizarding world. He doesn't die to save Harry - who means a lot to him beyond being the hoped for defeat of Voldemort -, either. But he makes sure he dies in a way that saves Draco Malfoy from becoming a killer (at least for a while longer, and it does give Draco a shot at being able to choose later). As I said: it's this that sells me on Dumbledore as someone who did learn from the past, imperfectly as he applied it during the rest of his long existence.
(Sidenote: "But what about my soul?" Snape asks Dumbledore bitterly in the relevant Deathly Hallows flashback. I sympathize, but, you know, killing a man who asks him to, and whom he knows to be dying of a magical disease already, actually isn't soul-endangering, whereas what a younger Severus actively chose to do, which was to become a Death Eater the first time around, complete with all the killing and torturing that entailed, was.)
With Rumplestilskin, it's not the relationship with Belle that keeps him human. (Especially not now, in s4 with all the active deceiving, but not before that, either.) It's things like his sympathy for Henry before finding out Henry was his grandson, when Henry was simply a child - and basically the only person Rumplestilskin in season 1 did something for without having his own angle in mind. Or the mutual respect detente that makes his relationship with Regina in s3, when she's begun her belated emotional growing up and is able to get him ouf his Pan-caused funk in Neverland. Or the matter of fact admiration he has for Emma, even when he's willing (and trying) to use her. Now without his son as an incentive, and with the death-to-save-everyone option already taken and rejected by fate, Rumplestilskin is capable of giving up power permanently, which is about the only thing that could remove the temptation to abuse it which he keeps succumbing to, and actually make him stick to those lessons from the past. But then again: I could be wrong, since his story isn't over yet.
December Talking Meme: The Other Days
This said, I love this prompt. It's not an obvious comparison, but if you think about it, the two do have their parallels. (And contrasts, obviously.)
I should add another disclaimer right here and now because if I remember correctly, Dumbledore used to attract considerable fannish ire for, depending on the reader, his questionable mentor policies, Slytherin discriminations and/or not supporting Sirius and/or Snape enough. This isn't going to be an anti-Albus D. post. Mind you, the affection I feel for Dumbledore is largely because Deathly Hallows for once and all proved that the ambiguity in his character was intended. Otherwise I would have found him simply a somewhat frustrating example of the Wise Old Mentor Who Needs To Be Offed Before The Final Battle trope. But Deathly Hallows is that rare example where a character after his death gains in layers and interest, and indeed made AD one of the Potter characters I was retrospectively most interested in. (BTW the way Dumbledore's backstory is revealed, bit by bit, first via Rita's gleefully scandalous biography which to Harry's horror sounds a bit more convincing than the defense from Albus' old pal, then by Aberforth's memories which are bitter but not bashing the way Rita's tell all was, then Snape's memories, and finally by Harry putting his memories of Dumbledore in context and encountering him one last time is a neat way to do it. JKR catches a lot of grief for the long forest wanderings in DH, but rarely credit for what I thought was a great way to reveal something about a key character who isn't around and can't be resurrected.)
So, the Headmaster and the Dark One. (Wait, would this be a viable crossover 'ship?) One of the first similarities that come to mind is that they're both very powerful beings who adopted excentric mannerisms partially designed to distract, but which are actually also expressions of something in them. Dumbledore's sherbot lemons, Rumplestilskin's high pitched giggle (note that this is utterly absent in Gold both before and after the curse is lifted); they're not simply masks, imo. The poor human wool trader didn't have the giggle or the dark sense of humor yet; we see and hear it for the first time in the relatively recent Dark One when he is flippant about having killed his servant in order to avoid his son's horror about this turn of events. If young Albus of lofty ambitions and passionate relationship with a future Evil Overlord was already prone to collecting frog cards and offering sherbert lemon drops, nobody mentions it, but old Dumbledore, who turned down the ministry of magic not, as the reader comes to realise, due to being above politics but because he doesn't trust himself with the power, does this all the time. He has a sense of the absurdity of life that's also a release and a refuge from the horror (and his part in it). (When Harry asks him what he saw in the Mirror of Erised in the very first book, Dumbledore makes a joke about socks, and it fits with the benign, not taking himself seriously wizard. In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore, facing other magical creatures mirroring the past back at him, is no longer able to joke but cries out, though Harry won't understand quite what Dumbledore is watching there until Deathly Hallows and his conversation with Albus' brother Aberforth.)
They start out very differently, of course. Or do they? Rumplestilskin's centuries long quest for power has its roots in the experience of utter powerlessness and humiliation over and over again, but also in the way he's lost his son by choosing said power at one fatal moment. By contrast, young Albus is an academic star and on the fast track to wizardly glory. He feels somewhat embararassed and shackled down by his family, true, but generally he's living the kind of life a younger, human Rumplestilskin would have regarded as completely enviable. (If anything, abandoned-by-his-father Rumple would have thought Albus was ungrateful to resent having to take care of his sister.) If anyone looks like they're destined to become a future evil overlord in their youth, it's Albus, making excited plans for "the greater good" with Gellert Grindlewald because they can and they're that concinved of their own superiority. But when it all changes, it's due to an incident not too different from Rumplestilskin holding on to his dagger and losing Baelfire only to regret it for the rest of his life. Deathly Hallows doesn't postulate that Dumbledore's entire subsequent life was driven by atonment for his sister's death, but it does suggest the guilt over this was what put an abrupt end to what could have become megalomania (and did become just this in his friend/love-of-his-life (if you accept Word of Author post book) Gellert Grindlewald) and changed Albus into someone who'd never seek power again.
