Makhasu writes...

You said on the COS dvd commentary, when Demona swings Macbeth around, "I think she's just a little bit in love with him there." While I don't think it was an strong romantic love, I do think she was much more affectionate towards him than she would have been to someone else. We never see her that friendly towards anyone else she's not romantically involved with, not even her own clan members. My question is, was she aware of it? Was he? Was Gruoch? >=)

Makhasu writes...

Why hadn't Macbeth and Gruoch gotten married by 1032? They were 27 years old by the time she was betrothed to Gillecomgain. Why didn't they marry before that?

Makhasu writes...

Was Macbeth genuinely in love (not just smitten) with Dominique? I only ask this because he had known her for such a short time, and even then knew very little about her.

Makhasu writes...

Someone asked if Macbeth had ever been married to anyone other than Gruoch and Dominique, and you said "Maybe, but not often." Why not? Why didn't he get married more often?

Makhasu writes...

You've said that Macbeth sometimes works as a stage actor. In what sort of productions? How well does he get along with taking orders from the directors? =)

Makhasu writes...

What was Macbeth's relationship with Gillecomgain like after Gillecomgain became the High Steward of Moray?

Makhasu writes...

What was Macbeth's relationship with Bodhe like after he became King in 1040? By 1057, neither he nor Luach seemed particularly fond of him.

Makhasu writes...

How was Demona able to get Macbeth to marry her in such a short time? He only knew 'Dominique' for less than a month, according to the dates you've given.

Makhasu writes...

You said that, besides pain, pleasure also passes between Macbeth and Demona. Why would the Weird Sisters toss that in? Doesn't it creep Mac and D out a bit?

For that matter, when did they first find out about that? It must've been a pretty shocking experience.

Makhasu writes...

Did any of the historical events of Macbeth's reign also occur in the Gargoyles universe? For instance, his war with Duncan's father, Crinan, his pilgrimage to Rome, etc...

Makhasu writes...

Why did Macbeth have Banquo and Fleance as best man and maid of honor at his wedding? He doesn't seem to like them, and the feeling seems to be mutual. So why did he bring them all the way to Paris for his wedding?

Makhasu writes...

Why did Macbeth want the Scrolls of Merlin? That was never answered in the episode Lighthouse in a Sea of Time.

Makhasu writes...

What was the relationship between Macbeth and Duncan like during the eight years that Duncan was king? By 1040, he seemed to trust Macbeth enough to go walking with him and his son.

Makhasu writes...

You answered, when asked if Macbeth and Demona share emotional pain, "Metaphorically." I didn't quite understand that. Could you explain in greater detail?

Makhasu writes...

Where did Macbeth go when he fled Scotland in 1057? Did he ever return?

Makhasu writes...

Did Macbeth really die when Canmore stabbed him? The Weird Sisters said to Demona that "though the pain is great, child, you are unharmed." Were she and Macbeth alive, but in pain, when Canmore declared himself victorious?

Makhasu writes...

Can Demona or Macbeth sustain permanent damage? Like scars, lost limbs, etc... They're in impeccable shape for people who've been, as you said in one answer, "stabbed, shot, etc."

Makhasu writes...

Does Demona still think that Macbeth was planning to betray her in 1057?

Makhasu writes...

What was Macbeth and Demona's relationship like when he was king? How well did they get along?

Makhasu writes...

What do Macbeth and Demona think of that golden age during his reign as king?

Makhasu writes...

Does Demona know that Macbeth is no longer actively hunting her?

Makhasu writes...

How did Canmore find out about Macbeth and Demona's link? How did those rumors get started?

Makhasu writes...

Did Demona's low opinion of humans change at all during Macbeth's golden age of rule? She and her clan's treatment was very different from what it had been before, and his reign is the only time we ever see Demona truly happy and content.

Makhasu writes...

What did Macbeth's subjects think of him aging suddenly from 35 to 52 overnight? Did he ever give an explanation for the change?

