[Dragaera] _Iorich_ plot criticism (spoilers!)

[Alexx Kay]

loads of spoilers below
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On the whole, I quite enjoyed _Iorich_.  But this post is about the parts
I really *didn't* enjoy.  Namely, the large amounts of nonsense in the
political side of the plot, as related by Vlad.

Page 174:
 I shook my head.  "This is huge.  How are they convincing the Empress to
go for it?"
 "The massacre at Tirma."
 "Huh?"
 "Word is about to leak out that it happened because the sergeant was
using a combination of koelsh leaves and poppy."

Norathar's 'explanation' here makes no sense.  The Massacre at Tirma is a
political problem for the Empress, true.  But creating rumors about it
being due to drug abuse makes it a *worse* political problem, instead of
alleviating it.  Giving additional weight to those rumors by arresting
Aliera just compounds the issue.  The Jhereg aren't even threatening "do
what we want or we'll make things worse for you"; they're saying "we're
*planning* to make things worse for you, so do what we tell you to in
order make things even more bad for yourself."  That sort of all stick, no
carrot intimidation might work on a powerless Teckla, but not on Zerika.

Page 225:
 "First question: Did you know the Empress is starting an investigation
into the events in Tirma?"
 "First answer: Why should I care?"
 "Because it was not wanting to run that investigation that led to you
being arrested."

That statement makes little sense.  The Empress *does* want an
investigation, and had to be pressured into arresting Aliera.  The point
of arresting Aliera was to make it *appear* that Zerika couldn't do a
proper investigation (I think, see below for detailed argument), but Vlad
long ago figured out that that was just politics.  Per Norathar (page
175), the Jhereg don't care that an investigation will happen, as long as
they can cast sufficient doubt upon it.

Page 247:
 He considered.  "If you're right, ignoring the lack of evidence, what
happens to Aliera?"
 "Good question.  In fact, that's /the/ question, isn't it? I wish I could
answer it.  If they get away with it, the Empress has to choose between
giving in to the Jhereg, and sacrificing Aliera.  I don't know which way
she'll jump."

Pages 272-273:
        "You know about the Jhereg, Left Hand, and Orca pressure on Zerika."
        "On her Majesty," she corrected absently.
        "An honest investigation would be ugly, but would take away their
leverage.  An attempt on the part of rebel Teckla to stop the
investigation would sabotage it, or at least delay it, and the
pressure would be back on."

Page 278:
        "Here's the situation as I see it, stop me if I'm wrong about
something: The Jher--that is, certain groups are trying to
pressure the Empress. The leverage they have is the scandal about
Tirma, which is going to annoy a lot of the people who matter,
although exactly why they care I couldn't say."


Again and again, Vlad draws a connection between the investigation and
pressure on the Empress, which makes no sense.  If it was just Vlad
talking to himself, I might think he was simply mistaken.  But he
discusses this with lots of informed, intelligent people, who should see
the contradictions in what he's saying.  I am forced to conclude that the
text as we have it was deliberately obscured for some reason.  Two obvious
methods suggest themselves:
A) Vlad is deliberately withholding information (perhaps due to an oath
similar to the one he tricks Norathar into breaking).
B) Vlad has been subjected to a clumsy memory-editing job (most likely by
Verra).


So if the proffered explanations make no sense, do we have enough data to
determine what was *really* going on?  I think we do.

The Drug War idea resurfaces a few years ago (page 173: "...the Left Hand
got wind of it a few years ago, started collaborating with the Right Hand
and the Orca, and have been trying to put it back.")  This alliance plans
to take advantage of the next convenient cause celebre, which turns out to
be the Tirma massacre.

The Jhereg/Orca alliance have some sort of mysterious pressure they can
exert on Zerika.  This is alluded to vaguely on page 233, but never
explicated:
 "...If I lose the confidence of the nobles, of the princes, I cannot run
the Empire."
 "Sounds pretty simple.  Can the Jhereg really cause the nobles and
princes to lose confidence in you?"
 "A week ago I thought they could. Now--" She shrugged.  "Now I guess
we'll put it to the test."

This pressure is simultaneously strong and weak: it is strong enough to
get her to arrest a friend for a capital crime, yet weak enough that they
can't make Zerika stop the Tirma investigation directly (page 217: "Can't
pressure the Empress directly, we have nothing to pressure it with."), and
Zerika is willing to "put it to the test" by page 233.  It's not just raw
political power, because the Jhereg are near the bottom of the Cycle, and
the Orca are barely in the top half.  Vlad keeps saying that the Tirma
Scandal is the leverage, but that makes no sense; the scandal is what they
*want* to happen due to their pressure, not the pressure itself.

