The Double Wedding Band model emerged from earlier models that I developed, and then discarded when it became clear they weren't working. That work, in turn, grew out of much earlier efforts that started around the publication of The Silkworm, by myself and other faculty on the Hogwarts Professor site. There, we analyzed the Strike series, almost from moment Robert Galbraith was unmasked, with many of the analytic tools that were useful in Harry Potter studies and which were pioneered by site owner John Granger. My favorites to use were literary alchemy, ring structure and the parallel series idea. Looking for and documenting parallel scenes, imagery, plot lines and characters between Strike books, and between Strike and Harry Potter books became my sub-specialty.
FAQ 1: What is the Double Wedding Band Model? 
More details can be found at my original proposal. The Double Wedding Band model replaced two earlier ideas that date back to July 2022, shortly before the publication of The Ink Black Heart: 1) the 5-6 Flip model and 2) the Pentagram model, which later became the Double Pentagram model when Galbraith announced, in September 2022, that the Strike series would be 10 books.
People curious about earlier models and how my thoughts on the structure of the Strike series have evolved over time can read my earlier posts on this blog, and my old Hogpro posts, many of which are now available on the Farting Sofa Faculty Archives. You'll find all of the links below. However, for the benefit of those who don't want to dig through past writings, I'll try to provide a more readable summary here.
Answer: It is a means of stretching the 7-part ring structure model that worked so well for Harry Potter out to fit a 10-book series. It was named for the popular quilting pattern. It proposes that the Strikes series can be understood as two overlapping 7-part rings, one starting with Book 1 and ending with Book 7, the other starting with Book 4 (at the "Part 2" in the middle of Lethal White that has no corresponding Part 1 at the book's beginning) and ending in Book 10. In addition to the ring theory-predicted "turtle-back" links (Book 2-Book 6; Book 3- Book 5; Book 5-Book 9 and Book 6-Book 8) and the latch- turn -latch connections (Books 1, 4 and 7 and Books 4, 7, and 10), we see
- "leap-frog" connections, where consecutive odd numbered books connect each other, and consecutive even numbers connect to each other, creating "Stars of David" within the rings. and
- connections between the corresponding numbers on each ring. In other words, The Silkworm (#2 on Ring 1) and Troubled Blood (#2 on Ring 2) connect, as do Career of Evil (#3 on Ring 1 ) and The Ink Black Heart. (#3 on Ring 2).
I have been pleasantly surprised by how well the double rings been received, and by the number of Strike fans have expressed appreciation for both the work I've done on it and the detailed study of the Strike texts that went into it. With over 200 Farting Sofa posts here over two years, the two articles on the Double Wedding band are the 7th and 8th most popular. Another Rowling/Galbraith fan site said that my modeling work shows a "magisterial command of canon" and I am genuinely flattered by and grateful for that characterization. The Double Wedding Band has gotten very good play on the Strike and Ellacott files podcast and even inspired some unique predictions in their latest listener call-in episode. (Thank you, Sarah from Texas!)
Answer: Some. See here for a full list. As is usual for literary theories, the general predictions were easier than the specifics. While Beatrice Groves and Irvin Khaytman made convincing arguments for connections to both Silkworm and Half-Blood Prince, I was able to come up with reasonable lists of connections to CoE and OotP. And the general consensus was that TIBH was, if anything, more nigredo* than albedo, with Strike more broken down physically than we've ever seen him, the whole office blown up and the overall tone pretty dark and depressing.
Answer: Yes, there are. In Strike, connections run from very general examples of consistent characterization (Strike drinks creosote-colored tea, Robin has memorable red-gold hair, Charlotte lies, Pat speaks in a raspy baritone and types with her e-cigarette waggling between her teeth, Barclay makes a wisecrack) to amazingly specific parallel passages. How specific a connection has to be to "count" is a judgement call. "Detectives solve a murder" obviously happens in every murder mystery ever written. But how many times does the detective stop a bonus pedophile who was one of the suspects, but not the killer, as part of the murder investigation? (The answer for Strike and Robin is twice, so far, in CoE and in TIBH).
FAQ 2: What is the 5-6 Flip model?
Answer: This was one of my wilder ideas from summer 2022: that Troubled Blood was originally intended as the 6th book of the series. The original proposal, and the full rationale is here, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much other Strike enthusiasts liked it, and continue to appreciate the rationale even though the idea itself is clearly wrong.
The thumbnail version: Prior to the publication of Troubled Blood, Hogpro faculty expected to see
- connections to Career of Evil (per ring structure)
- connections to Order of the Phoenix (per parallel series) and
- nigredo elements (per literary alchemy).