And yet. Instead, he becomes a teacher, than a headmaster of the school where future wizards are shaped. Isn't this power, and the conviction of knowing that the greater good should be? One thing that Rumplestilskin and Dumbledore share is that not only do their narratives give them the mentor positions but they themselves do, with a very deliberate endgame in sight. Rumplestilskin mentoring Regina has, from the beginning, the purpose of fashioning her into a monster. He needs her to be one in order to fulfill his long term con and cast his curse. This doesn't mean he's the sole person responsible for what and who Regina becomes, or that she doesn't make her own choices, but he and his manipulative mentoring are certainly a large, large factor. Meanwhile, what Albus Dumbledore needs Harry to be is a sacrificial hero. The one to defeat Voldemort with the willingness to give his own life for this. And he does manipulate events and people to achieve this aim. Again, this doesn't mean Dumbledore is the sole reason, or that Harry doesn't make his own choices. (Also, as Dumbledore once mentions, it's Voldemort, basically, who picks Harry as his nemesis. It could have been Neville. But Voldemort instinctively picks the child mirroring his own half-wizard, half-muggle origins over the child of "pure" blood as the one he needs to rid himself off.) But in both cases, there has to be an incredible ruthlessness at work to be willing to shape and use a younger person that way. (I can't write "child" because Regina isn't one by the time Rumplestilskin first starts his active mentoring.)
Then again: the "determined master manipulator" image is standing on hollow feet, too. Rumplestilskin might have been playing most people in the Enchanted Forest for centuries, but he himself got played as well, and at least some of his ruthlessness towards Regina is fed by the fact he did fall in love with her mother Cora, that Regina should have been his child but wasn't (and the question as to what he would have done if she had been, if he'd been able to use her the way he did in order to cast the curse, remains unanswered), and he's prone to make the same mistakes again, believing he can have power and love both. Dumbledore seems to have been improvising at least half of the time, not just re: Harry, he makes emotional mistakes and wrong judgement calls (one of the most glaring examples: Severus Snape as a teacher in Hogwarts, which is one long exercise in Snape and the children making each other miserable even when one of them isn't the kid whose parents Snape is obsessed with for different reasons; I get why keeping Snape close was important both re: Severus and re: Voldemort, but still).
Both experience what it means to be not forgiven, and what it does. Dumbledore's sister Ariana is dead, but his brother Aberforth outlives him and though they remain in contact, Aberforth, who is the sole person knowing the full truth and in a position to, never forgives Albus. Harry does, during their last encounter, the only time Harry is in possession of all the facts and thus capable to. When Rumplestilskin finally does find his son again, he also finds rejection, and it takes a lot more until Baelfire/Neal forgives him; but then his son dies, due to another of Rumplstilskin's self shaped monsters, and the self justification for all those years he used to cling to is taken away, leaving once more: power.
With Dumbledore, I find one of his saving graces has nothing to do with Harry or his need to ensure that Voldemort gets defeated. It's the part where he doesn't want Draco Malfoy to become a murderer. Draco in canon does not resemble the infamous leather pants/master of sarcasm fanon version, but he is still a kid (an entitled brat completely in over his head) when he is charged with becoming an assassin and finds out the reality of Death Eater life is utterly different from what he thought it would be. Now Draco is absolutely irrelevant to Dumbledore's anti Voldemort plans. He also isn't a particuarly endearing kid, or a misunderstood woobie. (Just the previous year, Draco revelled in the bullying power being the headmistress' sidekick gave him.) But he is still an adolescent, and Dumbledore has his own biography to look back on when it comes to being a young man with delusions of grandeur making fatal misjudgements. So Dumbledore making sure that it will be Snape, not Draco, who kills him (both in the long term, i.e. making Snape promise when Snape reports to him about the whole affair, and in the short term, i.e. when Draco is actually standing in front of him and Dumbledore talks him down long enough until Snape can arrive) to me is one of the most humane things he does, precisely because it benefits no one but Draco. Dumbledore doesn't die saving the wizarding world. He doesn't die to save Harry - who means a lot to him beyond being the hoped for defeat of Voldemort -, either. But he makes sure he dies in a way that saves Draco Malfoy from becoming a killer (at least for a while longer, and it does give Draco a shot at being able to choose later). As I said: it's this that sells me on Dumbledore as someone who did learn from the past, imperfectly as he applied it during the rest of his long existence.
(Sidenote: "But what about my soul?" Snape asks Dumbledore bitterly in the relevant Deathly Hallows flashback. I sympathize, but, you know, killing a man who asks him to, and whom he knows to be dying of a magical disease already, actually isn't soul-endangering, whereas what a younger Severus actively chose to do, which was to become a Death Eater the first time around, complete with all the killing and torturing that entailed, was.)
With Rumplestilskin, it's not the relationship with Belle that keeps him human. (Especially not now, in s4 with all the active deceiving, but not before that, either.) It's things like his sympathy for Henry before finding out Henry was his grandson, when Henry was simply a child - and basically the only person Rumplestilskin in season 1 did something for without having his own angle in mind. Or the mutual respect detente that makes his relationship with Regina in s3, when she's begun her belated emotional growing up and is able to get him ouf his Pan-caused funk in Neverland. Or the matter of fact admiration he has for Emma, even when he's willing (and trying) to use her. Now without his son as an incentive, and with the death-to-save-everyone option already taken and rejected by fate, Rumplestilskin is capable of giving up power permanently, which is about the only thing that could remove the temptation to abuse it which he keeps succumbing to, and actually make him stick to those lessons from the past. But then again: I could be wrong, since his story isn't over yet.
December Talking Meme: The Other Days
