I hereby render unconditional obedience to the Circle and its principles. . . . I will be ready to risk my life at any time for the Circle, in order to preserve the purity of the bloodlines of Idris, and for the mortal world with whose safety we are charged.
—Loyalty oath of the Circle
The Accords have never had the unanimous support of the Clave. Almost every Accords negotiation has drawn protests, objections, internal squabbles from among the Nephilim. Those in far-flung territories, especially, with sparser populations, have often argued that Downworlder relations in such “wilds” require a looser hand, that the restrictions on Shadowhunter behavior in the Accords severely limit their ability to do their jobs.
These arguments have been heated and impassioned. Tempers have flared. Respected members of the Clave have stormed out of the Accords Hall in fury. Certain Downworlders and certain Shadowhunters have had to be carefully seated far from one another in the negotiation chambers.
At heart, though, the Nephilim’s and the Downworlders’ aims have aligned. We have all wanted peace. Everyone has, at root, wanted peace. Until the Circle.
Valentine Morgenstern, the only living son of a widely respected and long-standing Nephilim family, and his followers, disrupted the Accords. Not disrupted—invaded. I was there. Some have, in the years following, downplayed the horror and the violence of that day, to paint Morgenstern and his followers as noble dissidents, protestors using dramatic actions to make their point. But I was there.
Let us not mince words. The Circle despised Downworlders. They believed in the purity of humans and the impurity of Downworld, believed that Downworlders were at their root demons, and believed that Downworlders should be slaughtered to keep the world pure for humans. They viewed those Shadowhunters who disagreed with them as complicit in the profanity they believed Downworlders brought to our world. The Circle members were not protestors; they were violent fanatics.
(It is worth noting, in fairness to certain families, that many of the original members of the Circle, and many of the closest of Morgenstern’s original followers, had before the Accords fled from him because of the extremity of his views and the brutality of his plan, and were not present for the events in the Accords Hall. Not all of Valentine’s followers went along forever with his heinous crimes.)
Like so many other Shadowhunters, the Circle were in the Accords Hall that day, among the vast audience of Nephilim and Downworlders in the gallery awaiting the signing of these Ninth Accords. Unbeknownst to anyone else present, they had smuggled demonic weapons into the Hall—their fanaticism was such that they would use the tools of the explicitly demonic if they believed it would satisfy their supposedly noble ends. At the moment when the Accords were presented for signing, the Circle, as one body, rose and bared their weapons. Panic broke instantly over the Hall like a wave in a storm.
Amid the tumult it became clear that a number of Downworlder groups had been aware of the Circle’s plans and had laid in wait outside the Hall in secret to fight them. At the explosion of chaos these groups burst into the Hall and joined the battle. In truth this was not the shock it might have been. Valentine had been vocal in his protests for many months, and many expected some demonstration from him and his followers during the Accords—but nothing like the melee that occurred.
To attempt to describe the disarray and carnage of battle calls to my mind age-old clichés that cannot convey the power of the moment: It was horrible. It will stay with me forever. It was worse than your imagining. But all of these things are true. Good men and women were cut down in front of me, for no better reason than that the blood spattering their Accords robes would highlight the message of the Circle’s attack. Downworlders whose only crime was a demonic parent, or a demonic disease beyond their control, were murdered for having the misfortune of being present. Council members and Downworlder representatives alike shouted themselves hoarse, trying to restore order, unable to be heard over the din of metal smashing against metal and into human bodies.
I can close my eyes today, ten years later, as I write these words in my quiet office atop the tall crystal towers of the Melbourne Institute, and the smell of blood and the sound of slaughter come back to me as if I were still there. I think that probably the memory will never depart the dark places behind my eyes.
Worst harmed in the battle were the Shadowhunters unaffiliated with the Circle. They were killed, often indiscriminately, both purposefully by the Circle and accidentally by Downworlders who believed them to be among the enemy. Nevertheless, with the help of the Downworlder armies, the Circle was beaten back, and fled. They were only barely defeated. Valentine Morgenstern fled the Hall and retreated to his own house on the outskirts of Alicante, where he set a great fire and burned himself to death, along with his wife and his young child. Defeated, Valentine must have known that his life was forfeit; he was guilty of the greatest of Nephilim crimes, the murder of Nephilim. It is only fitting that he dispatched two last innocent victims, his own family, as his final act in the world. The Uprising ended in failure. The Nephilim and the Downworlders treated their wounded and saw to their dead. A great funeral was held in Angel Square in Alicante to honor the memory of those lost. Many surviving members of the Circle threw themselves upon the mercy of the Clave, and cooperated with the investigations into the whereabouts of those still loyal to Valentine. There was much speculation that the Accords had fallen apart, that peace between Idris and Downworld was impossible.
But the Ninth Accords were signed. In a stroke of irony Valentine’s terrible acts helped to uphold the Shadow World’s commitment to the Accords’ passage. It had been a difficult negotiation that year, full of clashing personalities and strong opinions, but after the Uprising a great sense of fraternity was felt by Downworlder and Shadowhunter representatives alike, united against their common foe, and they were able to ratify the Accords only a few weeks later.
The Tenth Accords (2007), just terrible for everyone.
Things turned out okay, though, right? Guys?
The Great and Tragic Love of Jonathan Shadowhunter and David the Silent, by
Clary Fray, Aged 17
SIMON IT WAS BY SIMON NOT ME
| JONATHAN SHADOWHUNTER: I am Jonathan Shadowhunter, and I am about to form a holy order of warriors to defend Earth from demons! I am louche and aristocratic and callow! | DAVID: Are you suggesting that only the combination of both your rash bravery and my levelheaded thinkiness can hope to defeat the darkness, rather than either alone? |
| DAVID: I am David and I witnessed something truly horrific in a cave and as a result I have taken a vow of silence and sworn myself to killing demons. I am only thinking these things, rather than saying them out loud, because I have taken a vow of silence. | JONATHAN: . . . No, but that’s much better than what I was suggesting, so let’s go with that! DAVID: We kill demons awesomely now! We go on adventures and repeatedly save each other’s lives! |
| JONATHAN: I throw myself at demons indiscriminately! | JONATHAN: Oh, David, I would trust you with my life! |
| DAVID: Verily, you shall be killed if you keep doing that. You need an influence of calm and meditative spirit in this mission. It is not just a war; it is a holy war. Meditate with me. | DAVID: Oh, Jonathan, I would sacrifice my own life for your holy mission! [He almost does.] I regret nothing. JONATHAN: (weeping) David, you must return to me! I need you! I cannot do this thing without you! |
| JONATHAN: This meditating business is very nice, and I feel more balanced and together than ever before, but have you noticed that we are supposed to be demon hunters but in fact neither of us has actually killed a demon in many moons? | DAVID: Lo, I return!
SIMON I WILL KILL YOU |