You do know Rowling has explicitly said that Voldemort can't love, right? I respect your right to ship Bellamort or any other pairing, but Voldemort never loved anyone. That much is canon.
I've been in the Bellamort fandom for less than a month, and from what I can tell already there have been pretty convincing arguments to show how Rowling's words are misinterpreted. So, let me try a somewhat different approach here where I can bring a possible interpretation of Voldemort and love (yes, is psychoanalysis again)
Ravleen: How much does the fact that voldemort was conceived under a love potion have to do with his nonability to understand love is it more symbolic
J.K. Rowling: It was a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union – but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. [...]
If Merope's survival could have made Voldemort understand love, then love potion or curse did not biologically interfere on a magical level to prevent him from love. This suggests Voldemort's struggles with love came from his childhood development.
Darchey: Did voldemort ever love a girl?
J.K. Rowling: [2] No, he loved only power, and himself. He valued people whom he could use to advance his own objectives.
If Voldemort loved power and himself, that suggests that he is able to love in a specific way. And that he does value useful people is quite interesting for what I'm about to unfold here.
Audience question: Has Voldemort or Tom Riddle ever cared for or loved anyone?
Rowling: [...] [3] No, never. If he had, he couldn’t possibly be what he is. [...]
If Voldemort has never cared for or loved anyone, but if caring and loving someone would have changed him, this continues to suggest that he was capable of love.
When we pair this all together we have we can interpret the following: [1] Merope's death deprived Voldemort of conditions that would allow him to understand love; [2] but he does love himself and power and values useful people, and this is how he perceives them, [3] meaning that he does not care or love them.
The latter definitely goes against what we, as a society, perceive as love because by definition love is:
A feeling of deep affection, intense care, and selfless devotion toward another person or thing.
But is this the most accurate way to interpret love in practical experiences? Does love only ever comes attached with affection, care and selflessness for other people or things?
I'll bring my man, Sigmund Freud, here to help me out again. Hi, sir, thank you so much for your concept of narcissism. I've briefly explained this in another post, but I'll develop more here.
As infants we don't have yet a fully developed clear distinction of self and others. For instance, an infant does not understand that their mother's breast belongs to a separate person who chooses to feed them. So, when the discomfort of hunger is relieved, the infant experiences that satisfaction as something that originated from itself and belongs to their own world rather than something provided by someone. This stage is called primary narcissism and it's completely natural, expected and necessary for psychological development, and helps to form ego-libido.
During primary narcissism, the libido (psychic energy) is invested in the self because there is no distinction between "me" and "not me". In this sense, the first object of love is the self (ego). Then, we gradually start to recognize that those sources of our satisfactions comes from external individuals with their own thoughts, feelings and desires. Now, some libido is then invested in people, forming object-libido.
In a way, we could say object-libido, unlike ego-libido, is something we develop in the sense that our early experiences later shape how we relate with people and recognize them as individuals.
Now, consider both concepts:
He loved only power, and himself [ego-libido]
He never cared for or loved anyone... [he] valued people whom he could use [object-libido]
Those are great cues to interpret how Voldemort's love is mainly narcissistic. Since Voldemort loves himself that means his libido investment remained concentrated in his ego. Power could be considered a separate object, but it's more an extension of his ego because it's a way to protect himself from vulnerability. Loving power is just another way for Voldemort to love himself.
Voldemort does not experience people as individuals: he sees them as extensions of himself due to their usefulness to him having value for his own goals. This is quite evident in the way he treats his Death Eaters, including Bellatrix.
Now, is narcissistic love not love?
In psychoanalysis, love does not involve selflessness. In general, we love people because they matter to us; their happiness affects our own emotional state; their absence creates distress to us; and their presence gives us pleasure.
In other words, one of the reasons we love people is because psychologically they have a value for us and people love us because we have value to them. This is far from something bad: it's what creates meaningful and healthy attachments as it allows us to give and receive in, let's say, more balanced relationships.
Therefore, psychologically speaking Voldemort's problem is not that his love contains self-interest; all love does. His problem is that his investment rarely extends beyond himself. Those are two separate things and now we can talk about how Voldemort invests in others.
Freud conceptualized two types of love that can help analyze this.
Anaclitic love: someone who loves another because they resemble the figures who originally cared for them.
Narcissistic love: someone who loves another because they resemble themselves or an idealization of themselves.
