"Rudi closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. He could feel the men, in a way - they were part of Montival, part of the great living organism that stretched from the single-celled things that dwelt in the crevasses of Earth and fed on its heat to the golden eagles balancing the wind high above. Himself and [the High Queen] not the heads of it exactly...not so much the rulers as a...focus, or an embodiment."
-SM Stirling, The Given Sacrifice (New York, 2014), Chapter Thirteen, p. 250.
That is how monarchy is imagined to function in our world and how it does function in the Emberverse. If kings really were divinely appointed, then our attitude to them would have to change. There might have been no Glorious Revolution in the seventeenth century. In the Bible, God lets His people have a king like other nations only because they demand one. In Narnia, Aslan anoints a London taxi driver as the first King only because another Son of Adam had introduced evil into the newly created world of Narnia. However, in Perelandra, CS Lewis presents a true absurdity: the equivalents of Adam and Eve are a King and a Queen before they have begotten or borne any subjects! Ransom, a commoner, is not their equal.
When Rudi reflects that he and his Queen are not the heads of Montival, this recalls Djana's reflection on Merseian social organisation:
"...Djana felt it betokened much that the chief of a Vach - not quite a clan - was called not its Head but its Hand."
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 193-365 AT p. 296.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And my attitude, vis a vis the new Kingdom of Montival is that of Poul Anderson as summarized in my "Political Legitimacy In The Thought of Poul Anderson," a state, whatever form it has, is legitimate if its people believes that is the case. For that matter, my view is also that of the Bible, when it warned the Jews that a king (or any other kind of state) will inevitably make DEMANDS on them. Demands that could be harsh and heavy.
And the Merseians can organize themselves any way they wish, MY view is that HUMANS find it natural to think of the leader of the state as its HEAD. Nor do I think that to be bad.
Sean
Sean:
There's something more important than legitimacy, and that something is POWER.
"If a king be taken, let him die
If a king be murdered, let him lie
For power is in the edge of a sword
And a helpless king is no man's lord."
— Alfred Coppel, in *The Rebel of Rhada* (SF), 1968
As Alexander said, "To the strongest."
Kaor, DAVID!
Very interesting and pointed, this verse of Alfred Coppel. The gist being, of course, that if the king (or any other kind of leader) is to be EFFECTIVE he has to have real power, not just the formal right to it. I was also reminded of how Mao Tse-tung put it: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
There certainly has been times when the formal leader or gov't of a nation was weak and impotent, unable to actually RULE. Probably the most famous, fairly recent example from Western history being Poland, from at least 1668 to the Third Partition of 1795. From at least 1668 the kings of Poland were, for all practical purposes, helpless, powerless, and unable to actually govern. Not only was the Kingship elective (and thus utterly dependent on the electors), but the Sejm (parliament) became impotent as well (due to the liberum veto allowing ONE member to veto any proposed action). The inevitable result was internal chaos and external weakness.
Sean
There's a strong element of the sacral in the High Kingship of Montival, though the constituent peoples conceptualize it in different ways.
The High King leads in war and keeps the peace and enforces certain rules, and appeals against death sentences go to him, but he's more than a general or judge or bureaucrat; and Montival is a very decentralized and diverse kingdom. His primary purpose most of the time is to act as a symbol and embodiment of what his peoples share with each other and their land.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree! And Montival evolved the kind of IDEOLOGY it needed for the new monarchy to be stable and accepted as legitimate. I still remember your comments about how the Roman Empire's failure to develop such an ideology was a huge reason for the frequently violent changes of Emperor.
Sean
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