Benoni Strang's Grievances

If I had lived on Hermes in David Falkayn's time, then I would certainly have agreed with those who said that the Hermetian social system was long overdue for some radical reform, despite Falkayn's stated preference for aristocracy:

a head of state who must be elected from just one family by members of the other ruling families;

in other public affairs, a pyramidal social hierarchy with multiple votes at the apex, one vote each somewhere in the middle and no votes at the base!

Benoni Strang, a diaffected "Traver" (worker), has genuine grievances. I summarize his account (which may of course be one-sided):

he attended a crowded public school while Kindred children were individually tutored by the best Hermetian teachers;

all the valuable land and resources and key businesses belonged to the domains, the Kindred and their Followers, who opposed any change in case it challenged their privileges;

his fiancee's parents prevented their marriage "'...because a Traver son-in-law would hurt their social standing, would keep them from using her to make a fat alliance -'" (Poul Anderson, Mirkheim, London, 1978, p. 144).

Later, Falkayn comments on Strang:

"'And he's taking this chance to get revenge. Or to right old wrongs, he'd say. Same thing.'" (p. 167)

Not exactly the same thing, David. Whether Strang is motivated by personal resentments and whether his cause is just are two distinct questions. What Strang does do wrong, of course, is to try to enforce his social revolution from the top down and, even worse, to do it with the backing of the orbiting missiles of alien, Baburite, invaders.

It transpires that Strang, with his human co-conspirators, is manipulating the Baburites but this does not lessen the wrong that he does on Hermes. In fact, it means that he is not only oppressing his fellow Hermetians but also exploiting the otherwise inoffensive Baburites.

After all this, Anderson, whose sympathies cannot possibly be with Strang, does make the reader sympathize with him right at the end. Dying in Adzel's arms, he says:

"'Listen. Tell them. Why should you not tell them? You're not human, it's nothing to you. I brought everything about...I, from the first...for the sake of Hermes, only for the sake of Hermes. A new day on this world I love so much...Tell them. Don't let them forget. There will be other days.'" (p. 207)

And social reforms can no longer be halted after the civil war has been lost and won.