[Dragaera] Paarfi's Whitewash of Adron

[Scott Schultz]

>(Or somewhere his spell included an expression of the form x / (Adron -
>Emperor).)

This is amusing to me because in the past I've characterized the Interregnum
as the result of a divide-by-zero program bug at the end of the Great Cycle.
Heh

I suppose the fun of the "unreliable narrator" is that you never really know
the absolute Truth.  

I think the one thing we can agree on is that Adron was attempting to take
the Orb when he was sure that the Cycle had NOT yet turned. However it
happened, that was his undoing, whatever his motivations. That was Kana's
undoing as well, really. The destruction and the re-establishment of the
Empire both revolved around Dragons refusing to accept the choice of the
Orb, and they both involved Dragons attempting to circumvent the existing
system using outside agencies.

It makes you wonder what the general status of House Dragon was at the time
and whether the resulting purge after Kana's revolt has really cleared it up
of trouble makers. Maybe this is the real reason that someone Norathar is
actually the best person for Dragon Heir - She literally comes from outside
of the hierarchy that produced troublemakers like Adron and Kana.

Getting back to Paarfi - I'd need to get my books to quote something, but he
writes that when the Orb came back online, that it circled mournfully over
Tortaalik's body, and then it searched out the next appropriate candidate
for Emperor and it chose Adron, setting the feedback loop into effect.

If the Cycle had not Turned, there was no reason for it to do that.

In fact, this behavior of the Orb picking the next successor is somewhat
questionable on the face of it.

If you go back through the stories and go over the bits and fragments of
history that we know about, most often we hear about "So-and-so claimed the
Orb".  You don't typically hear about the Orb claiming a person. Of course,
Emperors don't typically die; but we do have the example of the early
Tsalmoth Emperor who was killed by falling masonry (hmmm...). We're told
that the engineer building the Palace found him and claimed the Orb on the
spot. In this case, at least, the Orb did not automatically go out and find
the next recipient in line.

In other words, historically we are given an impression that the Orb is
passive, whereas Paarfi's account requires it to be active. Even Kana's
revolt only makes sense on the face of it if the Orb is a passive tool that
has to be wielded properly. If it's active, as portrayed by Paarfi, then
going against it is such a stupid move that only a bunch of fools and
lackeys would follow Kana, and that was clearly not the case.

Maybe Aliera is biased and not-fully-informed herself, but Paarfi is
definitely telling a different version of the story than the actual events
that occurred, whatever his reasons are for doing so.