Makhasu writes...

Did Macbeth have any advisors other than Demona? If so, how well did they get along with Demona?

Makhasu writes...

What's Macbeth opinion about Gargoyles as a species?

Makhasu writes...

The Scottish people seemed pretty hateful/fearful towards gargoyles before Macbeth's reign. How was he able to change opinions and get people to accept Demona and her clan?

Makhasu writes...

Does Macbeth have any close friends? If so, do any of them know who he really is?

Makhasu writes...

Who came up with the idea for the Paris scheme against Macbeth? Thailog or Demona?

Makhasu writes...

Is Macbeth conciously aware of how much his morals have changed since his youth? He does things in the present that he would never have done when he was young (attacking innocents to trap an enemy, theft, etc...) If he does realize how much he's changed, how does he feel about it?

Makhasu writes...

Why didn't Goliath and co. (when they were in Paris) tell Macbeth about the Weird Sisters controlling him and Demona? Even if only to prevent him from being susceptible to their manipulations again.

Makhasu writes...

What was Macbeth's position in WWII? We know he fought in it, but from what angle? Was he in the British or American militaries? Did he fight independently? Other?

Makhasu writes...

You've said that Macbeth doesn't get involved after the Space Spawn invade Earth in 2198, until some time later. Why? Surely he wouldn't just ignore his planet being taken over. He fought in WWII. Why would he stay out of this far more important war?

Makhasu writes...

Macbeth said to King Arthur that he was too long a king to serve another. Does this mean that he's never served or worked for anyone post-1057?

Makhasu writes...

You've hinted that Luach was conceived during the time that Gruoch was married to Gillecomgain, with Macbeth being the father. Why would he and Gruoch take such a risk? He gave her up for her own safety... committing adultery would probably have resulted in her execution.

maricar writes...

im asking about the famous line of lady mcbeth one of shakespeare's charater which starts with "blood, blood, blood"

Jurgan writes...

I've never asked a question here before, probably because I didn't have the patience to wait, but I just wrote this analysis of Demona and Macbeth's link for the GFW website, and I wanted to see what you thought of it. Am I on the right track?

Curses and Prophecies, Fate and Freewill

(Warning: This essay contains minor spoilers for Harry Potter books five and six. It's mostly about Gargoyles, so if you don't read HP you'll still understand this, but if you plan to read them soon, you may wish to stop reading now.)

Like most people reading this, Gargoyles had a major impact on my life. For me, the best it ever got was City of Stone. In fact, I would say that CoS was one of the highlights of my childhood. I still distinctly remember, when I was twelve years old, reaching the end of Part Three, seeing Demona advancing on stone Elisa with a mace, and then the words "To be Concluded." "You're telling me I have to wait a whole day to see what happens? I'm supposed to go to school? Screw that, I want to know how Elisa survives!" I've thought long and hard about CoS, and the key to it is the relationship between Demona and Macbeth. In fact, I think the Weird Sisters' spellcasting is, from a classical sense, the climax of the entire story. On the surface, the spell seems simple enough: Demona and Macbeth are linked so they feel each others' pain, and they will live forever. If someone were to kill one of them, (s)he would die and then quickly come back to life. If one of them were to kill the other, though, then they would both die. As I say, it seems simple. After reading Greg Weisman's numerous responses on the subject, I began to think about whether there was more to it than meets the eye, and it slowly dawned on me that it was much more subtle, deep, and brilliant than I'd ever considered.

