Cnif hu Vanden is a civilian xenophysiologist on Talwin. His name does not come from the dominant Merseian Wilwidh culture. The personal name is followed not by a nickname and a Vach but by a surname as if Cnif were a Terran!
His people, descendants of Lafdiguans, live on a colony planet where they retain differences not only in dress, customs and language but even in their laws. Merseians are not as culturally unified as Terrans. Cnif has been to Merseia only for advanced education and many of its ways are strange to him.
As their airbus proceeds on a visit to the Talwinian Domrath species, Cnif discourses to Flandry, pointing out Barrier Bay and the Golden River and describing the cataclysmic seasonal changes. Clearly, individuals like Cnif are not the cause of the inter-imperial conflict.
Ydwyr is a scientist, a scholar, an aristocrat - a nephew of the Roidhun -, a tolerant being and supremacist to the core. According to him, the problems are the policies of every other government, not of his! Those who are the problem do not realize that they are.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And those attitudes and views of Ydwyr were not limited to him. I recall Djuanda coming to realize many of the other Merseians, no matter how nice they were as individuals, agreed that Terra's refusal to go gently into that good night was the problem!
Ad astra! Sean
You're not the problem... if you win.
One major reason Meresia is less uniform than Terra is that it 'modernized' much faster, and by contact with outsiders as much as its own efforts.
Eg., the first contact with Terrans was at the very beginning of Meresia's Industrial Revolution -- the equivalent of aliens landing in Britain in 1817.
This short-circuited indigenous developments that might have, for instance, destroyed the local culture's feudal system. Instead it reinforced it.
An Earthly example would be Japan, where archaic elements were (until its defeat in 1945) empowered and mutated by the assimilation of Western technology and science.
And Meresia was politically united very fast.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I have just one or two caveats. First, at least during Flandry's lifetime, the Empire was not defeated by Merseia in any major way. So Terra's stubborn refusal to roll over and have its throat cut was a problem for Merseia.
I agree with the analogy with Meiji and post-Meiji Japan down till 1945, with this correction: the struggles for unification on Merseia took longer and included things like organized crime, the Gethfennu, being one of the major contenders for power. And that was not the case in Japan, which had long been ruled by a centralized gov't under the Tokugawa shoguns.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Also, my recollection from "Day of Burning" is that humans, in the first Grand Survey, first made contact with Merseia in that world's analog of our AD 1600, when Eriau was compared to Shakespearian English. What might have happened if aliens with FTL tech had landed on Earth in 1600?
In fact, we see aggressive aliens landing in England in 1345, in Anderson's THE HIGH CRUSADE, with somewhat unexpected results!
Ad astra! Sean
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