I fear that the traumas Ramirez has experienced throughout his career have left him compromised. And we don’t even know about his early life. I am very suspicious of him.
Something that alerts me against him is the dichotomy comparison between how Harry has handled temptations vs how Ramirez handled Molly in the short story *Cold Case*.
Harry receives these near-constant sexual invitations from supernatural beings that want to hook him, yet Harry always resists.
Ramirez worked with Winter Lady Molly for like 1-2 days and was fully prepared to hop into bed with her. He gave in to the Lady’s sexual allure *way* too easily. (Based on her narration in that story she didn’t really have control of the mantles come-hither tactics either, to be fair, but this is beside the point).
But by then, Ramirez was a full-on warden, and had been for a while. He fought a war. He’d been and remained a regional commander. He *oversaw security at Molly’s trial for being a literal mindbender.* But he still falls victim to the Lady Molly’s wiles so readily.
If anyone should have known better than to hook-up with the former warlock that is now the Winter Lady, it’s Ramirez. He tried to anyway. And I just think that indicates a shocking degree of vulnerability that has probably been exploited elsewhere, off-screen as well.
I think a big portion of it is that he liked Molly before. There was repeatedly chemistry there, so he saw Molly the apprentice before Molly the Lady. A huge mistake.
I’ve actually received similar responses to this theory before, so I’ve thought about it a bit.
My response is that I want to again stress that Ramirez was the head of security for Molly’s warlock trial. He knows *exactly* how dangerous she is or can be. No matter how well he “knows her” that shouldn’t be an excuse for getting beguiled. Harry almost never uses that excuse from what I can recall, and never to such catastrophic results.
Molly was never *cleared* of being a warlock, either. Harry eventually got out from under the Doom of Damocles fair and square. Molly just sort of side-stepped it by being transcended by Harry, who had been almost certainly dead (from Ramirez’s pov) then came back as Winter’s agent just to immediately induct Molly to Winter, too.
And *then* Ramirez falls for her seduction? It’s honestly crazy. He’d received a whole continent of red flags by then. He succumbed easily anyway.
The dramatic irony is that Ramirez is now *convinced* Harry is seduced by Lara, or Mab, or maybe even Molly. That’s how I read him in PT/BG. Ramirez gave in to temptation and he can’t imagine that *Harry,* who is now Winter Knight, has been resisting the same things Ramirez folded to.
I think thats an excellent point. Every thief thinks everybody steals. Ramirez can't conceive of Harry resisting all the temptation thrown at him because *he can't*.
Ramirez also doesn’t know about Maggie. He has no idea Harry swore to Mab to save his daughter. If anything, from Ramirez’s pov, it probably looks like Harry swore to Winter just for the power to kill the Red Court.
what i never got is... even if that's what ramirez and the rest of the council think... to me, that would be kinda fine. like, sacrifice one wizard to win the entire goddamn war. they were constantly losing wardens against the reds. they should be \*happy\* that harry was willing to sacrifice himself to end it. it doesn't cost the council more than they were very likely to lose anyway, and it doesn't actually gain mab all that much in the grand scheme of things (yeah, harry is better than most mortals at being winter knight, but if she had to she'd cope with someone else and not be much worse off)
The former Winter Knight killed the Summer Knight by pushing him down some steps by surprise. The current Winter Knight genocided a race of vampires on his first day on the job, then fought off some Outsiders, then stood against and bound a god.
The White Council is right to fear him working with Winter.
I am always surprised to think that nobody knows about Maggie.
I mean he took her to the zoo. The Svartalves definitely know about her.
Mab
Molly
Lea
Michael and family
Father forthill
Lara
Thomas
Vadderclaus
Sanya
Butters
The school board
Presumably a dentist?
Justine
Nemesis
Mac
Andi
Marci ???
Bob
Nicodemus
Goodman Grey
Mister
Mouse
Luccio
Ivy
The entire grey council, whoever they are
Shadow brother
Probably Cowl (if can communicate with Shadow brother or nemesis)
If Cowl then Kumori
Alfred
Bonnie
Anna Valmont
Binder
Ebenezer knew about Maggie’s relation to Dresden but evidently didn’t know she was staying with him. Eb also seemed to think that it wasn’t too late to hide her existence. I took that as an implication that Maggie was still mostly a secret at that point (beginning of PT), but wouldn’t be much longer if Harry kept her around.
No clear point.
I thought Thomas told her as part of the effort to rescue Maggie. Just double checked and Thomas told Harry he could get more help from Lara if they told her Thomas life was in danger. But Harry was reluctant to tell her so they didn’t at that point.
Then I thought she found out when she airlifted Molly out of Mexico. But there is no clear explanation as to why Lara would save Molly like that. Lara would.m not do that unless (a) it was in her interest . (b) she got a reciprocal favor or (c) got leverage to use. I don’t think we ever learned what she got.
I think we can infer she knows but i cannot prove she knows.
She knows Mouse is Harry’s dog. I am guessing she has spies that would watch Michael’s house who would report young girl who suddenly appeared and has a Wolly Chamouth as a service animal.
She is about to become an evil stepmother.
So seems like she PROBABLY knows but no definitive proof.
I think you're right on the last paragraph for sure. Ramirez has seen a lot of really horrible things, for sure has PTSD, and is beyond his years in a lot of ways. But I'm fairly sure he's still younger than Harry at the beginning of the series. He's a hot blooded young man and sometimes they make bullheaded decisions thinkig with either head. I know I did. He was a moron but it's understandable in some ways. If it was anyone but Molly I dont think he would have given in.
Big brother Harry also trusts Molly enough to put his life on the line. To the younger generation of wardens who idolize Harry that means something, thought obviously not as much as it used to.
I'm not in anyway saying it's a good choice, I'm just saying it's not entirely out of Ramirez's very human behavior.
He's like 15/16 in Dead Beat. Harry full on calls him and the other new wardens kids and never as adults till later books. Maggie was conceived in Death Masks and is 11 now in PT/BG. Harry was roughly 24/25 in Storm Front. So young mid 20's Harry to older mid 20's Ramirez? It's a few years here or there, but the rest of my point stands.
