Thursday, 17 August 2017

The Obala III

Rereading Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, I want to post about the Obala but find already on the blog:

Dennitza;
The Obala;
The Obala II;
Khyrwedhin;
The Kazan.

Dennitza is a human-colonized extrasolar planet with a Merseian minority;

Dennitzan Merseians mainly inhabit the Obala, the east coast of the Rodna continent;

Khywedhin is moot-lord of the steadcaptains of the Obala;

the Elena River flows from the Kazan to the Obala.

I will carefully reread A Knight..., Chapter XVI, in search of any information not already summarized in the above posts.

See The Obala IV.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

My perhaps inaccurate memory of A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS is that Anderson went into careful detail about the socio/political organization of Dennitza. To such an extent that I've wondered if that would have been the kind of political he would prefer, at least for some planets. It combines elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to just the right extent that all three balance and check each other in such a way that no single part dominates the others. And the provinces and subdivisions of Dennitza also have widely varying political setups.

All this makes me conclude, again, that Anderson disliked rigid, one size fits all schemes and preferred variety, adaptability, tolerance of difference, etc.

And I thought the Merseians who settled on Dennitza also organized themselves into clans called "vachs"? And they were given a role in the Dennitzan parliament as the third house of that body.

Sean