[Dragaera] _Iorich_ plot criticism (spoilers!)

[Alexx Kay]

> On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Alexx Kay <alexx at panix.com> wrote:
>> loads of spoilers below
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Hey!  Someone actually read my message!  I was beginning to wonder...

>> 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."
>
> [snip]
>
> If I follow your logic correctly, Zerika wants to tell them "No" all
> along but the House organizations want to go along with the Jhereg
> because they're aware of the Empire's fiscal situation. Aliera
> escaping/investigating/etc., and an investigation in Tirma, and both
> intended to make it impossible for the Jhereg rumors to be believed,
> thus forcing an automatic "Nay" that Zerika doesn't have the political
> capital to assert directly. Is that right?

Yup.

> Here's my reading of the events in /Iorich/, stripping out the things
> which Vlad supposes along the way but turn out not to be true:
>
> The Jhereg are planning to frame a sergeant from Tirma as a druggie in
> order to inflame popular opinion against drugs so they can be
> outlawed. The empress is aware that the Jhereg are planning this, and
> wants to resist politically because she fears the long-term
> consequences. Right, okay so far. Instead of doing something
> relatively sensible such as, I don't know, expediting the
> court-martial and/or execution of the aforementioned sergeant before
> the framing occurs (presumably this is what the "investigation" is
> for), Zerika instead chooses to arrest the Warlord as proof to the hoi
> polloi that the Empress is tough on crime. That way when the framing
> occurs she will have enough political capital to get away with not
> passing a law against drugs. Vlad is incorrect that the Jhereg planned
> this to get him, they just saw the opportunity either when she was
> first arrested or when he was spotted back in Adrilankha. (Judging by
> how ineffectual they are it is mostly the latter, or else everyone
> competent is scared of what happened to the last Left Hand assassin to
> go after him.) It is unclear why Zerika thinks this complicated
> misdirection scheme is better than a straightforward political attack
> on a bad idea, but she's ambivalent about it and feels guilty about
> smearing a friend's good name for short-term political advantage. When
> it becomes clear to Zerika that the cost would be higher than she
> anticipated, in that she would have to actually *execute* her friend
> (and possibly stir up trouble with Dragon House, possibly hastening a
> coup), she switches back to the riskier-in-her-eyes-but-less-painful
> tactic of trying to preemptively expose the true events in Tirma
> before the Jhereg can spread their rumors.

This is a plausible (to me) reading of events.

> /Phoenix/ is all about what happens when Verra makes a bad decision to
> start a war with Greenaere, IIRC for political reasons. /Iorich/ is
> all about what happens when Zerika makes a bad decision to essentially
> frame Aliera, again for political reasons. In neither is Vlad
> particularly strategically brilliant in piecing together WHY things
> are happening, but at least in /Iorich/ his final, tactical, deduction
> makes up for it. If you want to draw a moral from either it would
> probably be that power corrupts, and that goddesses and empresses
> don't stop to count the cost when they're in the mood to sacrifice
> some pawns. (Or at least, not in the Dragaeran Empire they don't.)

Funny you should bring up _Phoenix_.  I just reread the section in
_Iorich_ where Zerika talks about human sacrifice.  I (and most of us
apparently) had at first assumed that the main thrust of that discussion
was meant to be "sometimes people have to be sacrificed".  But shortly
before being interrupted, she says that the practice of human sacrifice
was stopped specifically because the gods didn't like it.  Maybe it was
actually *Verra's* idea to arrest Aliera.  It wouldn't be the first time
she'd made a poor-in-hindsight piece of political interference.

> I bet Devera would never do something like that.

Hard to know.  We haven't yet really seen her as an active character.  I
wonder if she will age past the little girl we've always seen so far?

Alexx

"No offense, but Cerebus figures its better all around if he keeps on
 thinking of this as a singularly dull dream."
   "Not at all.  You don't mind if *I* continue to believe I exist?"
"What *you* do with the voices in *your* head is *your* problem."
  Cerebus & Suenteus Po, issue 28