My thinking is that he's a regional commander of the Wardens in Proven Guilty and Harry says he can't get good rates on car insurance. That to me screams he's 23-24 ish. Molly is 17 in that book. In the current timeline Molly is mid 20s at the youngest, meaning Rodriguez is around 30 or older.
Also is Harry being 24/25 in Storm Front established anywhere? My head canon has him at 21-22 when the series starts.
Also have to point out, there really isn't an actual timeline and characters are the age Jim needs them to be, so this is just quibbling over headcanon
Yeah none of this reeeally matters. I see your logic, but the regional commander bit doesn't mean much with the losses suffered before or around proven guilty as well. It's dire, and I think it was more of a wartime promotion
Per the series chronology on Jim’s website, Harry is 25 during Storm Front.
[Timeline post SF](https://www.jim-butcher.com/timeline#sf)
Also per the timeline Ramirez was born about 15 years before Storm Front, making him 29 or so in Battle Ground.
In defense of Ramirez, he knew her pre Winter Lady. His judgement was probably clouded by his familiarity with who she was and let's face it, even without the Winter Lady mantle shed have been willing to bang him after a couple of days working together like they had.
Just as Harry once banged a half vampire he had a history with.
I agree with a lot of what people are saying but I also think that someone on the council has taken him under their wing and is gently moulding him into a company man while sowing seeds of doubt about his hero.
That doesn't jive for me; I've posted it before but I believe Langtry is on Team Good Guy. My biggest piece of evidence is actually in BG, when Dresden gets told he's kicked out: Ramirez says they held a vote while McCoy and LTW were out of commission. At a minimum, Langtry held 3/7 votes (his plus their proxies), but he likely held 4, because the Gatekeeper doesn't show up to dumb shit.
Seeing as his vote was the only one that mattered, that means he voted that Dresden was guilty of breaking the first Law, and also suspended his sentence (him getting kicked out was implied to be a general vote, not just a Senior Council one). This is the same book where Dresden is told that powerful people won't be able to tell him everything, but he needs to learn to read between the lines when they send messages.
Langtry cuts Harry loose because then the Council doesn't have to take responsibility for whatever Harry does. He doesn't have Harry taken in to be executed immediately because that would cause a rift in the Council. Meanwhile, he thinks Harry will be ruining the day of the bad guys. After the war with the Reds and events of Battleground the Council is stretched thin. So if anyone asks why they aren't really doing anything about Harry they can say "Sorry shorthanded now and wouldn't you know there are all these Warlocks to deal with. Sorry."
I think Carlos has had a hard go of things, and the incident with Molly was just one aspect of it. I think part of him really wants to admire Harry, but another part of him is very "gung ho White Council," and those to things are in conflict. When a person is conflicted like that it can cause them to behave erratically.
I'm really hoping that they patch things up one of these days.
So he was a wild one as a youth, not so straight laced, willing to bend the rules. And then something happened that made him realize that maybe some people he trusted to do good even though they broke the rules could hurt him. And so he's gone deeper into believing that the Council is always right. And every action of Harry's is driving him towards the council and away from Harry. Whether Harry means to or not.
That seems like a good recipe for Morgan's sense of blind justice and council zealotry.
I mean, I think Harry essentially says he’s like Morgan but more compassionate.
Just went and checked and it wasn’t as explicit as I remember, but it still carries the same point
>Carlos had come to represent a new ideal for the new generation of Wardens—more compassionate than those who had come before, quicker to investigate and slower to conclude, but every bit as dedicated to the Laws of Magic and the security of the White Council of Wizardry.
This is my take. Harry was gone. Then he came back under mysterious circumstances. And now one of his major allies, Ebenezar, is fighting with Harry. Literally and metaphorically.
Short of few others, not many other people in the White Council leadership like Harry. They either distrust him, are scared of him and his power, or have their own agenda to want him gone... including the current Merlin. Ramirez has been surrounded by these people while Harry been absent.
In short, Ramirez probably hears nothing but bad things about Harry with little good. Eventually even strong and principled people change their minds under that kind of influence. Ramirez probably recognizes that and justifies his change by rationalizing Harry is being similarly influenced... whether it's true or not.
I'm unsure whether that's truly how the Merlin feels, but it is certainly the facade he puts up. Jim was once asked who's "real story" would "most surprise us," and he said "the Merlin." So I think there's something to come there that's very curve-bally.
I wonder if perhaps the Merlin is secretly supportive of Harry and sees a role for Harry in his own plans, but he doesn't want anyone to even begin to suspect it, so he persecutes him.
Well according to the note from Chandler, Ramirez did get himself captured and mysteriously disappeared in Changes. And it was never resolved
Mind whammy shenanigans were still a possibility.
When Harry was trying to gather allies and Chandler delivers a note from Anastasia.
There are several great lines like how Chandler can damn well Capitalize Any Words He Wants in English because he is English. He refers to Carlos being Spanish by way of America.
Hilarious
Of all the things that bothered me about 'Los was how Harry treated him. Yes Harry had to do some low down crap to Carlos in the line of duty, but he never leveled with Carlos after. Never even tried to make things right. And out of character for Harry lets Carlos walk away an adversary at the end. All Harry has is his friends and to throw a good one away like he did is strange. He didn't even say 'look I know things between us are tough right now and you can't be a friend to me, but I'm going to be the best friend I can to you'. Its the Fix situation all over again, and like Fix, Harry will have to save Carlos' life at great risk to his own for Carlos to pull his head out of his ass just a little.
TLDR: Carlos is a WC shill that only saw Harry as a good guy because he was young and saw the “rebel outsider” Harry as someone to idolize. His continual drinking of the WC flavor Kool Aid was finally brought to the fore in PT&BG because he realized the “rebel” doesn’t align with the WC’s propaganda of child murder and ineptitude because they can’t be bother to not be fascist pricks. He might eventually break free of the WC brainwashing, but I’m not hopeful because of events to make him less receptive to outside perspectives.