We saw all of these in the published book and documented them in multiple posts that are still available on Hogwartsprofessor.com and in the Farting Sofa archives.
But, as I re-read Troubled Blood in anticipation of The Ink Black Heart, two observations kept bugging me:
- First, Talbot's True Book. It was such a huge part of that mystery, with both Strike and Robin seeming to get obsessed with decoding it at times. I could see no equivalent in either CoE or OotP.
- But, Talbot's notebook did seem to be a good match for the Bombyx Mori manuscript of The Silkworm, and for the Half-Blood Prince's doctored potions text.
- And, it wasn't just the True Book, combing through the text, I was able to identify a dozen more thematic echoes to The Silkworm and The Half-Blood Prince. See the original proposal, above, for the full list.
- Second, while John Granger made a good case for TB as Strike's nigredo, there were also lots of elements in that volume that screamed albedo: lots of water, the name Margot, meaning "pearl", the cups and moons on the tarot cards, Cynthia Phipps dressed as a queen and even kissing swan towels in a seaside inn.
- All our analytic tools predicted Silkworm links, Half-Blood Prince links and albedo elements would be in Book 6, not Book 5. Yet, they were clearly there in Troubled Blood.
- I felt a bit like an archeologist who has found Jurassic (dinosaur) fossils in a Cambrian (trilobite) rock deposit.
These observations, plus the year-long skip between the end of Lethal White and the beginning of TB, which left time for another book's actions to fit there, led me to propose one possible explanation: that TB was originally planned as the sixth book of the series. And, if that were the case, it made sense to me that The Ink Black Heart might have been originally planned as the 5th book, and the order, for some reason, flipped.
All of this was being written while we were awaiting publication of TIBH. A good model is able to not only provide an explanation for observations already seen, but to make predictions for the future. Therefore, I made a set of predictions (some general, some specific) of things that might happen in TIBH if it was originally planned as Book 5, but subsequently flipped places with TB. In general, I predicted that TIBH would, like TB, include a mishmash of connections to both Silkworm and CoE, to both OotP and HBP, and a combination of nigredo with the expected albedo elements.
FAQ 3: Did the 5-6 Flip model have any predictive power for The Ink Black Heart?
Most exciting for me, I made two rather specific predictions that panned out, at least in minor elements. I predicted a woman whose name meant "dark" or "black"--- the counterpart to Margot. That was fulfilled by a minor but essential character, Gus's art school classmate Darcy. Second, given that TB was a "wet nigredo" I predicted a "dry albedo" element of something bleached white by the sun in TIBH. We saw that in the white coral of the Whitstable hotel. Thus, the 5-6 flip model had just enough predictive power for TIBH to give me hope it might be correct.
FAQ 4: But didn't JKR dismiss the 5-6 Flip model out of hand?
Answer: I don't think that is an accurate description. What happened was this: In October 2022, shortly after the announcement that the Strike series would end after Book 10, Rowling held a Q & A session on Twitter. Nick Jeffery, my then-colleague on Hogpro, attended in hopes that he would be able to get as many questions answered as possible. He managed three. One of those questions was whether TIBH was originally planned to come before Troubled Blood. Rowling said no, she always planned to have a cold case first, then an internet mystery. I believe this was a truthful response. As far as I was concerned, she answered the question and the matter was settled.
"Dismiss out of hand" means to unfairly declare an idea worthless without considering the evidence or rationale. Rowling did not need to consider my evidence to answer the question she was asked. I am reasonably sure that she has never known that I or my blog posts exist. Any evidence I collected to make my educated guess was entirely irrelevant to the truth, because she knows how she planned her series.
We should also remember that books are not just their authors' creative products, but also their business. Early drafts, sketches, outlines and plans are the authors' proprietary business information. Rowling has engaged with readers by releasing some of these and, once she does, they are fair game for analysis. An example is the recent The Phoenix or the Flame collection of essays on Rowling's original outlines for Order of the Phoenix, to which I contributed a chapter. But the author alone decides how much of the proprietary business information to release and what elements should be kept secret.
FAQ 5: Weren't you disappointed to learn that the 5-6 Flip model was wrong?
Answer: Absolutely not. I was delighted that Nick thought the question was important enough to ask Rowling on this extremely rare opportunity. I was doubly delighted that Rowling chose to answer it; I doubt she would have bothered for a question she thought completely ridiculous and I think she would have simply not answered if it related to proprietary information she wished to keep secret. Would I have been triply delighted** if she had said, "Yes, that's exactly what I planned, what a brilliant deduction!"? Of course. But I'm not going to complain that my Knickerbocker Glory (or should that be "Nick"erbocker Glory?) doesn't have enough whipped cream on top.
