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I got the first three books for Christmas, devoured them, got the rest of the series, and am on my second read-through. I have some questions.
First, what was Faceless Man #2 doing between the incapacitation of the first one and the Covent Garden riot? Was he just living the life of a posh Londoner doing a bit of magic on the side? Given later events, this seems ASTONISHGINGLY unlikely, but that is all the evidence we have. Was he continuing on with the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau, and if so, why didn't whats-his-face, the burlesque owner who gets killed by the Pale Lady in Moon Over Soho (and the guy who tipped them off about the club's existence), know the club was still in operation?
Second, what does Faceless Man #2 reappearance on the scene of the London Underworld have to do with the Covent Garden Riot? Quite aside from Peter's guess that he's interested in Leslie because of something leftover from her time as Pretty Polly, the burlesque owner pins his reappearance on the scene as connected with the Covent Garden riot. Was he stirring up things, and is that what gave Punch his boost and set him on his way, besides the one-night revival of the play Pyke was in? Or was his reappearance a reaction to that huge event? Did it spur him on, or provide something he needed, or deprive him of something he wanted?
I know there were other questions I was going to put in this post, but I can't remember them.
First, what was Faceless Man #2 doing between the incapacitation of the first one and the Covent Garden riot? Was he just living the life of a posh Londoner doing a bit of magic on the side? Given later events, this seems ASTONISHGINGLY unlikely, but that is all the evidence we have. Was he continuing on with the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau, and if so, why didn't whats-his-face, the burlesque owner who gets killed by the Pale Lady in Moon Over Soho (and the guy who tipped them off about the club's existence), know the club was still in operation?
Second, what does Faceless Man #2 reappearance on the scene of the London Underworld have to do with the Covent Garden Riot? Quite aside from Peter's guess that he's interested in Leslie because of something leftover from her time as Pretty Polly, the burlesque owner pins his reappearance on the scene as connected with the Covent Garden riot. Was he stirring up things, and is that what gave Punch his boost and set him on his way, besides the one-night revival of the play Pyke was in? Or was his reappearance a reaction to that huge event? Did it spur him on, or provide something he needed, or deprive him of something he wanted?
I know there were other questions I was going to put in this post, but I can't remember them.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 03:18 am (UTC)From:a) before the Covent Garden riot, he thought Nightingale was either dead or otherwise not a threat, and he was the only active trained Newtonian practioner in England. After the Covent Garden riot and subsequent events, he realized this was not true, and thus changed his strategies; probably including moving timelines forward and concentrating more on accumulating power quickly.
b) He didn't trust Faceless Man #1 at all, at least not by the point he put him under guard, so while he inherited from him and used some of it, he mostly didn't continue in the same lines.
c) the Strip Club thing is weird, because it's implied the club itself is closed and mostly abandoned as a club, but the rooms in the back (where chimeras were living) are implied to be in active use by sex workers. My best way to make sense of it is that he closed it as a club but kept using the facility as a base to offer certain services more discreetly.
d) My guess is also that he was doing a lot of things more discreetly than his predecessor - the Skygarden scheme, for example, seems to have been in place pre-dating the Covent Garden riot. I get the impression that he mostly just wants to be able to do whatever he wants with magic, so he keeps an eye on the magical community and does things like financial crime and creepy experiments and gathering stored power, but he wasn't really interested in making waves, or was at least waiting until he felt more secure, until Nightingale reappeared and scared the pants off of him. The Strip Club is very much standard London Organized Crime of style of the mid-20th century (plus creepy magic etc.); Faceless Man #2 seems to be going for more of a Moriarty sort of feel tq his criminal empire.
But the end of Foxglove Summer also implied there's something going on with him that has an external deadline, so there's also whatever that is that would be shaping his plans, whether it's a long-term plot that's coming to fruition or something external that he found out about and the Folly didn't.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 04:36 am (UTC)From:I don't know how much he distrusted Faceless Man #1; if he had any serious problem with him, why not just kill him? It's not like he couldn't have done it, in FM1's state. Though I like your theory about the Strip Club.
Won't spoil you by bringing up stuff from Hanging Tree.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 02:37 pm (UTC)From:So, no, it wasn't learning Nightingale was still alive that caused FM2 to get more public such that burlesque guy noticed and we start getting flashy obviously-magical corpses. It was something else about the Punch case.
So did he cause Punch to get active just then? Was it a happy coincidence that he realized he could take advantage of in some way? Is there no connection, just weird coincidence that the biggest magic case London had seen in years, the case which finally got Nightingale to take on an apprentice, just HAPPENED to happen at the same time as the evil magician of London started getting more visible? IDK.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-02 04:58 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 07:34 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)Until about a year before ROL, he had a wife. And a young child.
I think that timing is not coincidental.