Why *was* Aliera arrested?  Several reasons are suggested in the text.  On
page 74, Aliera claims "If her majesty had not wished for my conviction,
she wouldn't have begun the arrest proceedings", but this seems
implausible.  Vlad comes to believe (chapters 7, 9) that Aliera was
arrested to lure him back; this is a plausible motive for the Jhereg to
*suggest* the arrest, but not for Zerika to order it.  The two remaining,
semi-plausible reasons are somewhat contradictory: to distract from Tirma
(chapter 5) or to give the appearance that Aliera is being punished *for*
Tirma, via back channels (chapter 9).  This last is at least consistent
with the notion that Zerika is supporting the J/O drug prohibition scheme.
 (I suggest yet another motive further down.)

Somehow, the J/O must have convinced Zerika that their drug prohibition
plan would greatly add to the stability of the Empire.  Enough so, that
the side effects of significant apparent Imperial corruption (a botched
investigation of Tirma; Aliera either executed arbitrarily, or else
released equally arbitrarily), effects that would *de*-stabilize the
Empire, would be a worthwhile tradeoff.  This is supported somewhat by
Zerika's (interrupted) lecture about human sacrifice and 'practicality' on
pages 55-56.  So there must be some imminent threat to the Empire which
this drug prohibition scheme could, at least in theory, alleviate.

As it happens, we (and Vlad!) *do* know of just such an imminent threat to
the Empire.  Not only that, but this threat already involves a Jhereg/Orca
alliance.  I refer, of course, to the economic crisis that Vlad discovered
in the course of _Orca_.  Vlad figured out what was going on , killed some
bad guys, and saved one old woman's house.  But the Imperial economy was
still fundamentaly tottering on a scaffold of lies and bad credit.

As far as we know, this economic instability is still not public knowledge
(thanks partially to Vlad's efforts.)  The J/O alliance could plausibly
threaten Zerika with an economic meltdown.  "We're too big to fail."  As
the news of our world shows us daily, governments are sometimes willing to
take extreme measures to keep the wheels of commerce turning, even if it
involves rewarding bad actors.  The drug prohibition scheme would funnel
cash into the coffers of two of the bankrupt Houses, allowing them to
replace imaginary, inflated money, with real assets.  (Albeit assets
extracted largely from the poorest classes, which Zerika might find
distasteful.)

(Caveat: I am not 100% certain that the _Orca_ economic crisis was the
true leverage that the J/O alliance held over Zerika.  But it does fit all
the requirements, so Occam's Razor strongly suggests it.)

The Empress goes along with the J/O plan at first, but she's got two lines
of resistance that she hopes to thwart them with.  Firstly, she attempts
to manipulate Aliera into doing her dirty work.  This is not directly
obvious in the text, but seems the only plausible explanation of an
otherwise unbelievably stupid idea: that Aliera should escape from prison.
 Zerika surely could not expect Aliera to become a refugee from justice
for any appreciable time.  No, Aliera was intended to escape and *clear
her own name*, ideally by uncovering the conspiracy that led to her arrest
in the first place.  It's a romantic notion, like something out of a
Paarfi 'history', but that hardly makes it less likely to have been
thought of and hoped for.  Sadly, for some reason, either Aliera either
didn't get the message, or didn't decide to comply.  In the end, Vlad does
approximately what Aliera had been intended to do, and gets her name
cleared in much the same manner that Zerika had hoped she would clear
herself.

The Empress' second line of resistance is to run a legitimate
investigation of Tirma.  The J/O want that investigation stopped, or at
least confused enough that they can get their own spin into public
discourse convincingly.  They decide to assassinate Lord Cathlo, while
pinning the blame on political malcontents.  Again, Vlad saves the day. 
It's important that he not only prevents the assassination, but makes it
clear that the Jhereg were behind it.  This costs the Jhereg political
capital, allowing Zerika to stand up to them and call their bluff.  And it
*is* a bluff -- they can't harm the Empire without essentially destroying
themselves in the process, and they're not that desperate.

Of course, at the end of all this, the Empire is *still* mired in a secret
economic crisis, one that would be made much worse, were it to become
public knowledge.  Given that, it seems plausible that powerful forces
might either extract an oath from Vlad to never speak of it, or simply
ensure that he *couldn't* speak of it, via a mind-wipe.

And that's more than enough fan-wankery for now...

Alexx

"Do you know him personally?"
   "No, but I've slept with his wife several times."
[I, CLAUDIUS]