As most people know, I am a behavioral neuroscientist by training, not a literary scholar. I have spent a lot of my career using theory and observation to generate testable and mutually exclusive hypotheses (typically, multiple explanations for some set of observations) and then designing studies whose goal is to eliminate each hypothesis. Scientists are not in the business of directly "proving" hypotheses, but we love to rule them out. Literary research does not work like scientific research, primarily because explanations are not typically exclusionary, but still, getting a definitive "no, that's not right" is as welcome an outcome as getting a definitive "yes, that's right," and it happens much more often. I got a definitive "no" from the one person in the world qualified to give it, and I consider that success, not failure.
Scholars, even brilliant ones, are surprisingly prone to two specific mistakes.
- Conflating their identity with their ideas.
- If any of my research or ideas are challenged, I do my best to defend my work: my data, my methodology, my conclusions. I do not "defend myself," nor would I want anyone else to defend me.
- Clinging to or continuing to defend a hypothesis, model or idea when there is clear evidence against it.
- The tendency to do this is far stronger when the hypothesis and your identity (or the identity of someone you admire or care about) are conflated.
- Once that happens, the person has, often unintentionally, fallen into the trap of attempting demonstrate that a hypothesis is sound for the sake of the person who made it, not for the good of the research endeavor. That approach becomes, in their view, the only correct approach. This hampers, rather than supports rational inquiry.
Once Rowling's answer ruled out 5-6 Flip for me, I did what a good scientist does and began looking for a different model to account for the observations that were still there and still puzzling me:
- The criss-cross of thematic connections predicted by ring structure, with both TB and TIBH connecting to Silkworm and CoE.
- The criss-cross of thematic connections predicted by ring structure, with both TB and TIBH connecting to OotP and HBP.
- The odd mixture of nigredo and albedo in both books, but particularly in TB.
The new model I eventually developed and with which I am currently working is the Double Wedding Band.
FAQ 6: Was the Double Pentagram Model developed as an alternative to 5-6 Flip?
Answer: In a way. I actually proposed it in July 2022, near the same time that I proposed 5-6 flip; the original post is available here. It was actually my attempt to make sense of some other connections I noticed that were not accounted for by either basic ring structure or 5-6 flip.
- Connections between Strike books 1 and 3
- Connections between Strike books 2 and 4
- Note: I call this tendency of odd-numbered books to connect to the most recent odd-numbered book, and evens to evens, the Leapfrog effect, and this was the first time I really noticed it.
- This effect would continue to be observed with the publication of Books 6 and 7. I consider the Leapfrog effect part of the Double Wedding Band model, and an idea with the potential to stand on its own even if the rest of the model turns out to be wrong.
But the main driver of the original Pentagram model was the fact that Troubled Blood was constructed so similarly to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was that observation that made me think that at one point, Galbraith might have planned a 5-part series with Troubled Blood as the finale. The Pentagram model got another boost when Galbraith announced the Strike series would be ten books long, because one pentagram could be easily doubled to two.
FAQ 7: Why did you discard the Double Pentagram? Did JKR tell you that was wrong, too?
Answer: No. To my knowledge, no one has, to date, asked her if she ever considered making Strike a five-part series. I discarded the Double Pentagram model because I was looking for a way to visually connect Books 6 and 7 to the earlier books in the first pentagram and I couldn't get it to make sense. That's when I started working with overlapping rings of seven. The Leapfrog effect that inspired the Pentagram was incorporated. In a way, the five-point stars of the Double Pentagram evolved into the six-pointed stars of the Double Wedding Band.
FAQ 8: Based on the Double Wedding Band model, what are you predicting for The Hallmarked Man?
Answer:
- Connections to The Ink Black Heart and The Silkworm, which are Book 8's turtleback partners on the opposite sides of the rings.
- Connections to Lethal White, the other even-numbered book, per the Leapfrog effect.
- Connections to Troubled Blood, the # 5 book on the first ring, since THM is the #5 book on the second ring.
- Connections to the fifth Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix.
