SHADOWHUNTERS AND DOWNWORLDERS

Power to the Powerless


“What?” Jace sounded furious. “Why not? The Clave requires you—”

Magnus looked at him coldly. “I don’t like being told what to do, little Shadowhunter.”

—City of Bones

Just one problem: You’re not forced to play the game. You can ignore the rules; you can make up your own. Magnus Bane is a living example, the closest thing the Mortal Instruments has to an anarchist, and certainly he’s in no mood to be told what to do. His resistance to obey is no surprise here. The surprise is that a seventeen-year-old with no magical powers would think he could issue commands to the most powerful warlock on the eastern seaboard. But Jace can and does, without a second thought, because he’s not just speaking for himself: He’s speaking for the Clave, with the full power of the Law.

The trilogy is packed with the (relatively) powerless using rules and laws to control the powerful—warlocks controlling demons and magical forces, Valentine controlling his demon army with the Mortal Cup, controlling Clary herself with binding runes—in all these cases, power imbalances don’t matter. No matter who’s stronger, the one with the rules on his side wins. And the Shadowhunters in particular seem to conflate the laws of magic with laws about magic (i.e., the Law), assuming that both are immutable.

This is a big reason why even a self-proclaimed rebel like Jace might be perfectly happy there are so many rules: He’s figured out how to use them to his benefit. The Law can be a more powerful weapon than a sword. No matter how young you are, no matter how relatively weak you might be, if you have the power of the Law on your side, you can push anyone around.

Well, almost anyone.

The problem with the Shadowhunter Law is that it’s not a law of physics. It’s a social contract, and as with all social contracts, its only magic is the magic of mutual agreement. Its power derives from belief in the impossibility of defying it—which means there’s nothing more threatening than an outsider who can see the Law for what it is.

A choice.

Think about it in the high school context: A group of people—let’s call them the popular crowd—ostensibly have no more power than anyone else. They have to go to the same classes, do the same homework, serve the same detention when they step out of line. But by mutual, unspoken agreement among the entire student body, this group has accrued a specific kind of power: the power to admit or reject other students from its ranks. But popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized. A queen bee mean girl can decimate her prey by insulting their outfit, refusing to sit with them at lunch, denying them an invitation to the most exclusive of parties…but what does that matter to the freethinker who could care less about fashion critiques, prefers lunch in the library, and would rather gouge out her eyes than party with the populars? And what would it do to the queen bees of the high school world if the student body, as one, decided that “cool” was worthless, and royal favor even more so? This is why the outsider, the rebel who rejects the social hierarchy—who doesn’t care what anyone in so-called power thinks of her—is so threatening to the powers that be. It’s true for the cheerleaders and it’s true for the Clave.

The very existence of someone who defies the Law renders defiance a possible option. Something that Jace is the first to understand, when, in City of Glass, he realizes that the Clave will read Clary’s rune-creating ability as a portent of doom. After all, the only thing more dangerous than a willingness to ignore the Law is an ability to change it.





Rebels Without a Law


“I should have warned her about your habit of never doing what you’re told.”

—Jace Wayland to Clary Fray, City of Bones

But rebels do exist—in mundane high schools and Shadowhunter Institutes alike. And Jace and Clary would gladly claim the title for themselves. All the more reason for them to appreciate the Clave and the Law: It’s significantly more satisfying to kick a wall than it is to kick thin air. For the rebellious teen—or the teen who wants to feel like a rebel—a clearly defined law gives you something to define yourself against.

If you’re looking to fight a war, it helps to have an enemy.

The beauty of Clave Law is that it allows you to feel like a rebel without actually doing much of anything rebellious—because when everything is legislated, breaking even the smallest of rules can offer the satisfaction of defiance without the consequences. “Isabelle only likes dating thoroughly inappropriate boys our parents will hate,” Alec says in City of Glass. “Mundanes, Downworlders, petty crooks.” The operative word here is “petty,” because that’s exactly what Isabelle’s so-called rebellions are. In fact, it’s hard not to suspect that the commitment-phobic Isabelle is dating these inappropriate boys precisely because she knows exactly how far things can go with them: far enough to feel like she’s flirting with trouble, but never so far that she’d have to introduce her new werewolf fiancé to Mom and Dad. It’s the perfect excuse to keep relationships skin deep—because any cute Downworlder might be worth bending the rules for, but who could be worth breaking them for? And so she gets to harmlessly test her boundaries, feeling like a proud rebel, while still protecting her heart. The same goes for our other heroes. Like prep school kids defiling a school uniform, the teen Shadowhunters get to call themselves rebels for the smallest of infractions: sneaking out, dating the wrong people. But when it comes to the big stuff ? Even Jace, who has the most flagrant disregard for the Law, especially when it comes to Clary (after all, this is a guy who’s not only willing to Mark an ostensible mundane but is also pretty open to the idea of sleeping with his sister), turns into a total priss. Remember his horror at Madame Dorothea’s failure to bend to the will of the Shadowhunters: “You knew there were Forsaken in this house and you didn’t notify [the Clave]? Just the existence of Forsaken is a crime against the Covenant” (City of Bones). Jace sounds like a class prefect taking someone to task for running in the halls, and, like the class delinquent, Madame Dorothea practically laughs in his face.

Admittedly, as the trilogy continues, Clary and co.’s rule-breaking becomes more daring and more flagrant—their rebellions become quite a bit less petty. Jace presides over Simon’s burial and awakening and later saves the young vampire with an emergency infusion of his own blood; Alec breaks Jace out of the Inquisitor’s prison; Jace tries to pay it forward by breaking Simon out of the Gard. They’re lawbreakers, no question: serious rebels. But their rebellions are almost always against specific edicts laid down by members of the Clave—against the bad (and often, in terms of the Law, illegal) decisions of individuals. They rebel against the man…while maintaining their absolute respect for the institution.

At no point do any of our characters, even Clary—the newcomer who could be expected to poke holes in the establishment—bother to question the fundamental tenets of Shadowhunter life. No one, for example, questions Luke’s expulsion from the Shadowhunter ranks or suggests that he be readmitted (in whatever capacity he could fight at their side), even if he is a werewolf. No one (until the end of the first three books) questions the sharp divisions and political imbalance between Shadowhunters and Downworlders; no one questions the wisdom of keeping all this secret from the mundanes; no one questions the rules of who’s in charge and what the penalties are for disobeying. These are the kinds of questions that Valentine liked to ask. Also known as: unthinkable. As it’s unthinkable for Isabelle to imagine challenging the Clave’s (and her parents’) stance on homosexuality: If they discovered that Alec was gay, she says, they’d disown him, because that’s just the way it works—of course, as we discover, the Lightwoods aren’t so ready as their daughter believes to toss away their son based on an outmoded tradition. But Isabelle assumes they will be, and that “there’s nothing I can do” (City of Bones).