An Arctic Shore And Lafdiguan Ancestry

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Here are some telling details that I have noticed as if for the first time. How much do we know about Qanryf Bryadan Arrowswift, Vach Hallen, or Afal Uroch the Lucky, Vach Rueth? (See More Merseian Names.) Not a great deal but a little more than nothing.

Of Bryadan:

"Faint but marrow-thrilling, the energies driving the Tryntaf pulsed through him. Air from the ventilators,

cold because his home was on an arctic shore of the Wilwidh Ocean, bore a likewise half-sensed exhilaration in reeks of ozone and oil. Telltales flashed, meters quivered, displays danced through his cave of control machines." (p. 306)

I have quoted three sentences because they gave us three senses but the interesting, to me, detail was "...an arctic shore of the Wilwidh Ocean..."

Of Uroch, his face:

"...was youthful, handsome, the green of the complexion slightly yellow because of partial Lafdiguan ancestry." (ibid.)

Handsome to fellow Merseians, of course!

My point here is that these two place names, "Wilwidh," and "Lafdigu," are already full of significance for the consecutive reader of Poul Anderson's Technic History. In particular:

"The mask helmets on suits of armor grinned like demons. The patterns of faded tapestries and rustling battle banners held no human symbology. For this was Old Wilwidh, before the machine came to impose universal sameness. It was the wellspring of Merseia. You had to see a place like this if you would understand, in your bones, that Merseians would never be kin to you."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 141.

At least that is the view of Max Abrams because he is the viewpoint character here.

The Hand of the Vach Hallen introduces Chee Lan to:

"'...my comrade: Olgor hu Freylin, his rank Warmaster in the Republic of Lafdigu, here in Ardaig as agent of his country.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Day of Burning" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 209-272 AT p. 230.

"Cnif was typical of the problem, crossed [Flandry's] mind. The stout, yellowish, slightly flat-faced male belonged to no Vach; his ancestors before unification had lived in the southern hemisphere of Merseia, in the Republic of Lafdigu, and to this day their descendants maintained peculiarities of dress and custom, their old language and many of their old laws. But Cnif was born in a colony; he had not seen the mother world until he came there for advanced education, and many of its ways were strange to him."
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Young Flandry, pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER THIRTEEN, p. 286.

Anderson skilfully evokes all that backstory by casually informing us that the Wilwidh has an arctic shore and that Uroch's ancestry is part-Lafdiguan.

And Andersonian scholarship is becoming hard work! I need a lunch break.