It is those last two that I am most excited about, because they are the most specific test for the predictive power of the Double Wedding Band. All the other connections can be more simply explained through the Leapfrog effect. Other 7-part theories (e.g. Parallel Series) don't make predictions for an eighth book. No other model, to my knowledge, predicts major thematic connections between Book 5 and Book 8, or between Book 8 of Strike and Book 5 of Potter. However, Evan Willis has predicted that THM will have thematic connections not to a Potter book but to Rowling's first post-Potter novel, A Casual Vacancy. So, I will keep this very reasonable alternative hypothesis in mind. Unlike scientific hypotheses, the two are not mutually exclusive.
If you are OK with spoilers, see here for some major reasons I am excited by what's coming up in THM.
I also think, since TB was a wet nigredo, TIBH a dry nigredo, and TRG a wet albedo, I think we'll have a dry albedo in THM.
FAQ 9: Aren't there connections between any two books, especially by the same author, if you look hard enough?
Some of the most specific and detailed connections documented so far include:
- During a major international sporting even, a bad-tempered government minister is killed by the estranged son that he recently helped get out of prison (the Cliff notes plot summaries of both GoF and LW, the fourth books of Potter and Strike respectively).
- Strike interviews a man named Henry who sells expensive home decor and who has Charlotte as a customer. Charlotte learns of the interview and ambushes Strike immediately afterwards (LW and TRG, a 4-7 connection consistent with a 7-part ring structure).
- One detective, distressed after learning about their partner being unfaithful, goes to the Tottenham and gets drunk. The other is worried enough to guess where they are, track them down, get them to stop drinking and eat something, be a listening ear, then escort them to a safe place to sleep it off. (CC and CoE, a Leapfrog connection between books 1 and 3).
- A protagonist, with much trepidation, submerges themselves in a dark and sinister pool in which a mysterious "magical" object has been seen. They are grabbed by a cord and pulled underwater, losing consciousness in a near-drowning. They wake up lying next to the pool, having been pulled out by a third party. (Harry in DH, Robin in TRG, both book 7 in their series).
- An annoying character uses a wheelchair despite being able to walk. The character also runs an online support board for others with the same condition, complaining frequently that the medical establishment doesn't understand their condition. Robin contacts a frightened teenage user of the board and persuades the teen to be interviewed for the investigation. (CoE and TIBH, a 3-6 connection that is not accounted for by ring structure, but which first inspired the 5-6 Flip model and now is accounted for by Double-Wedding band).
All of these are high enough in the spectrum of specificity for the hypothesis that they were intentionally planned to be the most logical and therefore the most likely explanation. This is the sort of "evidence" I'll be looking for in my reading of The Hallmarked Man. The true magic of Rowling/Galbraith's writing is that the books are captivating enough to make the detailed examinations and fine-tooth combing through multiple re-reads a pleasure, not a chore.
If you are patient enough to have read this far, thank you. If you like structural models, I hope the Double Wedding Band model is appealing and useful. It is the lens through which I will do my initial reading of The Hallmarked Man. All structural models, and especially the predictions based on them are, at heart, elaborate guessing games; I just try to make the most educated guesses I can. However, I certainly would never claim that everyone should use it or that I hold the unique key to correctly enjoying and examining these books. I hope all readers will share their own perspectives as The Hallmarked Man unfolds. One week to go!!
Please note: For Part 2 of this FAQ, see here.
*Given that both TB and TIBH were largely nigredo, that The Running Grave's baptismal imagery and Strike's progress towards purification made it an albedo volume, and that the many previews of silver, refined metals and swans suggest The Hallmarked Man as a second albedo, it appears that the Extended Play model is the best current explanation for literary alchemy in Strike.
*Given that both TB and TIBH were largely nigredo, that The Running Grave's baptismal imagery and Strike's progress towards purification made it an albedo volume, and that the many previews of silver, refined metals and swans suggest The Hallmarked Man as a second albedo, it appears that the Extended Play model is the best current explanation for literary alchemy in Strike.
**For the record, I have had two occasions to be triply delighted. One was when John Granger had the opportunity to submit a question on my behalf to Veronica Roth, author of one of my favorite YAL series, Divergent. I asked whether Tris's "I'm not done yet!" in the face of her execution was an intentional inversion of Jesus's "It is finished!" on the cross. She confirmed that it was. The second was when I gave a talk at a conference on the depiction of PTSD in the works of Rowling and Laurie Halse Anderson. I was very surprised (and more than a little nervous) to see Ms. Anderson herself as one of the few dozen people in the conference room for my presentation. One of my slides had the PTSD symptom of "expecting a foreshortened future" as illustrated by an Anderson character's line "Maybe I'll be an artist if I grow up." That got a "Yes!" and a fist pump from the author, which was most satisfying.
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