Someone on another forum I post to came up with an idea that since Rowling says it could have been in CoS, it refers to a founding member of Hogwarts (Slytherin’s relations with them in that book was important) and it struck me… perhaps the Half-Blood Prince was Godric Gryffindor.
Um… but Harry isn’t half-blood. His mother and father were both wizards. His mother may have been a half-blood, but he isn’t. After all, Draco only calls Hermione a ‘mudblood’. If Harry was half blood, the slur would be used on him as well, I gather.
Hagrid’s half-giant. That makes him a half-blood, yes?
I’d assume so… but I’m not sure many would consider him princely or like royalty in any way ;).
IIRC, one of the Black paintings in book 5 calls Harry a half-blood.
Or it’s Bellatrix. And Harry shoots back that so’s Voldy.
That’s what my girlfriend thinks. Her reasoning:
Rowling says on her site that Harry isn’t the HBP, and that she was thinking about making this the title for Book Two, but then moved some significant stuff from there to Book Six. That explains some of what my girlfriend is talking about above.
I agree with most of that. I think it’d be easy to add in a few things here and there in CoS to refer to Gryffindor as the Half-Blood Prince and Harry was carrying on the tradition. Good point in that GG was REALLY for letting half-bloods in. IIRC, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw both backed GG, but GG was the leader of that block. And the fact that it was a long time ago, perhaps some whiches and wizards had royal titles.
My girlfriend also poses to me the following, completely speculative question:
If Godric Gryffindor could animagus himself into a phoenix, could he live forever?
Interesting thought, to say the least.
Gadarene suggested that Harry Potter is the heir of Gryffindor. Someone else is the heir of Slytherin (I don’t think we’ve been told who this is, have we?), so perhaps there will be a battle between the two, which is nicely symmetrical.
According to Dumbledore, Voldemort is the last remaining heir of Slytherin.
Maybe half means half pureblood and half mudblood.
However, since it seems that Ms. Rowling already said the title doesn’t refer to Harry, that speculation is pointless.
That’s what a friend of mine read too. In that case I expect it to be out next year…maybe I’ve been thinking about delays in PC games too much 
OTOH, book 5 was predicted to have been released a full year before it actually was, so.
One thing I keep comming back to is that, although people say that there’s no royalty in Harry Potter, we’ve know about the Bloody Baron since the first book. Given the Bloody Baron’s name, book six’s title takes on a slightly different twist.
Take care
GES
IIRC harrys mother was what Malfoy would call a mudblood. Making him not part of a pure wizard line. So “son of a mudblood” maybe.
Rowling says on her site (in English only, other languages are not yet updated) that the Prince in the title is neither Harry nor Voldemort.
The canonical answer for when volume X will be out is ‘Next Tuesday’. But seriously, I expect it to be out next summer.
As for the identity of the prince, well isn’t Draco known as the prince of Slytherin? Suppose he weren’t actually Lucius’s son?
In one of the stories I;ve read about the Book 6 title, J.K. Rolwing said she found on e of the gueses, “Harry Potter and the Pillar of Storgé,” to be someone insulting and even laughable. Um, why? “Storge” means the love an animal has for its young, and while I don’t see how it applies to HP, I also don’t see why it would be insulting or WAY wrong either. Any ideas?
Patty
It’s true that no wizard royalty have been mentioned as yet . . . One explanation might be that the “Half-Blood Prince” is a prince from a muggle royal family (possibly a fictional family from a fictional country, like Ruritania) – and it turns out one of his parents was a witch or wizard.
In what language? I can’t find it in the Encarta online dictionary.
The Potter family used to live in Godric’s Hollow.
I don’t know if that is significant to Gadarene’s theory.