Hot Take: Morgan Was Right The Whole Time.

Hot take: Morgan was right the whole time.

Journal gives us a very clear explanation for Morgan's general antagonism towards Harry, and recontextualises literally every interaction they ever have.

Storm Front, he's actually not at all unreasonable. He's very suspicious, but anyone would have good reason to suspect Harry, and seriously bad stuff is happening. And Harry takes the opportunity to attack him over an insult. And there's every chance that Morgan knows Nemesis is in play. Maybe he even knows something specific about the heart ripping spell, which turns out to have a Nemesis connection of some kind. And then... It works out so very perfectly for Harry. An encounter between a Nemesis pawn (we know for sure that the Gatekeeper recognises this at some point, so it's reasonable that Morgan does too, possibly even at the time) and Harry, who is a suspected Nemesis pawn, a very high stakes one, ends with the situation working out so perfectly that Morgan himself is obliged to vindicate Harry from all suspicion. Doesn't that just sound like a perfectly manipulated play? Doesn't that sound exactly what Nemesis does with Maeve subborning Lily? Nemesis sacrificing smaller pawns to give an important one credibility?

Then Morgan doesn't show up until Summer Knight. Harry just kicked off a war between the Courts and the Council. Oh hey, and his Godmother (who Morgan almost certainly knew about), who has actually always been trying to protect Harry, has traded away her leverage that would let her do so, to the ruler of the force that protects against the Outsiders. Harry's gone from being a festering question mark that might be a time bomb, to being a nuclear power plant that already exploded and is now slowly building towards utter, Armageddon class meltdown. Not only that, but one of the Senior Council is dead, Dresden's own grandmaster on the evil side, and Dresden's own grandfather is now taking his place, which he'd refused for years before, after a private conversation with Dresden, one of the few times the Blackstaff has even been out in the open for years. Oh, and then Dresden manages to immediately get the famously neutral Gatekeeper, the single most crucial figure in the fight at the Gates, the most important person to keep free of Nemesis, to back him up, at least in part. Morgan has *every* reason to be absolutely frothing at the mouth *insane* to take Dresden out of the picture at this point. He looks *exactly* like the worst case scenario Morgan has been fearing since Malcolm's death. And yet with all that, what does he do? He follows the Merlin's orders to goad Harry into giving him an excuse for execution (just goading, Morgan doesn't attack him). And when Harry tries to contact the Senior Council again, Morgan doesn't let him through. Morgan who clearly suspects Harry is spreading the Contagion, won't let him get more access to the Senior Council at a critical moment.

After that what is there? Their next two significant interactions are Morgan trying to kill him after he watched Harry murder the woman Morgan loved, his master, his commander, the woman in charge of leading the combat arm of the Council. *Nobody* can blame him for that reaction, even without the Nemesis context. And then at the end of the book, he leaves Harry as Warden commander of half a continent.

I really can't pick out a moment where, all things considered, Morgan acted unreasonably. Hell, aside from the Dead Beat incident where there was simply the sensible reaction to a situation that seemed crystal clear, he constantly shows tolerance and fairness and restraint with Harry.

But of course I didn't just say he was justified, I said Morgan was *right*. We see in Ghost Story how He Who Walks Behind gave Harry an antagonist to hate and fight and blow up a building to kill, setting him on a darker path, preparing for something. Who says He Who Walks Beside wasn't doing the same thing in Storm Front? And gosh, giving Harry credibility and heroism in the eyes of the Council do masterfully really *does* feel like a Nemesis plot going off flawlessly, doesn't it? Then Summer Knight, we know (assuming that Harry hasn't *actually* been infected this whole time) that he wasn't spreading the Contagion, but the way that Lea, who we know *was* infected, and possibly working up to depose Mab, puts Harry into her orbit is definitely out of character, and absolutely reeks of Nemesis influence. Indeed, considering the events of Cold Days, it's very possible that this whole episode was about forging Harry into a weapon to kill Mab at a critical moment. This is also around the time we assume Maeve to have been infected...

Aside from the Dead Beat incident, Morgan only really went at Harry hard in situations where I think he actually *was* being moved like a chess piece by the Adversary.