Rowling says Harry and Hermione should have gotten married.

[LaCroix]

as far as I know, some of the owners were "defeated" by being killed in their sleep. I don't think they resisted or fought much, neither...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Perhaps I should have said Harry willingly died, rather than try to resist.

[Elheru Aran]

I think (I could be wrong) that the problem there was Voldemort tried to use the Elder Wand to kill Harry. That doesn't fly because you have to defeat or kill the current wielder, *then* take the Wand. You can't use the Wand against its user until after they're actually defeated. The only thing Voldemort kills is the part of his soul he unwittingly left Harry with when he tried to kill him as an infant.

The blood thing is bollocks, though...

[Crazedwraith]

Yeah it has to be forciblely taken from an unwilling owner to transfer loyalty. And even then Ollivander doesn't make it sound like its a dead certainty. Which is why Harry and co's wands hadn't changed ownership dozens of times just from them practising disarming.

Still the whole wand loyalty thing is pretty contrived. And ends up just being, well a reason for Harry to beat a vastly superior Wizard through little merit of his own.

[JLTucker]

The reason why Voldemort winning would have been terrible is that he's actually a really minor part of the narrative, for all he's supposedly the chief antagonist of it.

He shows up once or twice, most of the actual day to day villaining being done by flunkies, and he has relatively few goals beyond "be evil and racist".

It's impossible to actually be invested in an outcome where he wins because he's such a background presence. Contrast it with 1984 where the omnipresence of the Party is felt at basically all levels of the narrative and when, in the end, they break Winston we know what they were doing, why, and how Winston's narrative fits into the context of the world run by the Party.

Voldemort doesn't have that, he's not a narratively strong enough villain that his victory can possibly mean anything, and so him winning would be a bad ending to the series.

This is also why Star Wars starts in the middle, we're only invested in the Emperor's rise to power because we have the context of the following stories where him being in power means something to the narrative.

It's called metaphor, allegory, etc. Evil persists. It will never die. You can sacrifice yourself upon the alter of wizard blood, but it will still be there. Fascism will prevail in many instances. Hell, it can be argued that fascists run various countries, including America. Why not go that route to demonstrate it? I think that ending would have cemented Rowling as a great writer. It would be remembered more than a mediocre wizard besting an amazing wizard through contrived bullshit. Cater to your audience, I guess.

[Vendetta]

No, it would have been fucking dumb.

If you want to write a story where the villain wins at the end the villain needs to be interesting, the audience needs to have a reason to be interested in a world where the villain won.

The Harry Potter books don't have that, Voldemort is a shit villain who is hardly in the books anyway, it makes no thematic sense at all for the books to end with his victory.

This appears to be something you don't realise, but the ending to a story needs to be the ending to that particular story, not just some random ending that you thought up because evil persists and ooh aren't I edgy and controversial cause the villain won. It needs to naturally follow thematically and narratively from the story preceding it.

[Thanas]

To expand on that - the good guys losing would absolutely destroy any HP themes. Remember the beginning of the story? Harry goes through shit. He then goes through even more shit in school. To have the good guys lose at the end would be utterly unfair and I fail to see the message it would send. HAHAHAH life sucks so get used to it? Yeah, writing about how the abused boy winds up going through more abuse and then failing under pressure because he was too weak is such a great story for the ages and for the children.

It is stupid. Even worse, it is profoundly unfair. All those stories at the start of how one can make it through violence and how even the lowliest of kids can become special? Woops, turns out those amount to shit because the poor Hitler clone wins in the end with his agenda of racism and even more abuse.

Hooray.

People would be outraged and rightly so.

[JLTucker]

Conceded.

[Tribble]

Voldemort did not have full control over the Elder Wand, and it was reluctant to kill its true owner.
Voldemort had used Harry's blood in his resurrection. While it meant that he could touch Harry without being injured and spells would no longer backfire, it also tied Harry's life force to Voldemort's.