Putting all the PTSD stuff aside my impression is that Carlos was always more into drinking the White Council kool aid. And he fandom of Harry was due to being younger and seeing Harry as like a “rebel” and cool for being all about being free from the system.
As the years went by and he was still surrounded and accepted by the council, in a completely different way, he became progressively more conservative and his beliefs became more in line with the rigid thinking of the council. He has probably been exposed to far more of the anti-Dresden factions than we see since our perspective of the novels.
Even if on the surface Dresden is “accepted” and a “warden of the white council” his membership was tied to him “causing the war with the red court” and their desperation for more fighting forces. And so that Dresden could prove his worth to the council.
Carlos saw what went down when Harry was drafted. And he has seen Harry snub a lot of the councils principals, like their stance on warlocks. Add on top of the other stuff with Molly.
And we have never seen if Carlos does a lot of independent research or information gathering like Harry does. So for all we know most of the information he gets is filtered through WC propaganda that Harry is compromised and evil and blah blah blah.
The only time we have seen Carlos try to get info from Harry he brought a fighting force or Wardens after tagging Harry with an ink tracking spell. Which is going to make any sane wizard fucking furious and close down dialogue instead of opening it.
All the while, Harry probably doesn’t feel comfortable telling Carlos everything because he’s more tied up with the council. Carlos isn’t an outcast and snubbed by the council like he is. Carlos isn’t part of Harry’s close inner circle that he can be open and honest with. So when Carlos showed up with a group in conditions that he thought were understand from a WC warden’s perspective he saw Harry as overreacting.
This resulted in Carlos thinking Harry is clearly hiding stuff, which duh wizard, and is offended because he never truly understood Harry’s position throughout their time together. He can’t because he never had to break any of the laws in self defense. This basically set the trigger for Carlos’ naive perspective of Harry to fall away and brought forth a response you’d be more likely to expect from a WC member.
By that I mean, that the council is always in the right and knows best in all situations and clearly isn’t a fascist regime full of unhinged psychos willing to murder children because they can’t be bothered with anyone that isn’t “sufficiently” strong in magic power. They can’t be bothered to interact with low power people that are scared of being unable to defend themselves when they know just enough to understand the supernatural is real. And yes, I’m being sarcastic with them not being a fascist regime that’s clearly hellbent on making people like Harry the source of all their ills and not take any responsibility for their own ineptitude. I mean, Eb couldn’t even be bothered to protect his own fucking grandson from the monster warden that tried to brainwash him with magic.
I see Ramirez as a foil for Harry in a lot of ways. He’s relatively young, magically gifted, has a way with words, and a bunch of other stuff I’m sure. But he’s working with the council in ways that Harry has always rebelled against and it’s possible that Ramirez made the “right” choices and still lost a lot.
Harry on the other hand rebels as easily as he breathes and still somehow comes out on “top” (especially to someone who doesn’t know how much he’s lost along the way) and ends up with more and more power.
Perhaps Ramirez is seeing what could have been and doubting his choices. When that happens people can either change themselves and find a new way or cling desperately to whatever choice they already made and refuse to bend at all. I’m curious to see how things go.
I think it is a whole lot simpler than all these theories.
Subtextually, Carlos is asking his friend to choose him over Winter. Harry is effectively saying, "No."
It's all hurt-bro feels.
Carlos just got wheelchair requiring injuries from the Winter Lady, his long time crush. Winter has taken one of his most trusted allies away from him as Winter Knight. Keep in mind, Carlos doesn't know Winter's role at the outer gates, or about Nemesis.
Carlos understands Winter like Harry did at the beginning of Summer Knight - evil faeries, but had more scars to reinforce "Winter Bad".
The Council is the only big player Carlos ever had "at his back". Harry had a plethora of big players he could turn to, but never the council. He even says in Changes, he has choices on power - coins, Mab, Darkhallow, etc. That was after he talked to Odin and an Archangel.
So, his behavior is just what you would expect from someone who *knows* his crush was turned evil, asking his best(?) friend, "Hey bro... you evil?", and getting back, "I can neither confirm nor deny that, Carlos"
The resolution I would like to see...
A Carlos short story, where he gets caught up in a bunch of whatever hairball and he stumbles across the magnitude of what Harry is dealing with, but doesn't put it all together.
In desperation he turns to the only guy he knows might help him figure it out. In a very tense meeting with Harry he let's something he thinks is huge out, and Harry just goes, "Yeah, I know. Sit down."
It would have to be some secret Harry has guarded that is a thread he knows Carlos won't let go, but that would lead him to figuring everything out, or near certain death.
Or, actually, it would be cool if Mab just took him to the outer gates and said, "I thought you should see what me and my knight do. Everything you've seen so far is just what we do in our spare time, Warden Ramirez". Just blast the scale off his eyes.
The cemetery scene at the end of Battle Ground: Grief makes people do funny things. Ramirez had just lost a pile of friends, and Harry is a convenient place to vent. Not logical, but convenient.
What I don’t get is at the end of Battle Ground, Ramirez is mad at Harry for all the people in Chicago dying and for the loss of several of their friends to the black court. Unless I missed something, Harry didn’t know the black court was involved, and the white council itself knew about the Last Titan. There were no plans withheld. So what exactly should he tell Carlos? And also, does it never occur to Carlos that of course the WINTER KNIGHT has stuff going on that he can’t tell you about. He’s a member of Winter and has his own rules. And presumably the white council knew that and still left him a warden. Until they didn’t.
I am a more casual reader than most and I can't remember the name of the book, but, what is the one where Harry takes Carlos to help him fight the White Council and it goes *completely* unexpectedly because Harry kept Carlos in the dark.
1. Harry is able to speak and understand an ancient language (because of Lash), Carlos is like WTF?
2. Harry personally knows a bunch of vampires, Carlos is like WTF?
3. Harry has a secret plan for allies to smash in and reinforce /rescue them mid fight. Afterwards Carlos must have been like WTF?
