Manuel Argos founded the Terran Empire about 2700;
Dominic Flandry was born about 3100.
(See here)
How many Imperial reigns might there have been in those four hundred years? I count forty British monarchs from 1066 to 2017 and five Emperors in about the first seventy years of Flandry's life - which tells us nothing. A possible forty reigns in a thousand years would give us four in a hundred years and therefore sixteen in four hundred years. We know some of the Emperors' names - see The Terran Emperors and How The Terran Empire Might Go Wrong: two Manuels, two Pedros, three Josips, Olaf, Isamu, Georgios, Hans, Dietrich and Gerhart total thirteen. We know also that Manuel II was the Founder's grandson. See The First Three Emperors. But we do not know how many there were between Manuel II and Georgios.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Very interesting, this kind of speculating for us fan boys! Rereading your "The Terran Emperors," I estimate there was a total of at least 14 Emperors from Manuel the Great to Gerhart. I suspect there were two or three more, but, except for David's speculation about "the Second Sugimoto" (about which I remain doubtful), I don't think the texts contains further details about them.
Fourteen or sixteen Emperors in some 467 years does not seem too few when you take into account how the antisenescence of Technic Civilization could extend the life spans of human beings to 100 years or more. Also, I get the impression that, until the troubled years following the death of Josip, most of the Emperors could expect to live out their expected spans of life.
Maybe that overflowing loose leaf binder containing Poul Anderson's notes, charts, essays, about the Technic stories, includes further details about the Emperors. If so, I can't help but wish Anderson had included some of them as appendices to his Technic series, analogous to Tolkien's Appendix A to THE LORD OF RINGS, giving us a lot of information about the Numenorean kings and rulers.
Sean
Sean,
Do you know where the name "Isamu" appears in the texts?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Here it is, in Chapter VI of THE REBEL WORLDS, where we see one of Hugh McCormac's sons speaking: "So you aim to preserve the Empire, but take it over," Colin said quickly. "...I'm with you. You know that. I honestly think you'll give it new life--the best Emperor we've had since Isamu the Great, maybe since Manuel I himself..." My view is that Isamu the Great was most likely an earlier Emperor of the Wang Dynasty (perhaps the first or second).
Sean
Sean,
Thank you. Meanwhile, I have found it just by googling!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Good! And I should have said earlier that I agree with Flandry that it would have been disastrous if McCormac had succeeded in usurping the crown. Because he would have destroyed the principle of Legitimacy. True, we see Flandry later supporting the usurper Hans Molitor, but by then it was because Flandry believed there were no better alternatives once the Wang Dynasty had irretrievably collapsed. And Hans was at least a reluctant usurper who showed himself to be an able and well meaning ruler.
Sean
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