The Draka In The Galaxy

SM Stirling's Draka begin to sound like Poul Anderson's Merseians. See here.

(i) The Archon anticipates:

"'...the galaxy under the Domination of the Race...'" (Drakon, p. 275)

(ii) - but recognizes that this will take a long time and that:

(iii) "'...interstellar government will never be very tightly centralized.'" (ibid.)

Thus, for the snakes, as for the gatortails, it is the Race, not any particular nation or state, that counts. Each extrasolar colony has its own Archon.

By "the Merseians," in this context, I mean the Wilwidh Roidhunate culture, not every member of that species. This culture envisages a transcendent but nevertheless racially partial deity (!) whereas the Draka eschew all religion, having failed to revive Norse polytheism.

The Merseians face many intelligent species in their version of our galaxy whereas the Draka are reasonably confident that there are no nearby technological civilizations in the galaxy of Earth/1. However, there are such civilizations in parallel timelines. The Director of Technics suggests that there might even be dinosaurs that (a) did not become extinct and that (b) did later become intelligent.

There might be. However, I do not believe that (b) follows from (a). Intelligence is not inevitable. If reptiles, both large and small, had continued to flourish without requiring the advantages of intelligence, then there would not have been any natural selection of intelligence.

But it is to be hoped that the Draka "'...run into more than we can handle...'" (p. 276)