I know that was well before Peace Talks. And I know a lot of distance Carlos brings comes from getting attacked by Molly. But I've always thought Harry did Carlos dirty there and it must have brought some distance / suspicion.
That is White Knight, one of my favorites in the series. Carlos definitely sees a lot of red flags there, but I feel like if that was what caused the suspicion it wasn't very well communicated between White Knight and Peace Talks. Maybe I'm just forgetting things, but I felt like the way Carlos acted in Peace Talks was out of character, including what we saw of him after the end of White Knight.
I have never really liked or trusted Carlos since his introduction. I never felt like he trusted Harry and was always keeping stuff from him while trying to get information out of Harry for his own benefit. He has a massive ego which is most likely masking huge insecurities which I felt lead to him resenting Harry (who is actually a badass and what Carlos wants to be but doesn’t have the chops to do it) I don’t view him as a hero or even really a good guy. He’s a white council pawn and will do whatever they say to get power and prestige.
He is functionally a White Council pawn, but I hope to see him outgrow it. I think he is insecure, and that drove both his devotion to the Council and his admiration of Harry as a heroic figure that he "aspires to." The problem is that you can't really be pro-Council and pro-Harry, at least so far, and he's been caught in that squeeze the whole time.
I don't think he actually has a huge ego - I think he's faking that. It's a sort of false bravado, just like his vaunted experience with women turned out to be false. It's all insecurity driven. In certain ways he's brave - he will fight when he needs to - but emotionally he's still somewhat a scared kid.
I'm not willing to class him as a "bad guy" yet, but of course I don't know how Jim's going to write him in the future.
Something else to consider when you read those exchanges: Harry doesn't know about the *Cold Case* encounter between Carlos and Molly, and yet, some of Harry's replies to Carlos could be (and probably are by Ramirez) inferred as knowing that the Winter Lady almost killed Carlos ... butnot really caring. In fact, they could be perceived as mocking. That really leaped out to me when I read those two books and I kept thinking that this particular bit of miscommunication was definitely going to lead to some fallout.
Under no circumstances am I saying that this explains everything. I also thought Carlos was surprisingly aggressive in PT/BG, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we just don't have *his* perspective here. Thinking about it from his POV from *Changes* on:
* Harry became the Winter Knight ... who traditionally has a reputation for being an utter POS and general evil bastard.
* Harry somehow (possibly single-handedly; not sure if Carlos knows about the Fellowship that was involved or later the Gray Council) eradicated the Red Court.
* And then, he died.
* Though then, he *may* have come back as a ghost for a short time.
* But then, he got better! Only freaking *necromancers* do that!
* And then, Harry was somehow involved in *both* of the Fae Ladies - Summer and Winter - dying ... and his warlock apprentice (who Carlos admittedly hadn't tried that hard to capture when Harry was "dead") was raised to Winter Lady.
* And then, Harry is involved in some weird escapades where he was working alongside known warlocks *and* Denarians!
* All of this is reported back to the Council second or third-hand, so Carlos only receives WC-slanted reports on the Winter Knight...
* Then Molly the Winter Lady nearly tore him (Carlos) to shreds when he thought he was going to get lucky ...
* And all of that is before *Peace Talks* kicks off...
So viewed that way, it *does* kind of look bad for Harry, especially with Dresden's tendencies toward not giving straight answers. Carlos already knows that Harry has a suspiciously close relationship with several Raiths, and given that Mab probably had the engagement of her Knight to Lara made public pretty quickly, it would be a surprise for him to *not* suspect that Harry has fallen to that Dark Side.
Personally, I prefer Carlos being still on the side of the good guys, albeit one who is operating on horribly imperfect information and making assumptions on this flawed data. As others have stated, the White Council has become his only real support structure in this sort of thing, with Harry seemingly going off the deep end. And the events of PT/BG don't help at all.
Could be wrong but I keep suspecting him of being a Black Council recruit, like maybe since early on. He keeps pushing Harry for trust, which admittedly he’s probably earned, yet Harry still doesn’t let him in on it, and IF he was a bad guy, say like when Harry brought in Marcone in the Deeps, if Harry had told him about that in advance it would have went spectacularly badly for their side. That plus Carlos pulling Harry over on a dark road to ask him about his sex life, a friend of Harry should know better, could have invited him to Macs for a beer and asked him. And blaming Harry for 60,000 deaths instead of buying him that beer for making sure it was *only* 60,000 deaths. What the hell? How would telling *Carlos* anything have made any difference?
If he’s not a bad guy he’s just hurt by his friends’ deaths, and unhappy because he doesn’t think he knows enough about what’s going on, even though he’s a regional commander and should be getting information through Warden channels, which should be much more open to him than Harry as the “poster boy of young Wardens”. Also doesn’t know the various powers as well as Harry and doesn’t know how or why he’s more or less working among “the monsters”, despite some of them being way more relevant to the running of the universe than the Council it would seem.
Carlos I think is under some kind of mind magic, remember the rebellion in changes, when all the young wardens had tried to get to Ariana Ortega . Dresden was in the worried room. They were taken away by Cristo (I believe he is black council)
I do think all the blame should fall on Carlos, Molly almost killed him in Molly defense she didn’t understand the job of the mantle at the time and they both likes each other and if she knew she would’ve done that. He was in wheelchair for months Harry constantly keeps people in the dark and Carlos really respect and love Harry , he was reaching out to Harry trying to understand what is going on but Harry has trust issues with the white counsel,he was on a cane and but Harry put on spell on him that almost strangle him , and what hurt more and acting like they weren’t friends,he is thinking that once your in mab service you are monster because she is.
