[Dragaera] fame and secrecy [was: Vlad's passivity--getting long]

[Jerry Friedman]

--- On Thu, 10/23/08, Michael Wojcik <mwojcik at newsguy.com> wrote:
> > Aliera and Morrolan should be
> > among the "beautiful people".  They should
> be
> > described admiringly in the sort of magazines I
> > was trying to find an example of just now, but
> > couldn't.  Maybe I want /Town and Country/?
> 
> /Better Castles and Estates/?
> 
> Agreed, though. Morrolan runs a continual party for the
> elite, and
> Aliera likes to play the "cute dilettante", as
> Vlad says in /Jhereg/,
> when she's not killing people or engaged in serious
> business. They're
> prominent figures in the Phoenix Court. People come to
> Castle Black to see and be seen.

Also, Aliera is fabulously beautiful, was the daughter
of the man who caused the Disaster, had some part in
it herself (I don't know how much of that is known
before the publication of /FHYA/), and as a result
of the Disaster spent some centuries in the Paths of
the Dead before being rescued.

> >> And I expect that the events of _Issola_ are as
> >> Top Secret as it is possible to make them.
> > 
> > Why?  I'd expect the government to proclaim this
> > glorious victory in every village.  I'd expect the
> > Jenoine to be the Empire's Communists or al-Qaida,
> > the reason the Empire and nobility are needed and
> > shouldn't be disturbed.
> 
> Hmm. I'm not so sure about that. I tend to suspect
> (based on no
> evidence) that most Dragaerans know little or nothing about
> the
> Jenoine; that even most nobles are unaware of the actual
> situation
> regarding them; and that the Empire would keep a major
> crisis like
> /Issola/ under wraps. The Easterners are the Empire's
> token threat to
> trot out for flag-waving purposes. The Jenoine are too
> scary for that.

I don't think they're much scarier than nuclear war,
a threat that as far as I know no government tried to
deny, free press or not.  Of course, Dragaerans aren't
human.

> If memory serves, we know from /Orca/ that a recent Jenoine
> incident
> was hushed up by the Empire, or at least dealt with
> covertly and not
> publicized (which amounts to roughly the same thing).

"'Do you remember a certain affair three or four years
ago, that started out with Division Six looking into
the affairs of a wizard working for, uh, a foreign
kingdom,and ending up with a Jenoine at Dzur Mountain?'

"He stared at me, licked his lips, and said, 'I've
heard about it.'"

/Orca/, Chapter 7.  It sure looks like the "affair" was
kept secret. Whether the Jenoine was part of all of the
reason for that, we don't know.

Jerry Friedman