Dark Mark - Blog Posts

The Dark Mark and the Deathly Hallows notebook cover.

First time drawing Wilford but I think I did well. Dark will always be my favorite of the Iplier egos though.

Bartemius Crouch Senior

I love Barty Crouch Senior, I just do. Maybe it’s because when we meet him I just see this bright man who got shafted by his family, the public and was alone; I feel for him. Now, he’s not perfect. We know that he could be cruel, as we see with him and Winky and hear from others in regards to the trails of other Death Eaters not connected to his son. But while he was ambitious and made mistakes as department head, they were misguided mistakes and not with the background of the mistakes or self-promotion ones made by Fudge or Scrimgeour. And while we hear about how he was an absentee father working late at the ministry, we know Barty Crouch Jr. had his mother to over-indulge him similar to how I believe James Potter was overindulged, and we know that Barty Crouch Sr. adored his wife so I feel there were limits or levels to his cruelty, especially as at any moment he could have handled his son differently after his wife passed, but he didn’t.  

How Barty Crouch Dr. became who he was, we’ll never know, but once brought to the light I feel that Barty Crouch Sr. wasn’t as shocked as he would otherwise be, he just wasn’t in denial anymore. Maybe Barty Crouch Jr.’s nature turned his father away from him and not the other way around because regardless of the speculation that Barty Crouch Jr. might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, we know that’s not true. Barty Crouch Jr. was a proud Death Eater. When it comes to Barty Crouch Sr.’s errors, I put them more in line with Dumbledore’s. While not as understanding of his own faults, Barty Crouch Sr. was not malicious, but strict. Why he could not get the sympathy following the death of his wife and child as Dumbledore had with his sister I don’t understand. Barty Crouch Sr.’s main fault seemed to be in his appearance of being cruel (also alluded to in why Ludo Bagman got more praise than him) because the public first hated that he sentenced his son so ‘unfairly’ by treating him like any other Death Eater, then blaming him when he died in Azkaban, then hating him when they found out he had taken him from Azkaban but had him imprisoned in his home….I think they just wanted to hate him.

Bartemius Crouch Senior was not perfect or innocent, but for the most part, he tried to do what he believed was best for the world even if his methods to get there are more than questionable, and, he honoured his wife more than anything, which counts for something. His story reminds us that life isn’t fair but it is complicated.