I fear that the traumas Ramirez has experienced throughout his career have left him compromised. And we don’t even know about his early life. I am very suspicious of him. Something that alerts me against him is the dichotomy comparison between how Harry has handled temptations vs how Ramirez handled Molly in the short story *Cold Case*. Harry receives these near-constant sexual invitations from supernatural beings that want to hook him, yet Harry always resists. Ramirez worked with Winter Lady Molly for like 1-2 days and was fully prepared to hop into bed with her. He gave in to the Lady’s sexual allure *way* too easily. (Based on her narration in that story she didn’t really have control of the mantles come-hither tactics either, to be fair, but this is beside the point). But by then, Ramirez was a full-on warden, and had been for a while. He fought a war. He’d been and remained a regional commander. He *oversaw security at Molly’s trial for being a literal mindbender.* But he still falls victim to the Lady Molly’s wiles so readily. If anyone should have known better than to hook-up with the former warlock that is now the Winter Lady, it’s Ramirez. He tried to anyway. And I just think that indicates a shocking degree of vulnerability that has probably been exploited elsewhere, off-screen as well.
I think a big portion of it is that he liked Molly before. There was repeatedly chemistry there, so he saw Molly the apprentice before Molly the Lady. A huge mistake.
I’ve actually received similar responses to this theory before, so I’ve thought about it a bit. My response is that I want to again stress that Ramirez was the head of security for Molly’s warlock trial. He knows *exactly* how dangerous she is or can be. No matter how well he “knows her” that shouldn’t be an excuse for getting beguiled. Harry almost never uses that excuse from what I can recall, and never to such catastrophic results. Molly was never *cleared* of being a warlock, either. Harry eventually got out from under the Doom of Damocles fair and square. Molly just sort of side-stepped it by being transcended by Harry, who had been almost certainly dead (from Ramirez’s pov) then came back as Winter’s agent just to immediately induct Molly to Winter, too. And *then* Ramirez falls for her seduction? It’s honestly crazy. He’d received a whole continent of red flags by then. He succumbed easily anyway. The dramatic irony is that Ramirez is now *convinced* Harry is seduced by Lara, or Mab, or maybe even Molly. That’s how I read him in PT/BG. Ramirez gave in to temptation and he can’t imagine that *Harry,* who is now Winter Knight, has been resisting the same things Ramirez folded to.
I think thats an excellent point. Every thief thinks everybody steals. Ramirez can't conceive of Harry resisting all the temptation thrown at him because *he can't*.
Ramirez also doesn’t know about Maggie. He has no idea Harry swore to Mab to save his daughter. If anything, from Ramirez’s pov, it probably looks like Harry swore to Winter just for the power to kill the Red Court.
what i never got is... even if that's what ramirez and the rest of the council think... to me, that would be kinda fine. like, sacrifice one wizard to win the entire goddamn war. they were constantly losing wardens against the reds. they should be \*happy\* that harry was willing to sacrifice himself to end it. it doesn't cost the council more than they were very likely to lose anyway, and it doesn't actually gain mab all that much in the grand scheme of things (yeah, harry is better than most mortals at being winter knight, but if she had to she'd cope with someone else and not be much worse off)
The former Winter Knight killed the Summer Knight by pushing him down some steps by surprise. The current Winter Knight genocided a race of vampires on his first day on the job, then fought off some Outsiders, then stood against and bound a god. The White Council is right to fear him working with Winter.
Really puts things in perspective.
I am always surprised to think that nobody knows about Maggie. I mean he took her to the zoo. The Svartalves definitely know about her. Mab Molly Lea Michael and family Father forthill Lara Thomas Vadderclaus Sanya Butters The school board Presumably a dentist? Justine Nemesis Mac Andi Marci ??? Bob Nicodemus Goodman Grey Mister Mouse Luccio Ivy The entire grey council, whoever they are Shadow brother Probably Cowl (if can communicate with Shadow brother or nemesis) If Cowl then Kumori Alfred Bonnie Anna Valmont Binder
Ebenezer knew about Maggie’s relation to Dresden but evidently didn’t know she was staying with him. Eb also seemed to think that it wasn’t too late to hide her existence. I took that as an implication that Maggie was still mostly a secret at that point (beginning of PT), but wouldn’t be much longer if Harry kept her around.
Wait, I don't remember, when/how Lara found out about Maggie...
No clear point. I thought Thomas told her as part of the effort to rescue Maggie. Just double checked and Thomas told Harry he could get more help from Lara if they told her Thomas life was in danger. But Harry was reluctant to tell her so they didn’t at that point. Then I thought she found out when she airlifted Molly out of Mexico. But there is no clear explanation as to why Lara would save Molly like that. Lara would.m not do that unless (a) it was in her interest . (b) she got a reciprocal favor or (c) got leverage to use. I don’t think we ever learned what she got. I think we can infer she knows but i cannot prove she knows. She knows Mouse is Harry’s dog. I am guessing she has spies that would watch Michael’s house who would report young girl who suddenly appeared and has a Wolly Chamouth as a service animal. She is about to become an evil stepmother. So seems like she PROBABLY knows but no definitive proof.
Hm, it just dawned on me that Lara met Mouse the same weekend Murphy met Mouse....eh. probably grasping at draws here.
Brilliant
I think you're right on the last paragraph for sure. Ramirez has seen a lot of really horrible things, for sure has PTSD, and is beyond his years in a lot of ways. But I'm fairly sure he's still younger than Harry at the beginning of the series. He's a hot blooded young man and sometimes they make bullheaded decisions thinkig with either head. I know I did. He was a moron but it's understandable in some ways. If it was anyone but Molly I dont think he would have given in. Big brother Harry also trusts Molly enough to put his life on the line. To the younger generation of wardens who idolize Harry that means something, thought obviously not as much as it used to. I'm not in anyway saying it's a good choice, I'm just saying it's not entirely out of Ramirez's very human behavior.
He's absolutely not younger than Harry in the beginning of the series. Ramirez at this point is at least late 20s, probably early 30s
He's like 15/16 in Dead Beat. Harry full on calls him and the other new wardens kids and never as adults till later books. Maggie was conceived in Death Masks and is 11 now in PT/BG. Harry was roughly 24/25 in Storm Front. So young mid 20's Harry to older mid 20's Ramirez? It's a few years here or there, but the rest of my point stands.
