"...how many Constitution Squares had he known in his life? But this lay deserted under wind, chill, and hasty cloud shadows."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT XVII, 557.
(This is one of the images that came up when I googled "Constitution Square.")
When the demonstration of four hundred armed zmayi has entered the joint session of parliament and been allowed to speak, Kossara Vymezal bounds from among them and onto the dais. Someone in the Chamber radios to a nearby building. About fifty armed human Dennitzans run into the Chamber...
My closest experience:
a Borough Council met in the Council Chamber of a Town Hall;
simultaneously, a large group of trade unionists and their supporters convened in a large meeting room on an upper floor of the Town Hall;
the Council began to discuss a proposed funding cut with job losses;
someone in the public gallery of the Council Chamber blew a whistle, audible on the upper floor;
the trade unionists ran downstairs and invaded the Council Chamber...
There was no gunfire or loss of life.
This section of this novel accurately reflects public controversies and political conflicts and is easier to identify with than those narratives where Dominic Flandry works as a lone operative behind enemy lines.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Whatever the rights or wrongs of the proposed funding cut might have been, I cannot approve of how the borough council meeting was disrupted. There might have been no violence, but it could too easily have happened.
Sean
Sean,
Such actions are unavoidably controversial. I mention this one here because it is in my experience and because it parallels on a modest scale what Anderson imagines on Dennitza. This novel speaks to our experience on many levels: Flandry with his son, with his fiancee, with his fiancee's people, with his enemy, with his memories, political turmoil on Dennitza, the shallowness of the Duke of Mars, the pragmatism of Molitor, the rare wisdom of Desai, the steadfastness of the ychani, the traditions of Dennitza... There is more here than I thought!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with everything you wrote above, with one quibble. I don't think the elderly Duke of Mars was that bad. I recall him being described as never claiming to being more than a well meaning fop. And one who had gained, as time passed, a somewhat rueful realism about himself.
Sean
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