Considering his orphanage caretakers and also how Voldemort perceived his father and mother, the second is more fitting for how Voldemort would invest in others, since he most likely had no figures associated with love caring for him during his childhood.
Psychoanalysis doesn't exclude narcissistic love from the concept of love is because narcissistic love is still a form of libidinal investment. The difference is simply that the object receiving that investment is the ego itself.
If that's how Voldemort loved, then it does have implications on how he loved Bellatrix.
He predominantly loved Bellatrix narcissistically. I'd even say that she functioned as an extension and reinforcement of his ego while also becoming an object of libidinal investment. However, fully explaining this would require leave Freudian psychoanalysis and bring other authors, which would complicate a ask post. I might write about this again in a meta.
The point is that there are problems in canon in the way Bellamort loved each other, of course there is. I won't pretend to be blind just to frame them as an unproblematic couple. However, their love was still love.
In psychoanalysis, we don't separate love and hate because both are fundamental for our psych deals with our relationships with other people. Love and hate are not opposites because they are, fundamentally, libidinal investments that can coexist and be directed to the same person because our closest relationships are often emotionally ambivalent.
Detachment. Resentment. Control. Hostility. Aggression. Those are closer words to try to describe how Voldemort would love people since he perceives them as extensions of himself. This, broadly speaking, means opposite feelings can coexist in Voldemort's libidinal investments.
The ambivalence of emotions happens primarily because of life drive and death drive, concepts to describe our tendencies to, respectively, connect/construct/create and disconnect/demolish/destroy. Love and hate are useful for both life and death drives because they influence on expressions of aggression.
I have another meta coming soon about Bellamort that might clarify a bit how I understand their mutual investment, but for now:
Did Voldemort ever invest in Bellatrix beyond her utility to him?
Canon tells us that Bellatrix was useful to him. However, there are several moments in which Voldemort treats Bellatrix in ways that cannot fully be explained by her usefulness. In fact, I'd argue she is, at times, completely useless or at least not enough useful to him and yet, he continued investing in her. If Voldemort values only useful people, then why doesn't he simply discards Bellatrix when she proves herself no longer useful?
The reason why Bellatrix is such a important character to analyze Voldemort is because usefulness doesn't fully explain why he values her as his treatment of Bellatrix cannot be fully explained by her utility.
I'm not saying Rowling is wrong about the character she wrote, far from it. If she says he never loved a girl and only loved himself, I believe her and I do know she is using the usual meaning of the word "love."
My point is simply that, within another framework to understand love, those statements do not necessarily discard the idea of Voldemort loving someone, even if narcissistic and that's why I find Bellatrix so important to understand Voldemort as a character.
I just got my first two haters asks 🥺 I'm from another fandom where getting your first hater means you're officially part of the fandom!
*unfolds speech paper*
I'd like to thank Bellamort fandom for being so sweet and welcoming; my parents, for giving me such an amazing example; and god (Rowling), who created all things, for this amazing moment!
Since the first was anonymous and quite polite, I'll answer you in a moment, anon.
The second was neither anonymous nor polite. I won't expose you here, but I also won't amuse you answering privately since I'll block in a moment. Let me perfectly clear:
It's totally fine that we don't share kinks. Don't worry.
But remember: kinks aren't divided into "disgusting" and "not disgusting", but into "kinks I'm into" and "kinks I'm not into". What you seem to have confused with "disgusting" is actually called non-consensual sexual acts.
Fortunately for me, I'm not a woman who gets kink shamed easily, so you'll have to try harder than that to shame me. Unfortunately for you, I also have a humiliation kink, so if you try any harder I might come untouched. Or I might be lying... You'll never now. Pick your poison.
You're awesome 🖤 Never let these haters get to you. They're losers and cowardly enough to hide behind anonymity, and the more hate they send you, the more I'll shower you with love and appreciation, so whatever they're hoping to accomplish will only ever fail 🤣
Just a heads up. A really prudish and unstable woman who's a long-term Bellamort hater and a harasser has been interacting with some of your posts because she can't help herself to stay away from what she's not into. Her user name is @vibrantnemesisessence and she's blocked by most of the Bellamort fandom. The anons were almost certainly sent to you by her.
Ok, but why didn't Barty Crouch Jr just kidnap Harry? Like, did they have to set up the whole goblet of fire trap? Is there an explanation that doesn't feel convoluted?