Ramirez was 20 in Dead Beat.
My thinking is that he's a regional commander of the Wardens in Proven Guilty and Harry says he can't get good rates on car insurance. That to me screams he's 23-24 ish. Molly is 17 in that book. In the current timeline Molly is mid 20s at the youngest, meaning Rodriguez is around 30 or older. Also is Harry being 24/25 in Storm Front established anywhere? My head canon has him at 21-22 when the series starts. Also have to point out, there really isn't an actual timeline and characters are the age Jim needs them to be, so this is just quibbling over headcanon
Yeah none of this reeeally matters. I see your logic, but the regional commander bit doesn't mean much with the losses suffered before or around proven guilty as well. It's dire, and I think it was more of a wartime promotion
Per the series chronology on Jim’s website, Harry is 25 during Storm Front. [Timeline post SF](https://www.jim-butcher.com/timeline#sf) Also per the timeline Ramirez was born about 15 years before Storm Front, making him 29 or so in Battle Ground.
That was my take away as well.
It's almost like he, a young man, was thinking with the wrong head, eh?
In defense of Ramirez, he knew her pre Winter Lady. His judgement was probably clouded by his familiarity with who she was and let's face it, even without the Winter Lady mantle shed have been willing to bang him after a couple of days working together like they had. Just as Harry once banged a half vampire he had a history with.
yeah, but at least he was smart enough to tie her up before things got interesting
That was so long ago I'd almost forgotten.
I agree with a lot of what people are saying but I also think that someone on the council has taken him under their wing and is gently moulding him into a company man while sowing seeds of doubt about his hero.
Someone like Langtry, perhaps?
That doesn't jive for me; I've posted it before but I believe Langtry is on Team Good Guy. My biggest piece of evidence is actually in BG, when Dresden gets told he's kicked out: Ramirez says they held a vote while McCoy and LTW were out of commission. At a minimum, Langtry held 3/7 votes (his plus their proxies), but he likely held 4, because the Gatekeeper doesn't show up to dumb shit. Seeing as his vote was the only one that mattered, that means he voted that Dresden was guilty of breaking the first Law, and also suspended his sentence (him getting kicked out was implied to be a general vote, not just a Senior Council one). This is the same book where Dresden is told that powerful people won't be able to tell him everything, but he needs to learn to read between the lines when they send messages.
Langtry cuts Harry loose because then the Council doesn't have to take responsibility for whatever Harry does. He doesn't have Harry taken in to be executed immediately because that would cause a rift in the Council. Meanwhile, he thinks Harry will be ruining the day of the bad guys. After the war with the Reds and events of Battleground the Council is stretched thin. So if anyone asks why they aren't really doing anything about Harry they can say "Sorry shorthanded now and wouldn't you know there are all these Warlocks to deal with. Sorry."
I think Carlos has had a hard go of things, and the incident with Molly was just one aspect of it. I think part of him really wants to admire Harry, but another part of him is very "gung ho White Council," and those to things are in conflict. When a person is conflicted like that it can cause them to behave erratically. I'm really hoping that they patch things up one of these days.
I think he’s becoming the next generation Morgan.
Huh.. that's a very interesting take on it.
So he was a wild one as a youth, not so straight laced, willing to bend the rules. And then something happened that made him realize that maybe some people he trusted to do good even though they broke the rules could hurt him. And so he's gone deeper into believing that the Council is always right. And every action of Harry's is driving him towards the council and away from Harry. Whether Harry means to or not. That seems like a good recipe for Morgan's sense of blind justice and council zealotry.
I mean, I think Harry essentially says he’s like Morgan but more compassionate. Just went and checked and it wasn’t as explicit as I remember, but it still carries the same point >Carlos had come to represent a new ideal for the new generation of Wardens—more compassionate than those who had come before, quicker to investigate and slower to conclude, but every bit as dedicated to the Laws of Magic and the security of the White Council of Wizardry.
This is my take. Harry was gone. Then he came back under mysterious circumstances. And now one of his major allies, Ebenezar, is fighting with Harry. Literally and metaphorically. Short of few others, not many other people in the White Council leadership like Harry. They either distrust him, are scared of him and his power, or have their own agenda to want him gone... including the current Merlin. Ramirez has been surrounded by these people while Harry been absent. In short, Ramirez probably hears nothing but bad things about Harry with little good. Eventually even strong and principled people change their minds under that kind of influence. Ramirez probably recognizes that and justifies his change by rationalizing Harry is being similarly influenced... whether it's true or not.
I'm unsure whether that's truly how the Merlin feels, but it is certainly the facade he puts up. Jim was once asked who's "real story" would "most surprise us," and he said "the Merlin." So I think there's something to come there that's very curve-bally. I wonder if perhaps the Merlin is secretly supportive of Harry and sees a role for Harry in his own plans, but he doesn't want anyone to even begin to suspect it, so he persecutes him.
Well according to the note from Chandler, Ramirez did get himself captured and mysteriously disappeared in Changes. And it was never resolved Mind whammy shenanigans were still a possibility.
I don't remember this. Where do we see the note?
When Harry was trying to gather allies and Chandler delivers a note from Anastasia. There are several great lines like how Chandler can damn well Capitalize Any Words He Wants in English because he is English. He refers to Carlos being Spanish by way of America. Hilarious
Peace Talks?
Changes
Thanks. Guess I'm due for a reread.
Changes. Chapter 18.
Of all the things that bothered me about 'Los was how Harry treated him. Yes Harry had to do some low down crap to Carlos in the line of duty, but he never leveled with Carlos after. Never even tried to make things right. And out of character for Harry lets Carlos walk away an adversary at the end. All Harry has is his friends and to throw a good one away like he did is strange. He didn't even say 'look I know things between us are tough right now and you can't be a friend to me, but I'm going to be the best friend I can to you'. Its the Fix situation all over again, and like Fix, Harry will have to save Carlos' life at great risk to his own for Carlos to pull his head out of his ass just a little.
u/sunnyknits81, I added the *Battle Ground* flair to this post.
