"Voldemort seems like a fine bogey man to be destroyed by some hero, who is then crowned king"
Yes, and when Quirrell hears that Harry is being kept in Hogwarts due to the threat of Voldemort, Quirell specifically - and immediately - comes up with a plan to allow Harry to leave, by creating a "fake Voldemort" that Harry can defeat, ideally in a way that "leaves the [legend] open for future re-use".
So there may be an as-yet-unnamed Dark Wizard who has the personas of Voldemort and David Monroe. This Voldemort may either be him in disguise, or a person created by him, much as Bellatrix is an engineered persona. This person may have initially planned to be "crowned" after he defeated Voldemort, but it looks like he just "gave up" at some point.
He then hears about Harry, and is curious if Harry can help him "do it right" or if he can help Harry achieve a comparable success.
Yeah, there are a number of consistent themes.
Having to support a bad guy to fight a worse bad guy. Then creating fake threats to pretend to be a savior. Being able to project different identities. Taking over the identity of the savior. Then wondering, who is the real bad guy?
I think the resolution is that Voldemort set up his "defeat" by Harry, came back to nurture the Harry legend, will arrange the plan with Harry to have Harry defeat him as a fake(but actually real) Voldemort, but in fact Harry won't be defeating Voldemort, he will only appear to defeat Voldemort, with Voldemort actually taking control of Harry, and ruling the wizarding world as Harry, destroyer of Voldemort.
Edit: New thread posted here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: