[Dragaera] How are Teckla Republics formed?

[Scott Schultz]

It's a speculative question, given the lack of actual data, but I've 
recently been wondering just what it is that inspires the change-over to a 
Teckla Republic, aside from the obvious metaphysical events associated with 
the turning of the Cycle?

The Teckla have no particular House culture. City Teckla live different 
sorts of lives than country Teckla, and it seems plausible (I'd say likely) 
that Teckla in one part of the Empire could have methods of governing their 
affairs that differ entirely from those in another part. For instance, a 
village living under the rule of an Iorich noble could be presumed to have 
very different lives than those living under a Dragon or an Athyra. This 
could be wrong, of course. One thing we HAVE seen is that the nobility 
appear to be rather "hands off" in the management of their peasants as long 
as the grain is being grown, taxes paid, and obligations being kept. It may 
be that there IS a sort of homogenous peasant culture in the Empire except 
in the rare cases where a noble takes it into her head to become a 
micro-manager, the local laws are being flouted, or a noble is simply so 
narcissistic that he forgets that the peasants are people and mistreats them 
to the point of revolution.

Paarfi sort of implies (maybe just for the sake of drama) that at any given 
time there's some part of the Empire teetering on revolt. If true, we can 
deduce that there are a number of nobles who mistreat their peasants or at 
least burden them with taxes to the point that they live in fear for their 
existence and continued well-being. For every Aerich who is just and fair 
(by his lights), there's a Tazendra who hasn't a clue or a care about 
managing her lands and a Loraan who views his tenants as less than the dust 
beneath his feet.

In the past, if I'd thought about it all, I'd simply imagined that a Teckla 
Republic was probably  a kind of semi-peaceful usurpation of a corrupt 
throne - Having been through it so many times, they probably had it down pat 
by now.

Today I started reading _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ and, probably not too 
surprisingly to the readers of this list, in the back of my mind I started 
trying to fit it it in to the history of the Empire, just to see how it 
would work. (Prompted by a fun question I'd had for sometime back - what 
would a Dragaeran superhero be like - Robin Hood or the Pimpernel being the 
obvious answers.)

It got me thinking - Why would a Teckla Revolution be  peaceful? In fact, 
why would it even be the same from Cycle to Cycle? The fact that there have 
been 17 Teckla Republics doesn't actually imply that they tried the same 
form of government every time!

While I'd pictured the Teckla Republic forming every time as a kind of 
replay of the formation of the United States, there's no good reason why it 
should have happened that way. It's plausible that it could have formed at 
least once (maybe more) with a Robespierre figure who led their own version 
of the French Revolution and ended up sending hundreds of nobility (from 
Houses at the bottom of the Cycle, most likely) to the Star in an effort to 
purge the Empire and hold onto power. While Verra acknowledges that a true 
Socialist revolution can't stand because of the Cycle, that doesn't mean 
that it hasn't been tried or will never be tried by some Teckla Lenin or 
Trotsky leading their own Bolshevik Uprising.

It may very well be that EVERY Teckla Republic has been different in some 
fashion from its predecessors, depending on the degree of unrest (I can 
certainly picture a transition that develops because of an "enlightened" 
Orca ruler who oversees the creation of the next government), the cruelty of 
the regime (It's Orca, after all), and the character, moral fortitude, and 
social ideas driving the leaders of  the revolution.

I don't know if Steve intentionally setup Teckla's neighbors on the Cycle, 
but they are singularly appropriate. The Orca have the hard, predatory 
nature that is the natural oppressor of the peasant combined with the 
mercantile drive to exploit and use them to the point of revolt. The 
Jhegalla have the adaptive nature to survive and eventually overcome the 
Republic no matter what outlandish form it takes from Cycle to Cycle.

I guess I wouldn't be all that surprised that out of seventeen Teckla 
Republics there have, in fact, been seventeen DIFFERENT sorts of governments 
managing that Republic.