[Dragaera] Liberals

[Jerry Friedman via Dragaera]

> From: Rebecca Harbison via Dragaera <dragaera at lists.dragaera.info>

> 
>(T his 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.


Hm.
> (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.)


At some point in the distant past, somebody (sorry, I forget who) suggested
that the Cycle was based on reactions to each house.  People get tired of
the Jhereg and want to punish them, so the Iorich gain power, and then nobody
can get out from under the grip of the law except the sly Chreotha, etc.
Anyway, I hope I'm remembering correctly that Steven said he was thinking
along those lines.

One might compare this circular historical inevitability to Marx's linear
version.

Since then, I've wondered whether the first cycle happened for sociodynamic
reasons, and then became a pattern, and an inviolable tradition, and a
giant stone circle in the realm of the gods (as such things do).

Jerry Friedman