For years, Greg has received questions like "What would happen if Macbeth got his head cut off? Would it reattach itself? Would it grow back immediately?" He has always answered something like, "Well, that hasn't happened, has it?" At first glance, that seems like just a weak cop out, with Greg trying to avoid a question he has no good answer to. In fact, he seemed to get pretty flustered at the way people kept projecting Highlander concepts onto Macbeth, which was probably inevitable given that they're both immortal Scottish nobles. Unlike Highlander, though, there are no explicitly stated rules as to how immortality works; all we have to go on are the Weird Sisters' words, and they clearly are not the most trustworthy or forthcoming of people. Remember that Luna is supposedly a representative of fate, and then think about the fact that the spell doesn't really talk about "what if this or that happened," but rather "what will happen." The final words of Luna to Macbeth in the past were that "you both shall live, eternally linked, sharing each other's pain and anguish, with no release until one destroys the other. Only then shall both finally perish together." From that, it's clear that the Sisters are not interested in playing hypotheticals about all the different ways things could happen: they simply pronounced what will happen. Rather than the spell being simply a safeguard against their dying, it could instead be thought of as a prophecy declaring quite simply what will happen to them in the future.

It turns out that at no point in the entire series do we see anything happen to either Demona or Macbeth that would be sure to kill them. In fact, there are only two times it really seems likely that one of them could die. The first is when Macbeth was stabbed in the back by Canmore- painful, to be sure, but not necessarily lethal. Certainly there are those who have survived a poorly aimed stab. The second is when Elisa shot Demona with Macbeth's electric gun. That one seems even less likely, as about three gargoyles get shot with one of those things in any given Macbeth episode. One might make a case that the roller coaster collapse in The Reckoning was potentially lethal, but that falls under the old comicbook rule of "if you don't see the body, the guy's not dead," and the fact that we know Thailog survived as well makes it clear that magic was not necessary to live through that incident. So, we have established that we have never seen anything unquestionably fatal befall Demona or Macbeth. Furthermore, Greg has told us that no such thing has ever happened. Knowing that, it follows that it is meaningless to ask what if such a thing were to happen- it hasn't! Such speculation is what is known logically as a vacuous proof: If A occurs, then B occurs, given that A is an impossible event. Consider the statement "All pink elephants can fly," or, more precisely, "If A is a pink elephant, then A can fly." This statement is absolutely true, since every pink elephant in the world can fly- there are none, so anything you can say about them is true. A simpler way of thinking about it, though less rigorous, is that the statement "all pink elephants can fly" could never be disproved, since to do so one would have to find a pink elephant that could not fly, which can never be done. It is equally true that every pink elephant cannot fly. What this means, then, is there's no point asking "what if Demona or Macbeth were beheaded" if it cannot happen- it's true that if Macbeth were beheaded, he'd die, and it's true that if he were beheaded, he would be revived, and it's true that if he were beheaded, they'd both die, etc. All of those statements are true, because they are all based on an impossible hypothetical.

So let us then accept that neither of them has ever been beheaded. That still doesn't prove that neither of them could ever be beheaded, in which case it would still be relevant to ask what would happen. To answer that, it's worth thinking of the Weird Sisters' pronouncement as a prophecy rather than a spell. Suppose we think of the Macbeth/Demona connection in these terms: The spell allows them long life and they share each others' pain. Since they share pain, if one of them were killed, then the other would die too. Then we see that what Luna meant by saying that they would live on until one destroys the other is not that they are somehow magically protected from injury, but simply that she was predicting what would happen, as an avatar of fate. Such a prophecy brings Harry Potter to mind. When Harry was an infant, a prophecy was made which roughly stated that either he would kill Voldemort or Voldemort would kill him. That prophecy was overheard and found its way back to Voldemort, who immediately acted on it by attempting to kill Harry and fulfill it in a way favorable to him. In so doing, he nearly destroyed himself and gave Harry powers that would enable him to finish Voldemort once and for all. Moreover, he gave Harry a desire to end Voldemort. Harry lost his parents and knew first hand the sort of pain Voldemort inflicted on others, and so he would not rest until Voldemort was finished. On the other hand, Voldemort believed in the prophecy, and thus saw Harry as the greatest danger to him, so he would not rest until Harry was dead. So the result was that the two enemies were both determined to kill each other. As such, it was inevitable that one of them would eventually succeed, and the prophecy would be proven true. However, it was not true because of some incomprehensible hand of fate hovering over them, but rather it was based on simple extrapolations from the subjects' characters, and the fact that they knew about the prophecy (fittingly enough, Rowling has acknowledged Shakespeare's Macbeth as an inspiration for the prophecy).

