[Dragaera] Dragons and The Worm Ouroboros

[Jerry Friedman]

From: Philip Hart philiph at slac.stanford.edu

> Serious spoilers for The Worm Ouroboros.
>
>
> Eddison spoilers follow...
>
>
>Turn back now, unless you don't care.
>
>
>So I just read The Worm Ouroboros, 
...

> The good guys utterly defeat the (in part very) bad guys after a long and 
>costly war in which fleets and armies and uncounted civilians are destroyed; and 
>> their reaction is to sink into depression, because there are no more worthy 
>opponents.  When it's suggested that they rule over an age of peace and
> prosperity for the whole world, their response is that they would rather risk 
>their nation's existence again than give up knightly warfare.  As I read this I
> realized that these people, a couple of whom are not just heroic but pretty 
>funny and capable of deep feeling, are basically just psychopaths.  The book
> ends with the gods granting their prayer that the bad guys be resurrected and 
>reamrmed.

A naive literalization of Nietzsche's image of eternal recurrence, you wanna 
know my opinon.  All of Eddison is like "What if Nietzsche could have gotten 
along with women?"  The ending of TWO does have the advantage of being one of 
the few moments of philosophical horror in fiction.

> Anyway, I wonder if I'll ever have cause to feel this way about Morrolan and 
>Co.

You don't feel they're psychopaths?  But they're not *just* psychopaths, any 
more than Eddison's characters are.

Howard Brazee brought up Dragaeran lifestyles in the other thread.  I should 
point out that only some of the noble houses are like that (Dragon, Dzur, 
Jhereg, some Orca, a Lyorn or two, Greycat, Khaavren).  They just happen to be 
Steven's favorite kinds of people to write about, as far as I can tell.

I must admit I hadn't connected the two sets of psychopaths, though.  That's 
interesting.  (Next, "Rogue Moon"?)

Jerry Friedman