The Hidden Life Of J.K. Rowling: Rise And Fall

Did you know that Dumbledore, Snape, Ron, Hermione and many other Harry Potter characters were all based off of real people in J.K. Rowling's life? Bullying, the death of her mother, depression and poverty. What are the true anecdotes that shape J.K. Rowling's past? How did she create the global phenomenon that we all love and then spit the fandom into through her controversial comments on transgender issues? In today's video we're going to be talking all about J.K. Rowling. So welcome wizards, witches, muggles and squibs back to Spellbuzz. I'm your host Francesca Williams and you guessed it in this episode we'll be looking at how J.K. Rowling's past has shaped the wizarding world. J.K. Rowling was born on the 31st of July 1965 which means that Harry Potter in fact shares a birthday with his creator. She was born in a and her countryside home even had a cupboard under the stairs. One of the most influential parts to the story was in fact J.K. Rowling's own relationship with her mother and father. J.K. Rowling's mother was called Anne and she was a laboratory technician and J.K. Rowling always described her relationship with her mother as very warm and comforting. Her father on the other hand was described as cold and distant and her father was called Peter and he was an engineer. Now at the age of nine J.K. Rowling moved into a house that was near a forest. Here she would play with other neighborhood children and their favorite game was pretending to be wizards and these other neighborhood children that she would play with their surname well it was Potter. This forest holds another secret and that is the fact that J.K. Rowling described it as somewhere that always felt like a comforting refuge but also somewhere a bit mysterious and this is actually what inspired The Forbidden Forest which is described as being her favorite place at Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling always had a deep love for stories. In fact when she was six she wrote her first story and this was a story about a rabbit called Rabbit and then at age 11 she wrote her first novel and it was a story about seven cursed diamonds and the people who possessed them. In fact the number seven has always been important in J.K. Rowling's life not just in the Harry Potter series. As obviously we know in the series the number seven appears through the number of Horcruxes, the number of books, the number of Hogwarts years etc etc. In J.K. Rowling's formative years she describes herself as someone who was very bookish and a know-it-all and who does this remind you of? That's right it's Hermione Granger. In fact J.K. Rowling describes herself as being the closest match to Hermione Granger but because of this she sometimes struggled in social situations and Now this inspired a lot of things. First of all it inspired the name for Hermione and the reason for this is because J.K. Rowling didn't want any other girls to be bullied using Hermione as a reference so she chose a name that was so out there that it wouldn't line up with any girls who may share the same name. Second of all we can see the theme of bullying being very key throughout the story particularly with the bullying of Ron and Harry by Draco and also to Snape from the And this obviously creates a lot of the layers for the characters and their personalities which is a very interesting way that J.K. Rowling put her childhood experience in there as well. Her school life was also very important in fact some of our most beloved characters were inspired by her teachers. We had Albus Dumbledore and he was inspired by her headmaster at school described as eccentric and wacky but overall quite lovable and then we also have Minerva McGonagall who was inspired by her English teacher known for being strict but also having a genuine interest in students and finally we have Professor Snape who was inspired by her chemistry teacher who was a bit offish to start but once you got to know him his soft side was under there as well. In J.K. Rowling's teenage years her mother unfortunately lost her battle to multiple sclerosis. This was very difficult for J.K. Rowling as it was a long battle and after her mother died in fact she didn't have any contact with her father. This is reflected in the books quite heavily as we see that Dumbledore, Sirius Black and Hagrid are all very key father figures of what you would want an ideal father to be and also a mother's love is shown as something that is very important throughout the stories. You know the only reason that Harry is a hero is because his mother loved him so much that it saved him. On the other hand a mother's love is also key in Voldemort's story The Antagonist and this is because unfortunately Voldemort's mother died when he was just an infant and he got sent to an orphanage and this shaped a lot of Voldemort's resentment. Merripe Gaunt was unable to pass her love on to her child because she used a love potion to conceive him and therefore Voldemort was born, well Tom Riddle was born without the ability to feel love. Throughout this time in J.K. Rowling's teen years when she was struggling she also had a very close friend who funnily enough had a Ford Angela and this friend was called Sean Harris and he is the one who inspired Ron Weasley. Later J.K. Rowling wanted to go to Oxford University but unfortunately she did not pass the entrance exams so instead she went to Exeter University and it was here that she studied French and Classics, a decision that would ultimately support her for many years in her life as she often found herself working as a language teacher on more than one occasion specifically when she was unemployed. Now here she also studied Latin which can be reflected in a lot of the spell names in the Harry Potter universe but also a lot of the character names as well as many of them have a hidden meaning too. In 1988 she graduated and she went on to work as a researcher at Amnesty International and here she worked with people