The same can apply to Demona and Macbeth. At the time of the spell's casting, they were already great warriors, and with unlimited time to practice, they would become even greater. So it is highly unlikely that anyone else would kill them. Yet based on the events of their falling out, an intense hatred blossomed between them, one that would keep them hunting each other and make it inevitable that one would eventually kill the other. And since Macbeth heard the Weird Sisters' pronouncement, he believed that he could not die without killing Demona. It never would have even occurred to him to jump off a tall building and see what happened, because he believed that it would fail. Thus, the prophecy has the added bonus of controlling any possible suicidal tendencies Demona or Macbeth might develop by telling them it's impossible to kill themselves, since while Luna's side of their personality may simply be prophesying, Selene's needs them to survive for their future plans. Plus, even if Macbeth thought it would work, he probably would still feel the need to settle the score with Demona first. With all of that in mind, it is not hard for the avatar of fate to predict that one of them will end up killing the other, and the fact that she makes the prediction helps it to occur.

The question then is this: Is there a difference between saying something cannot happen and saying it will not happen? Suppose a man plans to stay home one day. Can we then say that it is impossible that he will get in his car and drive to another state that day? Let's say it's early in the morning, so he's got plenty of time. He's got a full tank of gas. He's not in Alaska or Hawaii, so there are connecting states he could go to. However, he has no desire at all to do so. Without that desire, it simply will not happen. We can then say that it is impossible. Now the obvious objection is that one never knows for sure what might happen, and if an emergency came up, he might have to leave the state that very day. For that reason, we distinguish between what can happen and what will happen- something can happen if it would happen provided the will to do it existed. If we knew for sure that the man would choose not to leave that day, it would then be fair to say that it was impossible for him to leave. Likewise, if we know with certainty that Demona and Macbeth will not die until one destroys the other, then we can say that it is impossible for anything else to happen.

This theory may seems very complicated at first, but if you take the time to think about it, it makes more sense than most other explanations out there. Rather than rely on vague magic powers and convoluted rules of "what if Demona were smashed in the day?" this theory eliminates all of the guesswork and gives an answer without the ambiguity; one that ultimately is simple and inevitable, yet firmly in the hands of the players. By thinking of Weird Sisters' spell as a prophecy, we can help resolve the fate vs. free will argument. Luna is an embodiment of fate, and so she is able to make predictions in the future, yet they are based simply on reading the characters of the subjects. While the prophecy that Demona and Macbeth will eventually die when one kills the other is a pronouncement of fate, it is only made true because of Demona's lack of trust and irresponsibility and Macbeth's lust for vengeance. The same could be said of the prophecy that Macbeth, Lulach, and Canmore would all become king- it wasn't hard to see that Duncan's paranoia would lead to him moving against Macbeth, a confrontation which would ultimately lead to Macbeth's ascension.

Jon writes...

I just caught City of Stone on the fantastic Season 2 DVD set, and a good (or so I hope) question occurred to me. Given Macbeth's on again/off again suicidal tendencies, was he masquerading as the Hunter in the hopes that Demona would take one look at him and nail him with a bazooka? Or was he just trying to go for a more satisfying psychological advantage in a hand-to-hand fight?

Raye writes...

Hi, my question concerns Demona and Gruoch, two of my favourite characters (One of my favourite moments in "Gargoyles" is when Demona goes completely against her prejudices and saves Macbeth and Gruoch when they're slipping from the parapet, and Gruoch's nervous little "thank you" to her afterwards). But anyway:

1. During the "Golden Age" of Macbeth's rule, how well did Gruoch and Demona get on? Or to make the question a bit more generalised, what was their relationship?