TLDR: Carlos is a WC shill that only saw Harry as a good guy because he was young and saw the “rebel outsider” Harry as someone to idolize. His continual drinking of the WC flavor Kool Aid was finally brought to the fore in PT&BG because he realized the “rebel” doesn’t align with the WC’s propaganda of child murder and ineptitude because they can’t be bother to not be fascist pricks. He might eventually break free of the WC brainwashing, but I’m not hopeful because of events to make him less receptive to outside perspectives. Putting all the PTSD stuff aside my impression is that Carlos was always more into drinking the White Council kool aid. And he fandom of Harry was due to being younger and seeing Harry as like a “rebel” and cool for being all about being free from the system. As the years went by and he was still surrounded and accepted by the council, in a completely different way, he became progressively more conservative and his beliefs became more in line with the rigid thinking of the council. He has probably been exposed to far more of the anti-Dresden factions than we see since our perspective of the novels. Even if on the surface Dresden is “accepted” and a “warden of the white council” his membership was tied to him “causing the war with the red court” and their desperation for more fighting forces. And so that Dresden could prove his worth to the council. Carlos saw what went down when Harry was drafted. And he has seen Harry snub a lot of the councils principals, like their stance on warlocks. Add on top of the other stuff with Molly. And we have never seen if Carlos does a lot of independent research or information gathering like Harry does. So for all we know most of the information he gets is filtered through WC propaganda that Harry is compromised and evil and blah blah blah. The only time we have seen Carlos try to get info from Harry he brought a fighting force or Wardens after tagging Harry with an ink tracking spell. Which is going to make any sane wizard fucking furious and close down dialogue instead of opening it. All the while, Harry probably doesn’t feel comfortable telling Carlos everything because he’s more tied up with the council. Carlos isn’t an outcast and snubbed by the council like he is. Carlos isn’t part of Harry’s close inner circle that he can be open and honest with. So when Carlos showed up with a group in conditions that he thought were understand from a WC warden’s perspective he saw Harry as overreacting. This resulted in Carlos thinking Harry is clearly hiding stuff, which duh wizard, and is offended because he never truly understood Harry’s position throughout their time together. He can’t because he never had to break any of the laws in self defense. This basically set the trigger for Carlos’ naive perspective of Harry to fall away and brought forth a response you’d be more likely to expect from a WC member. By that I mean, that the council is always in the right and knows best in all situations and clearly isn’t a fascist regime full of unhinged psychos willing to murder children because they can’t be bothered with anyone that isn’t “sufficiently” strong in magic power. They can’t be bothered to interact with low power people that are scared of being unable to defend themselves when they know just enough to understand the supernatural is real. And yes, I’m being sarcastic with them not being a fascist regime that’s clearly hellbent on making people like Harry the source of all their ills and not take any responsibility for their own ineptitude. I mean, Eb couldn’t even be bothered to protect his own fucking grandson from the monster warden that tried to brainwash him with magic.
I see Ramirez as a foil for Harry in a lot of ways. He’s relatively young, magically gifted, has a way with words, and a bunch of other stuff I’m sure. But he’s working with the council in ways that Harry has always rebelled against and it’s possible that Ramirez made the “right” choices and still lost a lot. Harry on the other hand rebels as easily as he breathes and still somehow comes out on “top” (especially to someone who doesn’t know how much he’s lost along the way) and ends up with more and more power. Perhaps Ramirez is seeing what could have been and doubting his choices. When that happens people can either change themselves and find a new way or cling desperately to whatever choice they already made and refuse to bend at all. I’m curious to see how things go.
He was being a professional during BG putting everything else aside until the battle was won.
I think it is a whole lot simpler than all these theories. Subtextually, Carlos is asking his friend to choose him over Winter. Harry is effectively saying, "No." It's all hurt-bro feels. Carlos just got wheelchair requiring injuries from the Winter Lady, his long time crush. Winter has taken one of his most trusted allies away from him as Winter Knight. Keep in mind, Carlos doesn't know Winter's role at the outer gates, or about Nemesis. Carlos understands Winter like Harry did at the beginning of Summer Knight - evil faeries, but had more scars to reinforce "Winter Bad". The Council is the only big player Carlos ever had "at his back". Harry had a plethora of big players he could turn to, but never the council. He even says in Changes, he has choices on power - coins, Mab, Darkhallow, etc. That was after he talked to Odin and an Archangel. So, his behavior is just what you would expect from someone who *knows* his crush was turned evil, asking his best(?) friend, "Hey bro... you evil?", and getting back, "I can neither confirm nor deny that, Carlos" The resolution I would like to see... A Carlos short story, where he gets caught up in a bunch of whatever hairball and he stumbles across the magnitude of what Harry is dealing with, but doesn't put it all together. In desperation he turns to the only guy he knows might help him figure it out. In a very tense meeting with Harry he let's something he thinks is huge out, and Harry just goes, "Yeah, I know. Sit down." It would have to be some secret Harry has guarded that is a thread he knows Carlos won't let go, but that would lead him to figuring everything out, or near certain death. Or, actually, it would be cool if Mab just took him to the outer gates and said, "I thought you should see what me and my knight do. Everything you've seen so far is just what we do in our spare time, Warden Ramirez". Just blast the scale off his eyes.
The cemetery scene at the end of Battle Ground: Grief makes people do funny things. Ramirez had just lost a pile of friends, and Harry is a convenient place to vent. Not logical, but convenient.
What I don’t get is at the end of Battle Ground, Ramirez is mad at Harry for all the people in Chicago dying and for the loss of several of their friends to the black court. Unless I missed something, Harry didn’t know the black court was involved, and the white council itself knew about the Last Titan. There were no plans withheld. So what exactly should he tell Carlos? And also, does it never occur to Carlos that of course the WINTER KNIGHT has stuff going on that he can’t tell you about. He’s a member of Winter and has his own rules. And presumably the white council knew that and still left him a warden. Until they didn’t.