who were trafficked, human trafficked, particularly under totalitarian regimes and for her this was quite impactful and it basically sparked her love for charity work and humanitarian efforts which I'll get into more in a minute but here it's quite interesting to reflect on J.K. Rowling's link to Hermione Granger specifically with Hermione's love for and helping the house elves as well. She then moved on and moved to Manchester with her boyfriend at the time however she wasn't a big fan of this so in 1990 she caught a train back to London but the train was delayed. Suddenly I had the idea of a boy wizard who went to a wizarding school. Harry Potter and Hogwarts came out of nowhere in the most physical rush of excitement and ideas came teeming into my head. I simply knew it was something I would love to write but that day I was penniless for once in my life so as I sat there on the train I had to rely on imagining the details most of which ended up being in the books and that was J.K. Rowling's first encounter with the idea of Harry Potter and we're very lucky that it was. Within the Harry Potter universe there is also a lot of emphasis on trains. First of all we have King's Cross Station. In fact the train that she was on when she had the first idea for Harry Potter was headed to King's Cross Station and furthermore her parents actually met there as well so that's why she chose that. Trains are also very significant in the Harry Potter universe representing new beginnings as a mode of transportation from the muggle world to the wizarding world and for Harry it's a big part of the transition of him moving into the wizarding world. This is also reflected in J.K. Rowling's idea having been on the train. It was shortly after this point that J.K. Rowling's mother died and over the next five years she would go on to work on the Harry Potter books. In 1992 J.K. Rowling moved to Portugal to work as an English teacher. It was here that she met her ex-husband a journalist but he was conscripted to compulsory military service. Furthermore J.K. Rowling was also pregnant. Around this time she unfortunately also had a miscarriage but in 1993 they welcomed their Once Jorge came back from his military service he had lost his job as a journalist and this plunged him into a deep depression. In fact after this point he became quite violent and also drank a lot. Ultimately the marriage only lasted one year and J.K. Rowling moved to Edinburgh to live with her sister and she took Jessica with her. Now it was around this time that life for J.K. Rowling was really difficult and ultimately she became plunged into her own depression. She said but I continued to write in every spare moment I had mostly cafes around the city whilst Jessica slept in her pram. So although faced with this difficult environment writing for J.K. Rowling was ultimately an outlet and this is quite interesting as it is reflected within the Dementors. Dementors are creatures that completely suck the joy out of those they are targeting. Furthermore they force them to relive their worst points. Furthermore she then wrote about Patronuses which were the anecdote to Dementors as she will. For Harry obviously he has his Patronus that was magical but for J.K. Rowling her Patronus was writing. While living in Edinburgh J.K. Rowling worked as a French teacher to support herself. She then continued working in schools Then in 1997 after countless rejections Bloomsbury published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the United Kingdom. It wasn't until 1998 that it was also published in the United States. Now what's interesting here is that J.K. Rowling's name appears on the front of the books as J.K. Rowling and that's what we all know her as. But as I said earlier her real name is actually just So where did the K come from? Well it was actually requested by the publishers as they were worried the name Joanne was too feminine and may discourage young boy readers from reading the books as they may think it's a love story or meant for girls. So J.K. Rowling chose the initial K as it stands for Kathleen which is her paternal grandmother's name and hence audiences wouldn't know from first glance whether the author was a boy or a girl. And this is very interesting because obviously they hoped that that would help them sell copies which obviously worked. What's crazy is the first release of the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone only had 1,000 copies printed which were obviously followed by numerous reprints and J.K. Rowling's first paycheck was only £1,500 and then over the next 10 years she would go on to write the next six books and the By the time I finished writing the final seventh book in the series in 2007 in the Balmoral Hotel Edinburgh I had been living with Harry for 17 years. That is just how much dedication she has put in to the wizarding world. It's important to note in 2001 she also remarried and had two more daughters. By the end of the film saga and the book saga there had been seven books, 10 years, 500 million copies sold, her audiobooks had 1 billion listening hours and her books in general had been translated into 85 different languages and overall she had built herself a net worth of over 1 billion dollars which is absolutely massive if you think where she came from to where she is now. Now after this point she started distancing herself from the wizarding world in fact she started using an alias to write crime and detective novels and publishing them under the name Robert Galbraith. These novels also took off and they did become BBC series and also HBO series but they obviously were never as big as the Harry Potter series. What's interesting here as well though is you can really see this that her direction was possibly detective novels through the Harry Potter series as if you look at the structure of all of the books there is always a bad guy that is yet to be found out and there's always a bit of mystery there which is I wonder why so many people love it so much. Then