# Is Rowling's Incest 'Golden Thread' the Key to Her Cormoran Strike Finale?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/rowling-studies-the-hogwarts-professor-podcast-6739232/is-rowling-s-incest-golden-thread-the-key-to-her-cormoran-strike-finale
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/rowling-studies-the-hogwarts-professor-podcast-6739232/is-rowling-s-incest-golden-thread-the-key-to-her-cormoran-strike-finale.md
Podcast: [Rowling Studies The Hogwarts Professor Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/rowling-studies-the-hogwarts-professor-podcast-6739232)
Published: 2026-04-29T02:06:37+00:00
Episode link: https://hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/is-rowlings-incest-golden-thread
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/195557481/a292ea9be68d8d3a1539e0f7831837fb.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/rowling-studies-the-hogwarts-professor-podcast-6739232/episodes/is-rowling-s-incest-golden-thread-the-key-to-her-cormoran-strike-finale
Duration seconds: 6104

## Resource

Golden Threads Last July, Nick Jeffery and I put together a month long review of Rowling’s work in celebration of her 60th birthday , a Kanreki party. Every day we posted conversations about each of Rowling’s works with Nick discussing a ‘Lake’ point, something biographical or bibliographical, and me talking about a ‘Shed’ quality of the work, the author’s traditional tools, artistry, and meaning. That worked great for about twenty days. Then we ran out of books. What to do for the remaining days of the month? We decided to talk about Golden Threads, the plot points, themes, and twists that run through everything Rowling has written. We started out with a survey of the fifteen-plus already identified by Rowling Re-readers and Fourth Generation types (see here and here ) and then with more in depth looks at the ones that were controversial or more difficult to see. We closed off the month with the ‘Lost Child’ Golden Thread and the possibility that Rowling’s inspiration for the Harry Potter series was the trauma of pre-natal infanticide (‘abortion’). As disturbing as that Golden Thread was to many Rowling fans and Feminist Gate Keepers, there was another third-rail string we didn’t discuss, namely, the plot point of incest that readers encounter again and again in the Potter and Strike series as well as the stand-alone stories. Incest as Golden Thread Nick and I discuss the Incest Golden Thread on the fly in the conversation above about Strike-Ellacott fandom theories about Sleep Tight, Evangeline and the series finale. Here are some written references if you want to review them by looking at the books in question on your shelf. * Harry Potter The foundation crime of the Hogwarts Saga is the abuse of Merope Gaunt by her father Marvolo and her brother Morfin. The abuse i…

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## Transcript

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