TLH Theory Time

Grace Blackthorn and Grace Cartwright are not the same person

I have been thinking as to why the family tree says that Christopher Lightwood marries Grace Cartwright, not Grace Blackthorn… surely if she is adopted her official name on an official document produced by the Silent City should be Grace Blackthorn… I believe this is because the woman who Christopher married is not Grace Blackthorn but Grace Cartwright - and that those are two different people.

Grace Cartwright is a daughter of Shadowhunters who had died - but CC has been pretty shady about the circumstances of her parent’s death, and changed her answers a couple of times. We don’t know how old Grace Cartwright was when her parents died, but I would think that it happened when she was very young. I think someone swapped the toddlers after the parents died, putting Grace Blackthorn in Grace Cartwright’s place. And I think Grace Cartwright is still alive and well.

Why would someone swap a baby, make it seem like it’s an orphan, and allow it to be raised by Tatiana Blackthorn, you’d ask? To protect it from it’s heritage.

It’s widely known that Grace is extraordinarily beautiful, and also “likes making crowns from flowers, leaves, and vines—a hobby she retained from before she was adopted”. I believe Grace is a faerie - and not just an ordinary faerie, but one of the Unseelie King’s daughters. It was mentioned in QOAAD that the King had several daughters after Auraline but that he had them all killed. I believe Auraline managed to save one of them and took her with her when she fled to the mortal world. We know she fled to the mortal world a few decades before she met Roland, which we might see in TLH (Roland being around 60 in Learn About Loss, the comment about him being “dashing in his youth” - I think we’ll see them both in TLH). That would mean her fleeing faerie could roughly align with when Grace was born, especially considering Grace might be older than she is claimed to be because faeries age differently.

We do see her bearing runes in official art - but we really don’t know what happens when faeries try to bear runes? They do have angelic blood after all, so why wouldn’t they work? Or at least they should not cause her any harm? Or, there’s also the question of who her mother could be  - and while the Unseelie King cannot have human consort in general, we know he had many children with many different women, so it could have been anyone, really, even a shadowhunter.

And I think that at the end of TLH Grace Blackthorn might die, and we will learn of the real Grace Cartwright, who will then marry Christopher.

Characterisation in Chain of Gold: Grace vs. Cordelia

I think that Cortana is more powerful and Grace’s powers more demonic than we’ve been led to think.

• Cortana can protect against demons/ curses
• “[…] you do not understand what Cortana is. As long as she bears that sword, and protects James, I will not be able to come near him.” Belial snapped…
  
• I think Cortana is going to ‘cut through’ the enchantment placed on James, either figuratively or by literally cutting the bracelet
• Also let’s look at CoG figuratively because I’m a lit nerd and I think it’s important
  
• Cortana is always described as gold, it’s rooted in angelic magic, and it’s sword- often a symbol of heroism. 
• Also Cordelia has bright red hair; she’s “warm and solid;” and she wants to fix her life with “cleverness and bravery—not with the sale of herself as a bride.”
• The bracelet, on the other hand, is silver, seems more like a handcuff, and “loyaulté me lie” is the motto of Richard III who some call a “Machiavellian, deceitful, treacherous and selfish tyrant”
• Grace is also often described in shades of silver with her “fair icicle beauty” (the antithesis of warm, solid Cordelia), and she’s more than willing to sell herself into marriage with Charles to gain protection from her mother.
• If you think this is all a stretch then I urge you to think of TID: We already know that colours and contrasts are important symbols in the shadowhunter universe. In TID, Will was described with dark hair, black clothes; Jem with his silver hair, and pale eyes and then came Tessa GRAY the perfect bridge between the two. 
  
• My prediction is that Grace’s powers are of a demonic nature, possibly given to her by Belial, but Cassie said in an ask that they were “intrinsic” to her, so maybe not? But she may have just meant that Grace also had powers, not just the bracelet. 
• We also know nothing about Grace’s parents, and since this bracelet belonged to her mother, and Grace has all these powers (plus you know, silver hair), I think she may be part-fae, which would also explain why her powers are slightly demonic- Fae have demon blood.
• Also Grace, uh, seems to be able to change her scent?
• He could smell her perfume as she looked up at him: it was always the same scent of violets. [James’ POV]
• Grace murmured a goodbye and left the room, a cloud of tuberose scent trailing in her wake. [Cordelia’s POV]
  
• Maybe smelling different to different people is part of Grace’s seduction powers?
  
• Also the next book is called Chain of Iron and iron hurts Fae, so maybe they’re involved somehow? Considering how little we know about Grace, I can see her as the entry-point character to a Fae introduction.

Some more figurative readings of Chain of Gold that link Grace with the demonic (and Cordelia with the angelic):

• The lovely @judehatescardan also just reminded me that when Cordelia touches Grace at the blackthorn house, Grace flinches from her touch as if she’s been hurt.
• Cordelia reached out to catch at her sleeve. Grace gave a low cry of pain and snatched her arm away […] she had touched Grace only lightly.
  
• When Grace and James meet at the picnic:
• James had rarely seen her in the sunlight; she reminded him of a pale, night-blooming flower easily singed by the sun.
  
• As soon as Grace the “night-blooming flower” (Fae connotations?) arrives at the daytime picnic, demons decide to show up as well; almost as if Grace in sunlight parallels demons being able to come out in sunlight
  
• Cordelia could hear the names of angels being called, but the Shadowhunters’ voices were slow with astonishment. It had been a long time of relative peace, and no one expected demonic activity during the day
  
• Another set of odd parallels occur when Grace takes the bracelet back from James. First, he has a symbolic dream about Cordelia cutting off a gray, hunched demon off his back
  
• …a monster knelt on his back, a creature whose face he could not see. A humped, misshapen thing […] She cut at the creature on James’s back, and with a searing pain it tore away from him
  
• Second, all the sick and infected people leave the institute
  
• The Enclave decided to move the wounded to the Silent City. They were too ill to be Portaled there.
  
• The huge monster on James back being cut away by Cordelia and all the infection and sick departing the institute on the SAME night that Grace took back her bracelet seems awfully coincidental to me… symbolic parallels? Agreed. 

potternaturalj2 said:“You are a Shadowhunter, she reminded herself. One of a long line of Persian Shadowhunters. The Jahanshah family had fought demons for longer than people like Rosamund Wentworth could imagine. Sona claimed they had the blood of the famous hero Rostam in them. Cordelia could manage a picnic.” What does Cordelia mean? Is it that Rostam was actually a shadowhunter, or does she refer to him because of her Persian heritage? It’s such a great feeling to see one of my country’s legendary heroes in CHoG.

Rostam’s story is such a cool one. I especially am a sucker for a legendary horse. 

So Sona always says they’re descended from Rostam. It could mean he was a Shadowhunter. Sona definitely thinks he was. The problem is really dating when Rostam lived: Ferdowsi wrote the Shahnameh around 1010 CE which means he wrote it at the time of Jonathan Shadowhunter but it collected tales that took place much earlier — Rostam is part of a great mythological archaic past, like Hercules. So probably Rostam wasn’t a Shadowhunter, but I think Sona is allowed a little license and Cordelia can still be descended from him either way!

thecordeliacarstairs said:hi cassie, i know you only reply to questions bu i still just want to thank you so so much for making cordelia the way she is in cog…

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grace–blackthorn said: Why was Jesse 

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