Monday 10 August 2020

Incorporation

The greatest defeat is not to be killed but to be incorporated into the cause that you have opposed, as at the end of 1984.

The narrator of Chase The Morning witnesses a horrific ritual that will climax not with him as the final sacrifice but with him as a possessed agent of the conjured evil.

Markham serves the kzinti that he had fought. Magnusson serves the Merseians that he had fought. British trade union leaders wind up in the House of Lords. (A member of a minority political group asked me in mock horror, "Do you realize that we have not a single ex-member in the House of Lords?" It would have to be an ex-member in that case.)

However, Dominic Flandry rejects Aycharaych's plea to help him to continue the deception that will preserve Chereion:

"'There've been too many betrayals in too many causes.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT XX, p. 600.

That was the moment at which Flandry could have ceased to be who he was.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

As far as I'm concerned, for some Labor Party leaders to become members of the House of Lords was a GOOD thing. Because it was a sign of at least some within Labor becoming less radical and intransigent. I'm frankly SICK of radicals!

Yes, Flandry would have betrayed everyone and everything he had fought and struggled for if he had accepted Aycharaych's plea. Memories of what happened to Kossara and his son helped to steel him to making that refusal.

Ad astra! Sean