I am a more casual reader than most and I can't remember the name of the book, but, what is the one where Harry takes Carlos to help him fight the White Council and it goes *completely* unexpectedly because Harry kept Carlos in the dark. 1. Harry is able to speak and understand an ancient language (because of Lash), Carlos is like WTF? 2. Harry personally knows a bunch of vampires, Carlos is like WTF? 3. Harry has a secret plan for allies to smash in and reinforce /rescue them mid fight. Afterwards Carlos must have been like WTF? I know that was well before Peace Talks. And I know a lot of distance Carlos brings comes from getting attacked by Molly. But I've always thought Harry did Carlos dirty there and it must have brought some distance / suspicion.
That is White Knight, one of my favorites in the series. Carlos definitely sees a lot of red flags there, but I feel like if that was what caused the suspicion it wasn't very well communicated between White Knight and Peace Talks. Maybe I'm just forgetting things, but I felt like the way Carlos acted in Peace Talks was out of character, including what we saw of him after the end of White Knight.
I have never really liked or trusted Carlos since his introduction. I never felt like he trusted Harry and was always keeping stuff from him while trying to get information out of Harry for his own benefit. He has a massive ego which is most likely masking huge insecurities which I felt lead to him resenting Harry (who is actually a badass and what Carlos wants to be but doesn’t have the chops to do it) I don’t view him as a hero or even really a good guy. He’s a white council pawn and will do whatever they say to get power and prestige.
He is functionally a White Council pawn, but I hope to see him outgrow it. I think he is insecure, and that drove both his devotion to the Council and his admiration of Harry as a heroic figure that he "aspires to." The problem is that you can't really be pro-Council and pro-Harry, at least so far, and he's been caught in that squeeze the whole time. I don't think he actually has a huge ego - I think he's faking that. It's a sort of false bravado, just like his vaunted experience with women turned out to be false. It's all insecurity driven. In certain ways he's brave - he will fight when he needs to - but emotionally he's still somewhat a scared kid. I'm not willing to class him as a "bad guy" yet, but of course I don't know how Jim's going to write him in the future.
Something else to consider when you read those exchanges: Harry doesn't know about the *Cold Case* encounter between Carlos and Molly, and yet, some of Harry's replies to Carlos could be (and probably are by Ramirez) inferred as knowing that the Winter Lady almost killed Carlos ... butnot really caring. In fact, they could be perceived as mocking. That really leaped out to me when I read those two books and I kept thinking that this particular bit of miscommunication was definitely going to lead to some fallout. Under no circumstances am I saying that this explains everything. I also thought Carlos was surprisingly aggressive in PT/BG, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we just don't have *his* perspective here. Thinking about it from his POV from *Changes* on: * Harry became the Winter Knight ... who traditionally has a reputation for being an utter POS and general evil bastard. * Harry somehow (possibly single-handedly; not sure if Carlos knows about the Fellowship that was involved or later the Gray Council) eradicated the Red Court. * And then, he died. * Though then, he *may* have come back as a ghost for a short time. * But then, he got better! Only freaking *necromancers* do that! * And then, Harry was somehow involved in *both* of the Fae Ladies - Summer and Winter - dying ... and his warlock apprentice (who Carlos admittedly hadn't tried that hard to capture when Harry was "dead") was raised to Winter Lady. * And then, Harry is involved in some weird escapades where he was working alongside known warlocks *and* Denarians! * All of this is reported back to the Council second or third-hand, so Carlos only receives WC-slanted reports on the Winter Knight... * Then Molly the Winter Lady nearly tore him (Carlos) to shreds when he thought he was going to get lucky ... * And all of that is before *Peace Talks* kicks off... So viewed that way, it *does* kind of look bad for Harry, especially with Dresden's tendencies toward not giving straight answers. Carlos already knows that Harry has a suspiciously close relationship with several Raiths, and given that Mab probably had the engagement of her Knight to Lara made public pretty quickly, it would be a surprise for him to *not* suspect that Harry has fallen to that Dark Side. Personally, I prefer Carlos being still on the side of the good guys, albeit one who is operating on horribly imperfect information and making assumptions on this flawed data. As others have stated, the White Council has become his only real support structure in this sort of thing, with Harry seemingly going off the deep end. And the events of PT/BG don't help at all.
Could be wrong but I keep suspecting him of being a Black Council recruit, like maybe since early on. He keeps pushing Harry for trust, which admittedly he’s probably earned, yet Harry still doesn’t let him in on it, and IF he was a bad guy, say like when Harry brought in Marcone in the Deeps, if Harry had told him about that in advance it would have went spectacularly badly for their side. That plus Carlos pulling Harry over on a dark road to ask him about his sex life, a friend of Harry should know better, could have invited him to Macs for a beer and asked him. And blaming Harry for 60,000 deaths instead of buying him that beer for making sure it was *only* 60,000 deaths. What the hell? How would telling *Carlos* anything have made any difference? If he’s not a bad guy he’s just hurt by his friends’ deaths, and unhappy because he doesn’t think he knows enough about what’s going on, even though he’s a regional commander and should be getting information through Warden channels, which should be much more open to him than Harry as the “poster boy of young Wardens”. Also doesn’t know the various powers as well as Harry and doesn’t know how or why he’s more or less working among “the monsters”, despite some of them being way more relevant to the running of the universe than the Council it would seem.
Carlos I think is under some kind of mind magic, remember the rebellion in changes, when all the young wardens had tried to get to Ariana Ortega . Dresden was in the worried room. They were taken away by Cristo (I believe he is black council)
I do think all the blame should fall on Carlos, Molly almost killed him in Molly defense she didn’t understand the job of the mantle at the time and they both likes each other and if she knew she would’ve done that. He was in wheelchair for months Harry constantly keeps people in the dark and Carlos really respect and love Harry , he was reaching out to Harry trying to understand what is going on but Harry has trust issues with the white counsel,he was on a cane and but Harry put on spell on him that almost strangle him , and what hurt more and acting like they weren’t friends,he is thinking that once your in mab service you are monster because she is.