[Dragaera] No traffic since February?

[Scott Schultz]

>I don't entirely follow you here.  What would being Malcolm X mean in the
>Dragaeran context?

It's an imperfect analogy, I'll grant you. I was reaching for someone who, 
unlike Martin Luther King Jr, say, had a history of violence, crime,  and 
even racism in his past, maybe even some Marxist ideals, but who eventually 
turned his efforts into empowering his "people" instead of overthrowing the 
oppressors. In other words, the sort of leader who might inspire the cause 
of "Easterner Power!" and create the "Eastern Dzur" and otherwise inspire 
radical social change from within instead of by trying to destroy the 
opposition. I suppose the question then is, "Who would be the charismatic 
temperate leader?", the Dr. King figure that would temper the force of the 
radicals while encouraging and/or shaming the Dragareans into seeing the 
true results of their own prejudice.

Of course, Dragaera isn't 20th Century America and their highly stratified 
society that supports divinely inspired prejudice amongst their own kind 
(the Houses) would likely have made them less amenable than American society 
has turned out to be over the last few decades.

Anyway, I think Cawti would have, and possibly still could be, a successful 
leader of a social revolution rather than a  proletariat revolution. The 
existence of the Cycle pretty much seals the doom of any real proletariat 
uprising, while the attitudes of the rulers, as evinced in private to Vlad 
by those very same rulers, show that they might be open to social change IF 
that change benefited the Empire without seriously messing with its 
foundations, IMO.

>Background question: Is there anything keeping Easterners from joining
>House Teckla and coming under the equal protection of the law, such as
>it is?

Hard to say. In this matter, we're generalizing from a single example - The 
only way we even know it's a possibility is that _Brokedown Palace_ opens 
with Miklos returning home from spending a couple of years as a Tekla. The 
procedure appeared to be simply "ask and ye shall receive" since, who in his 
right mind would ever WANT to be a Tekla? Likewise, when Miklos leaves, he 
just walks away one day and nobody really bothers about it. What's one less 
Tekla, especially an Easterner? I don't remember whether Sandor is said 
specifically to have come by his link to the Orb in the same way or if we're 
just left to assume it. I lost my copy of the book ages ago.

There must be some limitation, if only the number of peasants that any 
particular estate can support, that keeps the Easterners concentrated in the 
slums rather than migrating to the country. Maybe it's just the intertia of 
tradition.