[Dragaera] How are Teckla Republics formed?

[Steve Rapaport]

I always like to read Scott's comments.

I think I should just add that Steve, when he developed the Cycle, claimed
to be a "Trotskyist sympathizer" or something of that nature. (Still does.
http://dreamcafe.com/ ) So I expect he thought the Teckla revolution would
indeed be along Marxist lines.

That understood, the idea that it would be different each time, and take the
Orca by surprise every time, is grin-inducing.  Thanks, Scott.

 Steve the Younger


On 27/03/2008, Scott Schultz <scott at cjhunter.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
>
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-- 
\Steve