The blood and Voldemort as unintentional pseudo-Horcrux struck me as ass-pulls. But here's the thing I really don't get. The Elder Wand has been held by hundreds of hands over the centuries, and usually the first thing it was used for was killing the old wielder, as the wand's true power could be used only by someone who defeated the previous master of the Wand. Rowling repeats this herself, several times, the Elder Wand only respects strength.

So, Snape's killing Dumbledore at his own behest may or may not have transferred ownership, Dumbledore thought it wouldn't, but it doesn't matter because Draco "defeated" Dumbledore (with a magical suckerpunch) first. So let's accept that Harry was the true owner of the wand ever since he disarmed Draco, to the moment he walks into the clearing- and Voldemort smacks him in the face with a killing curse. Does that not count as victory enough? Did the stick which spent centuries giving it's allegiance to whoever was strong or clever enough to overcome it's owner suddenly pick up a sense of philosophy regarding the precise definition of "winning?"

You missed the part where Harry willingly went to his death. Dumbledore stated that was what "made all the difference". He would have died had he resisted, despite the blood, the horcrux, and ownership of the Elder Wand. It's also implied that Harry had to believe that he was about to die in order for the trick to work, which is why Dumbledore withheld that info from him.

[Metahive]

Others have already said it, but a "bad guy wins" narrative has to be set up properly. If the bad guy has no redeeming features whatsoever and is barely fleshed out (Voldemort is pretty revolting as well as one-note), then what satisfaction is there in seeing him win? While I'm not opposed to betraying audience expectations, it shouldn't come out of left-field, otherwise all you have is a twist for the sake of having a twist.

As a counter example where this could have worked I present the Inheritance Cycle. There, due to author Paolini's inexperience and general hackery, the lines between good and evil are unintentionally left rather ambiguous. The hero and his faction are often shown doing despicable things with only a bare-bones justification for their whole rebellion in the first place while the bad stuff done by the Evil King is not only mostly done off-screen, it's also conveyed through biased narrators that have an axe to grind and might as well be considered hostile propaganda. If that cycle had ended with the hero either losing or switching sides I would have actually given Paolini kudos for subverting the usual High Fantasy narrative, but alas it wasn't to be.

[Sidewinder]

Others have already said it, but a "bad guy wins" narrative has to be set up properly. If the bad guy has no redeeming features whatsoever and is barely fleshed out (Voldemort is pretty revolting as well as one-note), then what satisfaction is there in seeing him win? While I'm not opposed to betraying audience expectations, it shouldn't come out of left-field, otherwise all you have is a twist for the sake of having a twist.

This is probably the reason people hate the Draka so much. Has S. M. Stirling's later work demonstrated the author LEARNED from his mistakes in the Domination series, or does he remain a hack whose only talent is to outrage readers by writing down rape fantasies?

[Metahive]

Yeah, "wanked out supervillain nation with the authors favor wins" ain't a twist, that's shitty Heinlein fan-fiction with thrice the militarist and frankly fascist appeal. Even if all the other books of Stirling where nobel-price worthy literature, I wouldn't touch them after having this inflicted on me.

Back to the Potter, there's actually quite a lot of HP fan-fiction that involves Harry or an author insert Mary Sue turning out to be pureblood and joining up with Voldy and winning the day for the bad guys. It's not...very good.

[Simon_Jester]

This is probably the reason people hate the Draka so much. Has S. M. Stirling's later work demonstrated the author LEARNED from his mistakes in the Domination series, or does he remain a hack whose only talent is to outrage readers by writing down rape fantasies?

I have read a very restricted sample of his work, but...

My impression is that in his other fiction, he still writes some pretty horrific villains, but there's more to it than fantasizing about horrible things.

Satisfactory endings were a problem for him in other series, though; he had the same problem in the Isle of the Sea of Time series (published while he was still writing Draka stories). There, he has a horrible bastard of a villain, and sets him up as a powerful but defeatable antagonist... but then has the villain assassinated in an anticlimax just as the protagonist faction is finally getting to grips with his forces.