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kit-herongraystairs · 2 years

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Shadowhunter wealth

So, Let’s talk a bit about Shadowhunter wealth and how they are richer than most average upper middle class mundanes.

A little introduction on who finances the Nephilim:

In the Codex it is mentioned, that the Shadowhunters have connections to the world’s major religions, who provide them with weapons and safe havens. This is also shown in the City of Bones, where Jace and Clary enter a church to fetch secretly stacked Nephilim-weapons. Another implication like this is made throughout the books: Most Institutes are said to be former churches or on the ground of former churches, so we can assume that they are provided to the Nephilim by different branches of Christianity.

In the end of the Queen of Air and Darkness, Alec talks to Mark about the new Shadowhunter gouvernment and contacting major religions about the exile from Idris and the schism of the Nephilim, worrying that some of them might turn their back on the new Clave in exile. Here he mentions losing funds, which further implies that the Shadowhunters are largely financed by the major world religions.

Shadowhunter wealth in the late 19th century and early 20th century (The Infernal Devices and The Last Hours):

In The Infernal Devices, the clothing the main characters wear is considered expensive and fancy. - I don’t just mean Jessamines, who doesn’t Shadowhunt so she doesn’t have a Shadowhunter salary but her own, inherited wealth - All of them have custom-made silk and patterns and what-not clothing that would be definitely considered upper middle class to upper class. Henry wears colourful patterned vests, so do Jem and Will, Charlotte has several pretty dresses that were custom-made. While she is said not to really care about fashion, she still dresses like an upper middle class or upper class woman, just a practical one. Often, they don’t really care about if their clothing gets ripped, even if it’s not an emergency (like Tessa ripping a fancy shirt of Jem while making out with him in the Clockwork Prince), so even that amount of money (and people didn’t have as many clothes as today, Tessa has five different dresses and that’s all of her clothes except a nightgown) doesn’t really mean anything to them.

Tessa doesn’t have any money. I don’t mean that she doesn’t have any salary as she seems to be Shadowhunting (as it is shown in The Whitechapel Fiend) but she doesn’t have any generational wealth. Neither does Will. His father was exiled as a young man so he probably has no Herondale inheritance or remnants of “the Spoils” except the Herondale Manor. His mother used to have money but his father gambled it away, so he also inherited nothing from his mothers side. This is also a reason why I won’t mention Blackthorn Manor or Benedict Lightwoods generational wealth: It is probably largely made out of “Spoils”, so it’s hard to differentiate inheritance with an actual salary.

My point here is: All of the wealth that Tessa and Will have accumulated comes solely from their salary as Shadowhunters. With this salary they don’t just pay for their own and their childrens usual expenses like food, clothing, tutoring, books, etc. Not just that, they also bought a fancy four-story house in Curzon Street for their son and his wife. Also, it’s mentioned that Tessa renovated the whole London Institute… which is huge. It would be incredibly expensive to renovate an Institute of this size. It’s mentioned that the head of the Institute has a higher salary and Will and Tessa probably also have a higher salary because they won the Clockwork War, but it’s still a large sum of money that they seem to have at their disposal.

Generally, Most of the active Shadowhunters do not seem to have money problems (except for maybe Elias Carstairs, but even he is technically taken care of through his wife and not really an active Shadowhunter, thus probably not getting a Shadowhunter salary). So we can assume that at least in the 19th and early 20th century, Shadowhunters are extremely wealthy. We see a lot of excessive parties and clothing and balls.

A more positive time than later is shown there, Charlotte, is a progressive Consul and the Clave not trenched in fascism or weighted down by tensions like the Cold Peace, there hasn’t been a war in ages (and the Clockwork War didn’t decimate the Shadowhunter population significantly), no heavy demon activity and the Accords are established for quite a while now. It is mentioned that the amount of demons in the 21th century is a lot higher than in the 19th or early 20th century, so maybe they just don’t have that kind of time or fun anymore because the 21th century definitely seems darker and more military-style.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a Shadowhunter social life or a community anymore like they had in the local enclave/conclave in the 19th/early 20th century shown in The Last Hours. Of course Isabelle & co. go to parties, but they’re usually Downworlder parties. The Clave doesn’t do a lot of partying or similar social gatherings. City of Glass has a scene with a party after the defeat of Valentine and the end of the Mortal War as well as Jocelyns and Lukes wedding in City of Heavenly Fire.

The higher tension and “darkness” of the Shadowhunter culture in the 21th century has definitely social and historical reasons, like the aftermath of the Uprising and the Clave being interspersed with fascist ideology, the Consul being far-right and a secret sympathizer of Valentine, the higher demon activity, later the Dark and Mortal War as well as the Cold Peace and the new government in Exile…

Shadowhunter wealth in the 21th century (The Mortal Instruments and the Dark Artifices):

First, I want to talk about the salaries of the TMI kids.

