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Peter Grant's changing perceptions
Sep. 3rd, 2024 02:27 pmOne of the things I find interesting about the Rivers of London fandom is how some people take Peter's initial thoughts and responses to people as The Gospel Truth, and cling to that in a way that ignores when Peter's opinions and relationships change over the course of the series.
Peter Grant is a very perceptive, thoughtful person, and he's really good at picking up the vibes people give off. But nobody is ever 100% accurate in their perceptions of other people, especially when they first meet them, and Aaronovitch does a great job of portraying that. With the recurring characters, we regularly find Peter's relationship to them, and his understanding of them, changing over the course of the series. Sometimes, it turns out that his initial impression was wrong or was missing key information, or was based on things that have changed. Aaronovitch never has Peter think "oh, by the way, I was wrong about X! I used to think this way, but now I've realized it's this other way." Instead, we see that Peter's relationships with the people in question change, and his internal monologue about them changes. But a lot of people don't recognize that. They keep trying to fit things that happen in later books into the initial perception Peter has.
Seawoll is the one I've noticed this with most often. When Peter meets Seawoll, he doesn't know any of the context, but he does know that Seawoll is a) really incredibly competent, b) doesn't like magic, c) doesn't like Nightingale, and d) is really scary, partly because he will ferociously defend his protégés (and Peter isn't one of them). Seawoll and Nightingale have an antagonistic relationship at that point, and Peter is Nightingale's apprentice, so his experiences of Seawoll are filtered through that lens. I've repeatedly run up against people who think that the problem is that Seawoll just generally doesn't like Nightingale, and that that continues throughout the course of the series, and that he's hostile to Peter too.
That's ... not what the series shows. Seawoll is (and remains) a gruff, blunt person, but over the series he comes to like and respect Nightingale, and clearly comes to think of Peter as one of his protégés, whom he cares about like he cares about Stephanopoulos or Guleed.
Seawoll is, above all else, a professional, a good cop who wants to do things right and bring guilty people to justice through the criminal justice system. Seawoll may look, on the surface, like the old sort of copper who was easily corrupted and just wanted to bully criminals, but in fact he cares about justice and getting the right person, not the convenient person. He is, at heart, what we want a modern police officer to be, and the sort of copper that Peter wants to be. Moreover, he wants to train the next generation of coppers up right so that they, too, will be trustworthy custodians of the public good, and will care more about achieving justice than getting the easy (but wrong) arrest.
Seawoll doesn't like Nightingale at the beginning of the series because very few of those things are true of Nightingale. Nightingale is very competent at magic, but not at any of the investigative or bureaucratic things that make up the rest of the Metropolitan Police or the rest of the criminal justice system. There is little to no accountability, for Nightingale; he can break any rule or law he wants, and if he has a good enough excuse and there's enough magic involved, the Commissioner and the other powers will simply shrug and look the other way. When there is magic involved in a crime, there is no justice system, there's just The Nightingale's judgment. He is judge, jury, and executioner. The UK eliminated the death penalty in 1969, but Nightingale still executes people when he thinks it right ... and when the series starts, he doesn't have any provisions for any other response to a serious crime. There are no checks and balances before Peter, no second opinions, no other options. By Seawoll's standards, that's murder, not justice. And if Nightingale gets things wrong, well, that sucks for his victims. One of the many reasons to eliminate the death penalty is that if you execute someone and then realize you were wrong, there's nothing to be done. And Nightingale, like all people, is sometimes wrong. Consider the jazz vampires in Moon Over Soho. There was plenty of evidence that they were nothing like what Nightingale thought they were, and yet Nightingale's response was to conclude that they still had done things worthy of death and not consider any other options.
The other thing about Nightingale-as-a-police-officer is that policing requires you to know the community you police. Nightingale is utterly ignorant of about 99% of the demi-monde, and it regularly bites the Folly in the ass. Quiet People? Jazz vampires? Multiple other branches of Newtonian practitioners? Nightingale spent decades sitting in the Folly and waiting for other people to tell him there was a problem, and missed a hell of a lot. Which makes for compelling stories, from Peter's perspective, as he's discovering all sorts of interesting things. But also, a lot of the things Peter discovers are things Nightingale should already know if he'd been doing a decent job of policing the demi-monde all those years. Nightingale is very good at magic ... and very bad at being an officer of the law.
