As the creator of the world-renowned Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling is considered one of the most famous writers of all time. However, despite the warm reception to her rags-to-riches journey from a single mother to best-selling author, there are signs that her Cinderella story is coming to a close. Where did it all go wrong?

Joanne Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 at Yate General Hospital near Bristol, and grew up in Gloucestershire and in Chepstow. As a child, she always dreamed of becoming a writer, writing her first book, Rabbit, at the age of 6, and her first novel at the age of 11. She received an education from Wyedean Comprehensive School and University of Exeter and moved to London after finishing her degree. In 1990, on a delayed train from Manchester to London’s King Cross, Rowling first thought of the idea of Harry Potter, and in the years that followed, began to plan out the series. After moving to Edinburgh with her baby daughter Jessica, she began to write the manuscript for the first book in the Harry Potter series, while also working as a teacher. The manuscript, which would eventually be titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in 1997 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books under the pen name J.K. Rowling, and quickly achieved record-breaking success. From there on out, she rapidly shot to fame, receiving international acclaim for her work.

Today, the Harry Potter series has been translated into 80 languages, with more than 500 million copies sold, and the franchise has expanded to movies and additional books and plays. However, while the series teaches valuable life lessons, the mostly white and un-diverse Harry Potter universe is still far from perfect, which has become all the more apparent in recent years with the emergence of a younger and more diverse and interconnected generation of Harry Potter fans. The stagnation of the HP universe has also been significantly worsened by the input of the author herself.

For one, J.K. Rowling is notorious for including random and often unrelated additions to the Potterverse, despite the fact that the last installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in 2008, and the movie adaption of it in 2011. While some of these additions can be seen as simply nonsensical and ridiculous, including the revelation that Hogwarts once didn’t have bathrooms and students and faculty would instead “[relieve] themselves wherever they stood, and [vanish] the evidence”, others, such as claiming that certain characters were LGBTQ+ or shoehorning the existence of minorities into the universe, point to a larger problem in the author’s thinking. 

In particular, J.K. Rowling has received significant criticism for “queerbaiting”—a tactic used to draw in fans by including LGBTQ+ implications of some characters and then turning around and denying all subtext—in the Harry Potter universe. For example, in the course of the main series itself, fans have pointed out that the eventual heterosexual relationship between Remus Lupin, whom many saw as being gay and in a relationship with close friend Sirius Black, and Nymphadora Tonks, who was seen as being canonically genderfluid for her ability to change gender and appearance at will as well as her insistence to be addressed by her non-binary last name, could be seen as an example of queerbaiting. On another occasion, in October 2007, the author revealed that Dumbledore, Harry’s mentor and one of the most powerful characters in the series, was gay to a jubilant crowd at Carnegie Hall. 

More recently, a few years ago, she received backlash for hinting at a relationship between Albus, Harry’s son, and Scorpius, Draco’s son, in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, complete with sensual hugs and jealousy, before having Scorpius end up with Rose, Hermione and Ron’s daughter, instead, without any meaningful development between the two. While it could be argued that J.K. Rowling is genuinely trying to diversify the Harry Potter universe, many are concerned that her actions are merely failed attempts at painting a veneer of progressiveness over an inherently socially-flawed universe. 

Additionally, outside of her work in the Harry Potter series, she has also been heavily criticised for her opinions concerning transgender rights, and has been labeled a “TERF”, which stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”, for a laundry list of her transphobic actions. These include following several TERF Twitter accounts, supporting a TERF in a significant 2019 UK court case, reiterating several transphobic beliefs in an essay titled “TERF Wars,” implying that being trans is a condition that needed to be “healed” by comparing hormone prescriptions to antidepressants, and most recently, promoting merchandise from a TERF business.  

While some say that it’s possible to separate the art from the artist, that is, supporting the beloved Harry Potter series but not J.K. Rowling, many of the author’s transphobic views have also made their way into her writing, especially in her crime fiction series Cormoran Strike, written under the pen name Robert Galbraith. In book 2 of the series, The Silkworm, for example, Pippa, a trans woman, is trapped by protagonist Cormoran Strike in his office after attempting to stab him, and is characterized as “unstable and aggressive,” a trope used against trans women, all the while J.K. Rowling includes a description of Pippa’s Adam’s apple and hands. 

Additionally, the fifth installment in the series, Troubled Blood, which was released on September 15 of this year, is about “the investigation into a cold case: the disappearance of GP Margot Bamborough in 1974, thought to have been a victim of Dennis Creed, a transvestite serial killer,” reviewer Jake Kerridge wrote in the Telegraph, “One wonders what critics of Rowling’s stance on trans issues will make of a book whose moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress.” 

The pseudonym “Robert Galbraith” itself is another reason for controversy, as it contains the first and middle name of a 20th-century anti-LGBTQ conversion therapist. Over the course of his career, Robert Galbraith Heath introduced a number of unethical “treatments” to “cure” gay men, including electroshock therapy, which have since been denounced by the medical community. Although the author has denied knowing about Heath before choosing the pen name, stating that “Robert” was from her hero Robert F. Kennedy and “Galbraith” came from her childhood desire to be called “Ella Galbraith”, many people still don’t believe that the implications of the name paired with her transphobic beliefs is a mere coincidence.

While there are still people who support her and deny that she’s done anything problematic, the once-beloved author has certainly fallen out of favor with the general public. Much of the generation that once boosted Rowling to fame, as well as most of the more progressive younger generation of today, have turned their backs on her. On TikTok, a platform dominated by teenage users, for instance, people have created videos mocking the way she stereotypically depicted BIPOC and the tokenism of BIPOC in the HP universe. Several users have also created multi-part videos denouncing her. Additionally, some of the actors that once starred in movie adaptions of her series, including Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, and Rupert Grint, have spoken up for trans rights following some of her transphobic actions. Perhaps even more tellingly, after the backlash for Troubled Blood, Twitter users trended #RIPJKROWLING for her “dead career.” 

The impact that the Harry Potter series has had on the world is immeasurable—there’s no denying that. However, while J.K. Rowling has certainly touched the hearts of millions with her storytelling, it’s plausible that, at long last, her time in the limelight will soon come to a close.

Photo courtesy of NEWS.SKY.COM