[Dragaera] Questions from Brokedown Palace

[Scott Schultz]

Everything I say here represents my opinion, not some sort of objective
fact, and should be assumed to have a big IMO attached to most every
paragraph. Just sayin'.

Something you need to keep in mind about Brokedown Palace is that it's never
been super clear that it even belongs in the same continuity as the Vladiad.
When it was published it was, as I recall, the third Dragaera novel and the
first that was not directly associated with Vlad. The only Vlad stories at
the time were _Jhereg_ and _Yendi_. You could just barely call the Vladiad a
series.

Brokedown Palace is a result of Steve's Cool Theory of Literature which
states that authors will write about whatever strikes them as being "cool".
In this case, Steve thought it would be "cool" to write a Hungarian fairy
tale and set it in his fantasy world.

To contrast just how contradictory _Brokedown Palace_ can be with the
"hard-boiled" setting of Vlad and the "romantic" setting of Khaavren - Bolk
claims to be THE Taltos Horse ridden into battle by Fenaar in the legendary
battle where Fenaar defeated the Elves in the battle that ultimately
resulted in the founding of Fenario.

If you've read _The Pheonix Guards_, you'll realize that Khaavren's
experience of this same battle and encounter with this same horse runs
rather differently than the legend that Bolk claims to have experienced
first-hand. (Which is just another example of the unreliable narrator theme
that pervades all of the stories.)

Then there's the whole spiritual battle between Tradition/Stasis and
Progress/Change that is fought between Sandor/Miklos, Verra/Bolk, The
Tree/The Castle. It's all very symbolic. So much so, that it's difficult to
credit how much of it is literal fact, from the standpoint of someone like
Vlad. All of it? Some of it? None of it? Who knows?

These days, we do mostly assume that it's at least part of the continuity
and that Miklos and Brigitta were real people, and there is even speculation
that Cawti could be Brigitta's daughter/direct descendant. 

Verra at one point seems to confirm that she is, in fact, unable to manifest
in Fenario and that is thanks to one of Vlad's ancestors; which might make
him a descendant of Miklos, though probably a distant ancestor.

This manner of "death" is different than the sort of death implied by the
existence of Godslayer, a weapon whose full Serioli name seems to imply that
it's anti-magic effects stem from its intended purpose of completely
obliterating everything that makes a God divine. It doesn't just "kill" a
God on a metaphysical level like Trinigore in Blackchapel or Verra in
Fenario; it literally unmakes the very being of a god.

Re: Sandor - He's just a guy who happens to have a link to the Orb and the
knowledge of how to use it. It's not even clear that an Easterner CAN become
undead, because that involves the soul coming back without a body, or vice
versa, and it's not even clear where Easterner souls go. In the case of
Franz in _Tekla_, there's at least anectdotal evidence that they don't
always go anywhere at all.

Bolk is PROBABLY a God; just not a God who joined up with the Lords of
Judgement when the cataclysm happened that ejected the Jenoine from the
universe. Some of this is Steve's Zelazny-love showing. Bolk is very much
the same sort of figure as Sam in _Lord of Light_ and Verra is very much in
a similar position as Brahma and the establishment in the same novel. So
much so, that until the most recent Vlad novel, it was my personal opinion
that Verra and the Lords of Judgement were responsible for actively
repressing the social and technological advancement of the Easterners just
as the "gods" of _Lord of Light_ did to the colonists in that story. Now, it
appears that this repression is actually the work of the Jenoine and that
Verra and the Gods have been working to free Dragaera and, by implication,
the Easterners as well.