I’m gonna concentrate here on Izzy and her lifestyle first, because I think that Alec and Jace just live rather… modest, not because they couldn’t afford more, but because they just don’t really care. (Maybe they buy fancy weapons I guess. ) Also because I already mentioned partying earlier. Having expensive clothes in the 19th century and having a lot of clothes in the 21th century is not really comparable and Shadowhunters usually don’t really wear like… expensive brands, so Isabelle is probably the best example. She is said to have a lot of fancy/detailed/dramatic clothing, complex (weaponised) jewellery, makeup and shoes, which are all probably a lot more expensive than what the average person would or could afford for their wardrobe. Not to mention that she is 16 years old in TMI and while she is already an active Shadowhunter, she is still a minor, so she probably works less than an adult Shadowhunter. Still, her salary definitely exceeds normal pocket money by far, even an average salary of a person with a college degree.

We should also remember that it is hinted that the Shadowhunter kids in the Mortal Instruments don’t cook for themselves. The Lightwood parents are on work trips to Alicante a lot and Hodge (while we see that just in the first book, it still shows us how they lived before they met Clary) only cooks for himself and not for them. Isabelle can’t cook and no one eats her food, also it seems to be a rather rare occasion that she even tries to cook. In City of Fallen Angels, Jace lives with Simon and mentions to him when they go grocery shopping, that he never went grocery shopping before or even saw an uncut Mango in his life… this suggests, that when Robert and Maryse are away, they don’t go to the supermarket and buy food for themselves and they don’t cook: they EXCLUSIVELY go to restaurants or order takeout. It’s usually extremely expensive to just live from restaurant/takeout food instead of buying ingredients and cooking for yourself. We see them over the course of the series eating takeout or in cafés several times, but never really cooking for themselves. Maybe Maryse gave them with her Institute heads salary money for takeout while she was away. But given that this is a huge waste of money and they’re technically old enough to cook for themselves, I consider that hypothesis to be implausible. It’s more likely that they pay food with their own salary.

Now, let’s talk about Shadowhunter houses in the 21th century. Sadly we don’t see many houses or apartments from Shadowhunters, mostly institutes.

We see the wealth of Jocelyn and Luke, who are both inactive Shadowhunters and do no longer get a Shadowhunter salary from the Clave. And… it’s a lot. While they live in Brooklyn in 2007 and not 2022, we still have to acknowledge here how expensive New York is. Jocelyn is said to have some generational wealth, it’s mentioned several times that she sold stocks when she had money problems. I highly doubt that she actually could earn enough money as an artist, since she is said to not be famous and couldn’t become famous since she was in hiding. So she was not able to sell expensive paintings, she also wasn’t an art teacher, which means that she didn’t have a steady income from an art school or something similiar. And yet she was able to rent an apartment with several rooms in Brooklyn and had enough money to pay probably the most expensive Warlock in New York, as well as raising a daughter on her own. I highly doubt that her salary as an artist made a large influence on her through inheritance established wealth. She probably had a large inheritance and leftovers from her Shadowhunter salary, which was not much for a Shadowhunter but a lot for a mundane.

With Luke we see the same pattern: he owns a house with a garden in Brooklyn (I’m gonna assume that he owned that house based on the fact that he put chains in the wall. You don’t do that in a rental.) and a whole farm with probably several houses (since the academy needs space) and barns in upstate New York. That’s also something an antique book shop owner probably can’t afford without a huge inheritance.

We don’t really get to see the apartments and houses of active Shadowhunters except in Alicante, which is special in itself, because money is there probably less relevant, but houses seem pretty close to each other, meaning that they’re going to be rather small. Also most of the Idris houses we see are like the Inquisitors or Consuls house (which are funded by the Clave and thus rather large) or the house of Amatis or Diana… who obviously live alone and don’t need a huge manor.

We’ve already established that Shadowhunters have a… comfortable salary, since the Clave is financed by the leaders of organised religions who know about demons and give the Nephilim weapons and Institutes and money to protect the world from being overrun by demons. Also Nephilim who aren’t “regular” Shadowhunters, so people in special positions (like Institute heads) or people who are famous war heroes get a higher salary. So most of the main characters have a high salary, at least after the books.

The reason money and Shadowhunter salary isn’t mentioned often is because they are so rich, have a basic income, a steady salary and don’t have to fear high debts from hospital stays or university (mentioning this here since most of the characters are American) so money is just kind of… not their priority.

It’s a bit different with werewolves or even Magnus, when he takes specific jobs that he hates for money in The Bane Chronicles. Even though he’s one of the most powerful warlocks existing, he still struggles with money some times, but this could also be due to his attitude of “trying to get rid of money fast as soon as he aquires it”.

Most other warlocks won’t have many money problems either and also rather tend to be rich, depending on what their line of work. Catarina who works as a nurse will not have as much money as Malcolm Fade with his huge Malibu estate for example. So, while money and struggles with money are mentioned several times in the books, it’s never really concerning active Shadowhunters… always Downworlders or Mundanes.

Conclusion: Shadowhunters are generally considered rich by mundane standards. They’re not billionaires, but they’re definitly wealthy. I hope you enjoyed this analysis. You can send me asks or suggestions what part of the Shadowhunter World I should analyse next.

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