The Falkayns, David and Coya, visit Nicholas van Rijn in his penthouse on the Winged Cross in Chicago Integrate. This confirms for the first time that David and Coya did indeed get married after the events of "Lodestar." It is also specifically confirmed that Coya who had been Coya Conyon:
"...proudly followed a custom growing in her generation and now called herself Coya Falkayn..." (p. 14)
The other major change is that the Falkayns:
"...would soon be embarked on their first shared voyage beyond Sol's outermost comets." (p. 11)
Has David left the trader team? No. Coya has joined it. Van Rijn gives them a party:
"'...before Coya ships out with your team and finds me lots of lovely new profits.'" (p. 18)
The team will now comprise not only a Master Merchant, a planetographer and a xenobiologist but also an astrophysicist. There will be no more instalments with just David, Adzel and Chee Lan in the Muddlin' Through. In fact, there will be greater changes than that but let's just take this novel one chapter and section at a time. Every detail should be appreciated not only because Mirkheim is one of Poul Anderson's most successful novels but also because the Polesotechnic League sub-series of the Technic History will end here.
4 comments:
It's probably thought that marriage is a dynastic arrangement to guarantee David's loyalty, by people who don't know the real dynamics. League Feudalism running overtime! 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That might have been the case if all these characters had lived a century earlier. But, by the time of "Lodestar"/MIRKHEIM, the feudalism of the League was disintegrating.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it as slagging down, but becoming more openly feudal at the same time. More in a "Wars of the Roses" style, though.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, I can see that. I also thought of what was seen in France for over 30 years after the death of Henry II in 1559, during the civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. More often than not the real leaders were the great barons leading those Catholics and Protestants, not the kings. "Bastard feudalism" as one biographer of Henry IV called it.
Ad astra! Sean
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