The Problem with the Masquerade

Okay, so what is a masquerade? Well, it’s a ball or party where everyone is wearing a mask and a costume, but that’s not what this post is about. It’s about the other kind of masquerade which is more common in writing these days (we might need to bring back more masquerades of the first kind, though). This kind of masquerade is a rule maintained by a group of (usually) supernatural beings to keep the regular populace in the dark about their existence. The examples I’ll work with here are the Harry Potter franchise (though more the original books than the Fantastic Beasts series) and the Vampire The Masquerade setting from World of Darkness (did you really think I’d not make use if this here?).

Masquerades are common in Urban Fantasy settings, because they serve as an explanation for why the world looks like ours, despite having vampires, mages, werewolves, etc. in it. Instead of figuring out how the existence of vampires et al. would change the course of history, the writer simply says ‘the vampires et al. keep themselves hidden from the humans, so everything went ahead as if they didn’t exist.’

The masquerade has quite some problems, because it’s highly unlikely it could be maintained for millennia. Even if you accept that it was possible in the past centuries, with the rising of the internet and social media, it would be next to impossible to remove every picture of a dragon flying over the city or a guy who changed into a wolf in the middle of a crowd from leaking out and going public. It would be next to impossible to undo a breach of the masquerade - and those would still happen.

Yet, if you want vampires et al. in a setting of our 2019 or so, the masquerade is the best way to explain that (or you would have to make them something new to the world).

There are, however, a few things you need in your setting to make the masquerade work at all. If it’s logical, is another question entirely, this is merely about the mechanics within that world.

First of all, you need a group which can clearly be defined by a specific trait which they want or need to hide. Vampires clearly want to hide that they exist. Magic users in Harry Potter also don’t want regular muggles to know about them. The assassins in the John Wick series also are a group in itself which doesn’t want others to know it exists (they are not supernatural, though, although one might argue that they have a supernatural ability to endure damage).

Second, you need a government which has the power of making laws. That means a governing body of any kind which is respected by that group. Vampire has the prince, the ruler of a domain (who can be male, female, or non-binary, it’s always ‘Prince’). In Harry Potter, every country has a wizarding government as well as a regular one. The government has to agree with the masquerade and to maintain the law about it.

Finally, you need enforcers who make sure that the masquerade is kept. The government can make laws ‘til the cows come home, but without someone to enforce them, they will be worthless. Vampire has the sheriffs for this, in the Harry Potter universe, Aurors take that place.

Everything else is just surplus to requirements. The group might be almost completely independent, only sharing the space with normal humans, or it might be sharing society with them, only having some other needs and wants than the regular human does. As long as they are clearly defined, have a governing body, and enforcers for their laws, the masquerade can work. Whether it should be there, is a different question.

Let’s look at the groups using the masquerade in both Harry Potter and Vampire The Masquerade and see how useful or necessary the masquerade is in their case.

In Harry Potter, we have a world of wizards, witches, and other supernatural beings behind the regular, everyday world we all know. Wizards usually live outside of regular settlements, they have their own stores, their own currency, their own government, their own laws. Their only connection to the regular world comes through children of regular parents who have magic and need to be taught to use it and children of wizards and witches born without magic who have to go into a regular life. Without this, both worlds could be completely separate and would never have to mingle.

In Vampire The Masquerade, vampires live among the regular crowd of mortals. They prey on humans, kill or change them, and the really old ones often influence the very course of history as grey eminences behind the scenes of politics. They are apex predators who have a vested interest in not being recognized for what they are, because they need to rest during the day and they are easy prey themselves under such circumstances. Yet, they can’t stay away from humans for good, because they need the blood and every now and then also feel the need to make offspring.

How useful is the masquerade for the mages in Harry Potter? The only reason given for it is that muggles, aka ‘humans without magic,’ would hunt down witches if they knew they exist. The problem with that is the question of how exactly those muggles would be dangerous to wizards or witches. Magic in Harry Potter is very powerful - a first-year student of magic can already conjure up fire (as Hermione does twice). A fully-developed wizard can do much more, as is seen during the series more than once. Wizards are seriously overpowered in the Harry Potter setting, meaning it’s hard to imagine how muggles would simply catch, imprison, and kill them. In addition, wizards live in groups, which means it’s not going to be one wizard against a group of muggles, but a group of wizards against a group of muggles. Doesn’t look good for the muggles, does it? In addition, magic is a boon, it’s something very useful which not everyone can do. Wizards could provide better and faster healing for diseases and many other things to the muggle world. Under those circumstances, the world could be easily shared, but it would look completely different, because magic would have made certain inventions unnecessary, while others would have been made instead. So, in this case, the masquerade is pretty unnecessary and only serves to allow J. K. Rowling to set her stories in a world her audience recognizes.

How useful is the masquerade for the vampires in Vampire The Masquerade? There are several reasons why the masquerade is enforced in this setting. The most important one is that vampires are vulnerable during the day (although they can overcome the weakness of sunlight and, sometimes, also stay awake during the day). While a vampire is sleeping like dead (literally), every human could wander in and stick a stake in their heart (although, if I remember it right, that doesn’t kill them - beheading and fire do, though). Vampires do not really add anything to the human society. They would, theoretically, make excellent history teachers on account of having been around during history. Apart from that, though, they wouldn’t really contribute anything useful, all the while taking blood and the occasional human for their own group. Since they are, largely, parasitic, hanging on to the human society, taking what they want, even playing with it (at least the really old and bored ones), it would make sense for humans to seek them out and kill them off. Vampire powers, even on a high level, are also less overpowered than the magic in Harry Potter. Vampires do have advantages, but they’re not big enough to make them impervious to the danger of humans. They are also solitary, only mingling sometimes, not a tight-knit group. So, in this case, the masquerade is actually useful for the vampires and it also makes sense that it is strictly enforced.

There are few good reasons for a masquerade and on the whole, it’s preferable not to have it, especially for supernatural beings or beings with supernatural powers. There are situations, though, where you have to add one in order to tell the story you want to tell. Try to make them believable, if you can - or at least make the story so interesting that people aren’t thinking about your reasons for the masquerade.