Old Wilwidh

A while ago, I suggested a possible screen adaptation of the opening section of Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry story, "The Game of Glory." A shorter passage in the novel, Ensign Flandry, has also made an impression. I imagine this single paragraph read aloud as part of an audio or audiovisual presentation of extracts from Anderson's works.

Castle Afon in the old Merseian capital, Ardaig, is the Roidhun's official primary residence. Brechdan Ironrede, Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council, i.e., Prime Minister of a unified Merseia, receives representatives of the Terran Empire in the audience chamber of Castle Afon:

"Entering the audience chamber, a human was at first dazed, as if he had walked into a dream. He needed a moment to make sense of what he saw. The proportions of long, flagged floor, high walls, narrow windows arched at both top and bottom, sawtoothed vaulting overhead, were wrong by every Terran canon and nonetheless had a rightness of their own. The mask helmets on suits of armor grinned like demons. The patterns of faded tapestries and rustling battle banners held no human symbology. For this was Old Wilwidh, before the machine came to impose universal sameness. It was the wellspring of Merseia. You had to see a place like this if you would understand, in your bones, that Merseians would never be kin to you."
- Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 141.

The omniscient narrator concludes this paragraph with a forceful assertion of the kind that would normally be expressed as an opinion by one of the characters: "...Merseians would never be kin to you." No? Human colonists and Merseian immigrants are well integrated on the planet Dennitza, a human mother even singing a Merseian lullaby.

The green-skinned Brechdan, who is also the Hand of the Vach Invory, stands in a black robe "...beneath a dragon carved in black wood..." (ibid.) (Try to picture the scene.)

Each Merseian, at least in the dominant Wilwidh culture, is identified by a personal name, by Vach membership, by military or civil rank and also by a nickname, like "Ironrede." Brechdan's bailiff, Chwioch, in his red tunic, green trousers and high-collared cape, is "...called the Dandy..." (p. 23). A dying cyborg spy says:

"'Will you remember my name? I was Dwyr of Tanis, once called the Merry. They made me into this...Remember Dwyr...Now let me die. If you open the main plate you can turn off my heart.'" (p. 132)

There is something irreconcilable in the Wilwidh culture. Brechdan says to a human Intelligence officer:

"'Commander...your young man makes me proud to be a sentient creature. What might our united races not accomplish? Hunt well.'" (p. 145)

- but Brechdan and his ilk can conceive of only one kind of inter-racial union. Speaking to a fellow Merseian, he acknowledges that he likes the Terrans, adding:

"'They were magnificent once. They could be again. I would love to see them our willing subjects...Unlikely, of course. They're not that kind of species. We may be forced to exterminate.'" (p. 92)

Be forced to! (Like Doctor Who's opponents, the Daleks, who say "Exter-minate!" as often as Nazis said "Seig Heil!")

Later, approaching the "farce" of a welcoming festival for a Terran delegation, Brechdan, even more callously, thinks:

"If we must exterminate the Terrans, we will at least have rid the universe of much empty chatter." (p. 93)

Chatter is preferable to war and enslavement, Hand.