Obviously they wouldn't have been best friends, but I also can assume that as such close companions to Macbeth they would have spent a reasonable amount of time in each other's company.

2a. Would they have considered each other as a "friend"?

2b. Or was there a little bit of resentment/jealously/competition going on in terms of their separate relationships with Macbeth?

2c. Or did they just stay out of each other's way?

Thank you very much in advance for any reply you give me, I think the time and effort you put into communicating with fans is amazing! My fingers are crossed that the second half of season two will make it to DVD.

Harvester of Eyes writes...

I was just wondering: you've mentioned that you had two more loves planned for Demona. As far as MacBeth is concerned, did you have any loves planned for him? I've read through the archives, and maybe I missed it, but you mentioned that MacBeth did have other marraiges, but not often. Were there any that we would find out about between 1996 and 2198 (aside from "Dominique")?

Paladin writes...

Dear Mr. Weisman-

I was wondering if you could clarify how William Shakespeare fits into the Gargoyle universe. Was he aware of the Third Race in some regard, or was he just a very talented writer whose stories were closer to truth than fiction?

Thank you for your time, and for your creation.

Jonathan Anderson writes...

"31. What is the extent of the sensations that can be felt between Demona and Macbeth via their link? Can they feel other things besides pain?

Greg's answer:

Simple touching doesn't pass from one to the other. Intense feelings of pain and pleasure would."

So if the happened to have sex, it would be some sort of transfering chain re-action of pleasure?

Wally writes...

I searched the archives, but I may have missed the answer...

In "Sanctuary":
Given his suicidal tendencies, why does Macbeth bother to put up such a fight against Demona at the end? As he opens his secret stash of weapons before the final battle, he says something like "Demona, it ends tonight." He's had 900 years to think about his situation, so it struck me as odd that he temporarily seems to forget that he can effectively kill Demona by letting her kill *him*. Why does he bother to jump out of the way of her shots? And why does he have such a quick change of heart after Elisa "kills" Demona?

P.S. Thanks so much for continuing to answer questions. Gargoyles was an amazing creation. I hope you feel some pride in the accomplishment. (I'm 31, and every time I watch an episode, I'm amazed at how well the whole story ties together. Truly great work. Thanks!)

J writes...

How did Demona feel about having to kiss Macbeth in "Sanctuary"?

matt8387 writes...

Did Hakon die before or after Macbeth was born?

Aves writes...

Hi Greg,

I don't want to get all gushy, but Gargoyles changed my life and you can't even begin to imagine how much I appreciate the work you've done. That being said, I have a small question. Well, a series of questions.

Is Duncan a descendant of Constantine or Calvin? I guess what I'm asking is: Did Calvin reclaim the throne from Constantine after he murdered Kenneth? When Duncan first appears, he's the prince, but it was never specified who the King was. I'd guess that Duncan was of Constantine's blood, only because they sort of look similar, and also had common virtues of treachery and deceit.

Or am I just totally off base and are we even talking about the same throne? I don't really know much about Scotland, and when I think about it, it's remotely concievable that we could be talking about two different provinces or kingdoms or houses or whatever they call it.

I apologize for all the circumlocution. Thanks again for everything.

Anonymous writes...

MacBeth was Scottish nobility and related to the king; so is he a from the line of Princess Katherine or the usurper, Constantine?

Maelgrim writes...

IN santurary why does Macbeth have a picture of Eliza over his fire place?

Thrist writes...

This is about Demona and MacBeth. Let's say Demona's wing's or tail were injured. Would Macbeth still feel the pain even though he dosen't have them or would he not feel it at all. If he di where??

Axem Gold writes...

It's been a while since I asked a question here. Just couldn't think of an original question, but here some questions about Macbeth:

1. He did the best to defend the Gargoyles on Nightwatch on the Journey, so would he be more of an ally, enemy or neutral?

2. Would he play more of a role on Gargoyles or Pendragon?

3. Any plans for him to meet John Castaway (Canmore)?

THANKS