While I’m not defending the whole convoluted plot, the idea is that Voldemort did not want anyone to realize that he was back until he had time to rebuild his supporters. Harry’s death was supposed to look like an accident. I suspect that’s why the Portkey went both ways, so that they could send the body back and make it seem like Harry had died during the Third Task. Additionally, avoiding suspicion for BCJ was critical because he was a perfect spy in his disguise as Moody—he’d even fooled Albus Dumbledore. That would have been an absurd advantage to Voldemort once the war began in earnest.
Considering all that, it was important to ensure that no one suspected that Voldemort (nor Crouch Jr.) was behind Harry’s death. If Harry had disappeared outside of the competition and it looked like foul play, then Dumbledore would immediately suspect that Voldemort was behind it and start rebuilding the Order. (Remember that Voldemort doesn’t know that Harry has already tipped off Dumbledore that Voldemort is active again—Harry told Sirius about his scar hurting, and Sirius told Dumbledore.) And if anyone were to sniff out the faux Moody as a suspect, it would have destroyed a golden opportunity for Voldemort to have a spy in one of Dumbledore’s closest allies.
In the end, it was a long-term strategy rather than a ploy just to get Harry’s blood. Had it succeeded, not only would it have made Dumbledore look bad that famous Harry Potter got killed during the Third Task under his watch, but it also would have made the Ministry look extremely incompetent, weakening public opinion of the government and planting the seed of instability.
The concept around the kidnap is actually not bad! But it does feel like there were a fair few details that could have blown up the whole plan, and I’m not entirely sure why BCJ wanted Harry to do well rather than just survive until the Third Task, but there might be something I’m not really remembering.
Also, Voldemort continues the strategy of secrecy throughout OOTP as well. He doesn't intend to reveal his return even by the end of OOTP. Only because he was seen rescuing Bellatrix was his return revealed and his two-year strategy destroyed.
What really gets me is what would have happened had he escaped without her, unseen. Fudge would see Harry, Dumbledore, and a trapped, sobbing Bellatrix, with the other Death Eaters tied up in the DoM. That would give him the ultimate evidence he'd been craving all along, the perfect opportunity not just to prove Dumbledore is building an army against him but also to blame Dumbledore and Harry for the escape of the Death Eaters. That would be catastrophic for them and leave Voldemort to operate completely unimpeded.
He sacrificed all that strategic advantage to save Bellatrix from temporary imprisonment...
The modern Moose is actually the smallest of several moose species that have existed in the Americas over the last 50 million years. The Mega-Moose only went extinct one thousand years ago. The Mondo-Mega-Moose coexisted with the Neanderthals, and the Moose Lord once stood 75 feet tall as the largest land mammal of all time.
Why do so many people love to invalidate Bellamort?
I think people struggle to accept the "matrimony" part of the "Unholy Matrimony" trope. When two villains are couple, they tend to overlook the fact that their love can be genuine unless the story is told from their POVs
Bellamort's love is treated almost as if it wasn't "enough love" to create its own category a saga that, in the end, is all about different kinds of love. HP is about how love influences people's choices and shapes their lives, but the fandom prefer to ignore that Bellamort's love is still love and that it shaped their characters as much as any other
I also believe people prefer to desumanize Voldemort to allow themselves to forget (or not even realize) how tragic his life was, so treating him like a cartoon villain who is so very evil and feels no love is easier than accepting the complex character Rowling wrote
Then there is sex, which is where I think people struggle most to accept Bellamort. I partially understand, even if not personally. Their sex live was definitely not a PG-13 movie, so they are not a couple for everyone to enjoy. To me that also goes back to the fact the fandom loves taking away Bellatrix's agency when Bella herself actually feels like one of the characters with more agency in HP
can i just say that Italian Black Family makes way more sense than french
why are they french? why aren’t they from the place that’s literally home to the centre of the catholic church? who came up with french Sirius and Regulus? i know french was the language of royalty but the Black family makes so much more sense if they’re italian at least to me
'I don't know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn't love, the mess he's left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me.'
I don‘t know why I have never read anything about this quote but omg, this reads like such an obvious Grindeldore hint, maybe the most obvious one in the books.
It almost seems like Harry is (unintentionally) implying who Dumbledore really loved and guess what. He would have been totally right.
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