after her time away from the wizarding world in 2016 she came back she wrote The Cursed Child which is on stage in many places still and also Fantastic Beasts was released. Then in 2018 we had The Crimes of Grindelwald and then in 2022 we had The Secrets of Dumbledore. Now her latest work in the wizarding world is highly criticised although some people love it and they love the immersion into the wizarding world many people think that it's not consistent with her original works of Harry Potter so it'd be interesting to see what they do next. For the moment she is currently still living in Scotland and she's currently an executive producer on the HBO series so that's why I say it'll be interesting to see the direction that it goes in. Over the years JK Rowling has supported many charitable causes in fact charity is one of JK Rowling's main priorities as she says in a statement alongside my writing and my family life my other priority is charities and causes I support. In fact JK Rowling has set up her own charities one of these and arguably the most famous is Lumos and Lumos and this has transformed the care system worldwide. Some things she's done in support of Lumos include releasing three books with all the proceeds going to Lumos and these three books were linked to the Harry Potter series and the wizarding world so she knew they'd do well and they are Quidditch Through the Ages, The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Furthermore she also has released a children's book in support of Lumos and this was called The Christmas Pig. Now there's also another charity that she supports it's called Volant this supports people in poverty particularly those who are vulnerable such as children and women and to support this cause she released a book called The Ickbog. Now The Ickbog is a fairy tale and originally in 2020 it was released online for free however after the Covid-19 lockdowns were over she turned it into a book as many expressed a desire to read said book then all the proceeds from that went to Volant. There is also another charity that she has created and this was in her mother's honour as if you remember I mentioned earlier her mother died from multiple sclerosis she opened the charity Anne Rowling's Regenerative Neurology Clinic and this obviously supports multiple sclerosis. Now despite her work in charity she is also a divisive figure as on one hand she's supporting vulnerable groups and on the other it seems she doesn't support a certain vulnerable group which is the trans community. Now the reason people believe this is because she liked a tweet in 2017 which likened trans women to men in dresses which is obviously deeply hurtful however once the backlash came out a spokesperson for JK Rowling said that the like was accidental however that seems it was not so because in 2019 there was someone called Maya Forstater who lost her job at the Research Centre for Global Development due to her gender critical opinions on social media. Now at this point JK Rowling tweeted hashtag I stand with Maya as she didn't believe that it was right to for someone to lose their job over an opinion. Furthermore in 2022 JK Rowling actually met up with Maya Forstater and Maya Forstater said that JK Rowling was a source of strength. Maya Forstater is now a gender critical activist and in fact she in an employment tribunal due to wrongful dismissal I believe. In 2020 JK Rowling also released an essay and this essay explained her views. Now within this she was critical of using the words menstruating people. Now this actually came up earlier in a tweet where she replied to a tweet that described support for menstruating people and she said I'm sure there used to be a for this and then mocked using different words for women attempted to it was quite a mocking tweet. So then this essay was off the back of that and she said that she particularly didn't like the use of menstruating people as she felt it was dehumanizing for women. She also said in the same essay that she believes most trans people or all trans people pose zero threat to women however she still does not like using those words to describe women. So this matter is quite foggy because in one breath JK Rowling defends herself and then the other people still feel she's wrong. The backlash from this was really big. In 2020 a lot of people filmed themselves specifically on TikTok crossing out her name from their books, burning her books, ripping her books. Many expressed that they absolutely did not want anything to do with the wizarding world anymore and that they now felt that they had been rejected from somewhere that was seen as such a lovely place and community to be a part of. Furthermore Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson distanced themselves from JK Rowling and her views and expressed support for trans people whereas some other actors such as Robbie Coltrane and Ivana Lynch although distanced themselves from the trans critical views also explained that they didn't feel JK Rowling should be getting as much backlash as she wants. This has led to a mass boycott in some places for some people of the wizarding world including in 2023 when Hogwarts Legacy came out many didn't even want to buy the game because they did not want to support JK Rowling. In fact a lot of this has had a knock-on effect to the HBO series as well. So JK Rowling is such a deeply divisive person because on one hand she created this fandom that we know, love and feel at home in and on the other hand she has some pretty strong opinions about a minority group. So the question is now can you separate the art from the author? But I have one question for you to answer down in the comments below and that is are there any points in JK Rowling's life that you see links to the Harry Potter series that I haven't mentioned and if so let us know down below and if you like more videos like this go and check out our channel we also have loads of videos about the HBO series as a whole. That's all from me today now bye