Lucius Abraxas Malfoy

Families

Married

• Spouse: Narcissa Black
• Children:
  • Draco Lucius Malfoy

Parents

• Family: Married
  • Father: Abraxas Malfoy

Analysis

Mini Rant about not understanding the character

Sometimes I think that Mrs. Rowling, and people in general, have an over obsessive need to redeem and whitewash everyone. I am sorry to tell you, but sin is real.

I bring this up because there are way too many fan fiction works out there that feature a good Lucius Malfoy¹. Nor is this always being done entirely for satire or entirely just because the author wants to turn everything on its head (though there are examples of both out there). Rather, many of these happen because the author objects to the more correct portrayal of Lucius as a villain.

• Lucius is a marked death eater
• Lucius despises both non-magical people and first generation magical people as beneath him. He is in fact a pure blood bigot.
• Lucius put the diary in Ginny's cauldron, intending harm to a child as part of a political manoeuvre.
• Lucius had the diary because [Riddle][] considered him a reliable and dedicated death eater.
• Lucius spends the last battle mostly standing on the sidelines as a sycophant, before, in the last mad scramble, frantically looking for his son.

Analysis

This last bullet point comes after [Riddle] has spent much of book seven threatening Lucius' life, health, social position, and family. In other words, after he has seen the master whom he served loyally in the first war reward that loyalty with the loss of everything Lucius values. It should come as no surprise that Lucius no longer feels all that loyal. But note that unlike his wife, he does not actually do anything. The final battle is not sufficient reason to overturn our general impression of this man.

Very few people, if any, are so lost to sin as to be entirely devoid of virtue. Lucius has many faults, but he does value his family. We have no real data on his skill as a father outside of [Draco][]'s behaviour however, and that is … not good. How much of that is because of actual bad parenting, and how much of that is because you simply cannot be an actually good parent when you think that you as a family deserve aristocratic privilege? Not privilege, but the kind of privilege that makes for the stereotypes of french nobility at the time of the French Revolution. When you think that kind of behaviour is correct (and Lucius does), is it possible to teach good behaviour?

We do not actually know, mind you, that Lucius is in fact "Lord Malfoy." We just know that he wants to be. This man is very much the grandchild (with however many greats inserted) of the man of whom Mrs. Rowling implies a plot to seduce Queen Elizabeth and thus take over the throne of England.²

[Riddle]: </Harrypedia/people/Riddle/Tom Marvolo/>/ [Draco]: </Harrypedia/people/Malfoy/Draco Lucius/>