We see Nightingale through Peter's eyes, and Peter has a fair amount of hero-worship for him, especially at the beginning. But Seawoll has very good reasons to dislike Nightingale and be suspicious of him. It's not a clash of personalities, it's not irrational, their conflict at the start of the series flows directly from the attitudes and actions of the two men as we see them.
But we also see how things develop through the books. Over the series, Nightingale changes. He regularly bows to Peter's ethics and procedures. Nightingale allows Peter to get the Folly looped back into the rest of the Met, with oversight similar to other departments. Nightingale, at Peter's prodding, comes up with things to do with magical criminals besides "kill the really bad ones and then fudge the reports." Instead of Peter being trained into Nightingale's high-handed belief that he is above the law, Nightingale gets brought into line with the best of modern criminal justice ideals (or at least, the best ones that you can have inside a carceral system--remember that RoL is copaganda). As Nightingale's attitudes and actions change, so does Seawoll's opinion of him. By the time of Amongst Our Weapons, Seawoll and Nightingale respect each other and work well together with minimal friction. They're not bosom buddies, but there's no hostility on either side. Seawoll is gruff and blunt, but no more so than he is with people he genuinely likes. Aaronovitch never tells us explicitly their relationship has changed, but he shows us that it is different.
As for Seawoll and Peter, Peter started out a bit afraid of Seawoll because Seawoll is powerful and doesn't like Nightingale (Peter's mentor) and is therefore suspicious of Peter. But by Amongst Our Weapons, not only is Peter not afraid of Seawoll, but we see Seawoll treating Peter with the same sort of care and paternal protectiveness that he gives to, say, Guleed. Again, Aaronovitch never tells us explicitly their relationship has changed, but he shows us that it is different.
In both cases, there are people in fandom who have not noticed the changes. They assume that the hostility and fear of the first couple of books is still the dominant paradigm for the Seawoll & Nightingale and Seawoll & Peter relationships in the later books, and read every interaction through that lens.
Peter Grant is a very perceptive, thoughtful person, and he's really good at picking up the vibes people give off. But nobody is ever 100% accurate in their perceptions of other people, especially when they first meet them, and Aaronovitch does a great job of portraying that. With the recurring characters, we regularly find Peter's relationship to them, and his understanding of them, changing over the course of the series. Sometimes, it turns out that his initial impression was wrong or was missing key information, or was based on things that have changed. Aaronovitch never has Peter think "oh, by the way, I was wrong about X! I used to think this way, but now I've realized it's this other way." Instead, we see that Peter's relationships with the people in question change, and his internal monologue about them changes. But a lot of people don't recognize that. They keep trying to fit things that happen in later books into the initial perception Peter has.
Seawoll is the one I've noticed this with most often. When Peter meets Seawoll, he doesn't know any of the context, but he does know that Seawoll is a) really incredibly competent, b) doesn't like magic, c) doesn't like Nightingale, and d) is really scary, partly because he will ferociously defend his protégés (and Peter isn't one of them). Seawoll and Nightingale have an antagonistic relationship at that point, and Peter is Nightingale's apprentice, so his experiences of Seawoll are filtered through that lens. I've repeatedly run up against people who think that the problem is that Seawoll just generally doesn't like Nightingale, and that that continues throughout the course of the series, and that he's hostile to Peter too.
That's ... not what the series shows. Seawoll is (and remains) a gruff, blunt person, but over the series he comes to like and respect Nightingale, and clearly comes to think of Peter as one of his protégés, whom he cares about like he cares about Stephanopoulos or Guleed.
Seawoll is, above all else, a professional, a good cop who wants to do things right and bring guilty people to justice through the criminal justice system. Seawoll may look, on the surface, like the old sort of copper who was easily corrupted and just wanted to bully criminals, but in fact he cares about justice and getting the right person, not the convenient person. He is, at heart, what we want a modern police officer to be, and the sort of copper that Peter wants to be. Moreover, he wants to train the next generation of coppers up right so that they, too, will be trustworthy custodians of the public good, and will care more about achieving justice than getting the easy (but wrong) arrest.
