[Dragaera] Liberals

[Rebecca Harbison via Dragaera]

(This reminds me that I need to read Hawk...)

Of course, I have some speculation.  What does having apparently
substantial 'unhoused' Easterners do for the Empire where the Cycle of
Houses is part of the Empire's stability?  While Easterners have joined the
House of the Teckla before the Interregnum (given evens of TPG), it seems
as if they were unusual, especially far from the border, and that
Easterners who were not Teckla (and not trying to invade) were an especial
novelty.  They existed -- I recall Khaavren mentioned one working as a
librarian -- but they seemed to be sort of the 'exotic foreigner'.

So Verra might be acting because even she doesn't know what a bunch of
Easterners who haven't really assimilated into the Empire's caste
structure, even as they became an underclass, can do.

(I also wonder if because it's the start of a Great Cycle that the Cycle
might be vulnerable to modification.  We already have calendar
irregularities as to whether the Cycle started with Tortaliik or Zerika IV.
I suppose the question is whether the Cycle flows only from the
metaphysical to the physical, or if it flows both ways.)

-- Stareyes

At any other time, such social unrest is doomed to failure. Verra doesn't
> sabotage the budding Teckla Socialists in _Phoenix_ because she wants to
> keep them down. She sabotages them because they are being driven by foreign
> impulses, one could say "unnatural" impulses in terms of what's natural to
> the Dragaeran Empire. (What is heavily implied is that it's a Marxist tract
> that was brought by the original Terran colonists and somehow found by
> Kelly
> or by someone who passed it to him.


On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Scott Schultz via Dragaera <
dragaera at lists.dragaera.info> wrote:

>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dragaera [mailto:dragaera-bounces at lists.dragaera.info] On Behalf
> Of
> > Jerry Friedman via Dragaera
>
> > The recent mentions of social justice at our author's blog have made me
> > notice that there are no liberals in Dragaera.  Nobody renounces their
> House
> > and marches with the Teckla, we hear nothing about any wealthy
> > sympathizers funding Kelly, there's no Eastern Martin Luther King, nobody
> > says, "Though we must deplore the rioters' methods, the riots are a
> clarion
> > call for justice that the Empire cannot ignore."  Have I missed
> something?
> >
>
> You have to remember that in Dragaera, there's a time for everything and
> everything in its time. The time for such social revolution is when the
> Teckla is ascendant on the Cycle.
>
> The Cycle isn't just a big stone wheel. It's a clock that marks out and to
> large extent controls the temperament of the Empire. Are there wealthy
> widows who run fundraisers to buy blankets and bread for the peasants
> during
> times of famine and cold? Probably. Are there social renegades to disown
> their own House to join House Teckla as a protest against the injustice of
> a
> callous Imperial government that descries the rights of the individual and
> keeps the lower classes downtrodden?  Sure, it's possible but the only time
> it's going to be *effective*, producing the prototypical Dr. Martin Luther
> King, Jr. or John Paul Jones or Che Guevera or Vladimir Lenin is when the
> Cycle has turned or is about to turn and the metaphysical time for a Teckla
> Republic has come.
>
> At any other time, such social unrest is doomed to failure. Verra doesn't
> sabotage the budding Teckla Socialists in _Phoenix_ because she wants to
> keep them down. She sabotages them because they are being driven by foreign
> impulses, one could say "unnatural" impulses in terms of what's natural to
> the Dragaeran Empire. (What is heavily implied is that it's a Marxist tract
> that was brought by the original Terran colonists and somehow found by
> Kelly
> or by someone who passed it to him. Though, come to think of it, it would
> be
> interesting if "Brust the Author" was not the only contemporary Terran to
> be
> communicating with Dragaera.) Because of their unnatural state of unrest,
> they are distracting the Empire at a crucial time and putting it in danger.
> If that danger was not real and present, Verra would likely have left well
> enough alone and the Marxist Revolution would likely have been recorded as
> nothing more than another hunger riot in the annals of Empire history.
> Those
> darn Easterners, always making trouble.
>
> Anyway - The point is that it's not a matter of Steve avoiding such social
> lightning rods, it's that it is strictly speaking not possible for it to
> occur in any meaningful way until the time is right for it to occur. This
> isn't a world of free will. It's a world where Dragaerans are ruled by
> their
> House and their heritage, where the Lords of Judgement rule over the course
> of human events and where the Cycle rules over all. Except for the
> Easterners. To them, Iluvatar gave strange gifts...
>
> Along these lines, though, there's the question of what life is like in
> Greenaire and Elde Island? It's been rather a long time since I read
> _Phoenix_ but it seems that those people, living unattached to the Orb, are
> not bound up in the fate of the Empire. The term "Dragaeran" as a word to
> describe all "faerie" may be a misnomer. It isn't clear that the
> "Dragaerans" who live apart from the Empire have Houses or even think of
> themselves in such a fashion. What happens to a Teckla who runs away to
> Greenaire? I think it would be interesting to find out.
>
>
>
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