Rowling confirms the connection between Snape and Machiavelli by naming her character after this book not once, but twice. Not only does Snape call himself the Half-Blood “Prince,” but in The Prince, Machiavelli praises a “ferocious,” “shrewd” emperor named Severus who killed a rival named Albinus (Machiavelli, 67). Rowling’s combination of the name “Severus,” with its implications of severity and severing, with “Snape,” which sounds like snipe or snip, creates a brilliantly unpleasant picture of a character who will be ferocious and shrewd about snipping the thread of another prince’s
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