Nicholas And Nathaniel

Nicholas Falkayn, named after his grandfather, is born on Earth near the end of Mirkheim and instructs his own son, Nathaniel, on Avalon near the beginning of "Wingless." This is as close as Poul Anderson's Technic History gets to becoming a family chronicle. We see David Falkayn's mother, Athena, his brother, John, and their family estate for the first and last times in Mirkheim. We see Avalon before its colonization in "The Problem of Pain." We see Ythri in "Wings of Victory." Although Falkayn's ancestry is from Hermes and before that Earth, many Avalonians are Ythrians and their traditions stem from that planet. Admiral Holm, although human, invokes "deathpride" when confronting a Terran. Holm's son, Christopher, marries Tabitha Falkayn, descendant of David. And the second main section of the Technic History is about other people and other planets with the single exception that one Avalonian Ythrian, Erannath of Stormgate Choth, is active, on behalf of both Ythrian Domain and Terran Empire, in The Day Of Their Return. (On the planet, Aeneas, there is apocalypticism but with a plural reference: Their return, not His.)

Thinking about one part of the Technic History leads to thinking about its connections to all the other parts which is what has just happened yet again.