Seawoll doesn't like Nightingale at the beginning of the series because very few of those things are true of Nightingale. Nightingale is very competent at magic, but not at any of the investigative or bureaucratic things that make up the rest of the Metropolitan Police or the rest of the criminal justice system. There is little to no accountability, for Nightingale; he can break any rule or law he wants, and if he has a good enough excuse and there's enough magic involved, the Commissioner and the other powers will simply shrug and look the other way. When there is magic involved in a crime, there is no justice system, there's just The Nightingale's judgment. He is judge, jury, and executioner. The UK eliminated the death penalty in 1969, but Nightingale still executes people when he thinks it right ... and when the series starts, he doesn't have any provisions for any other response to a serious crime. There are no checks and balances before Peter, no second opinions, no other options. By Seawoll's standards, that's murder, not justice. And if Nightingale gets things wrong, well, that sucks for his victims. One of the many reasons to eliminate the death penalty is that if you execute someone and then realize you were wrong, there's nothing to be done. And Nightingale, like all people, is sometimes wrong. Consider the jazz vampires in Moon Over Soho. There was plenty of evidence that they were nothing like what Nightingale thought they were, and yet Nightingale's response was to conclude that they still had done things worthy of death and not consider any other options.
The other thing about Nightingale-as-a-police-officer is that policing requires you to know the community you police. Nightingale is utterly ignorant of about 99% of the demi-monde, and it regularly bites the Folly in the ass. Quiet People? Jazz vampires? Multiple other branches of Newtonian practitioners? Nightingale spent decades sitting in the Folly and waiting for other people to tell him there was a problem, and missed a hell of a lot. Which makes for compelling stories, from Peter's perspective, as he's discovering all sorts of interesting things. But also, a lot of the things Peter discovers are things Nightingale should already know if he'd been doing a decent job of policing the demi-monde all those years. Nightingale is very good at magic ... and very bad at being an officer of the law.
We see Nightingale through Peter's eyes, and Peter has a fair amount of hero-worship for him, especially at the beginning. But Seawoll has very good reasons to dislike Nightingale and be suspicious of him. It's not a clash of personalities, it's not irrational, their conflict at the start of the series flows directly from the attitudes and actions of the two men as we see them.
But we also see how things develop through the books. Over the series, Nightingale changes. He regularly bows to Peter's ethics and procedures. Nightingale allows Peter to get the Folly looped back into the rest of the Met, with oversight similar to other departments. Nightingale, at Peter's prodding, comes up with things to do with magical criminals besides "kill the really bad ones and then fudge the reports." Instead of Peter being trained into Nightingale's high-handed belief that he is above the law, Nightingale gets brought into line with the best of modern criminal justice ideals (or at least, the best ones that you can have inside a carceral system--remember that RoL is copaganda). As Nightingale's attitudes and actions change, so does Seawoll's opinion of him. By the time of Amongst Our Weapons, Seawoll and Nightingale respect each other and work well together with minimal friction. They're not bosom buddies, but there's no hostility on either side. Seawoll is gruff and blunt, but no more so than he is with people he genuinely likes. Aaronovitch never tells us explicitly their relationship has changed, but he shows us that it is different.
As for Seawoll and Peter, Peter started out a bit afraid of Seawoll because Seawoll is powerful and doesn't like Nightingale (Peter's mentor) and is therefore suspicious of Peter. But by Amongst Our Weapons, not only is Peter not afraid of Seawoll, but we see Seawoll treating Peter with the same sort of care and paternal protectiveness that he gives to, say, Guleed. Again, Aaronovitch never tells us explicitly their relationship has changed, but he shows us that it is different.
In both cases, there are people in fandom who have not noticed the changes. They assume that the hostility and fear of the first couple of books is still the dominant paradigm for the Seawoll & Nightingale and Seawoll & Peter relationships in the later books, and read every interaction through that lens.
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