For the second time, Edwin Cairncross, Grand Duke of Hermes, is viewpoint character and this time he confirms that he intends to become Emperor. We have been assuming that Flandry's suspicion is correct but now we read Cairncross' mind and need no longer assume or suspect.
What else do we know about the doings of the great? When will the relatively new King of England visit his Duchy of Lancaster? There are rumours of preparations at the Castle. Will Jeremy Corbyn launch an electoral challenge to Labour? There are some indications. Donald Trump might have started something. Now, in Britain, when trade unionists demonstrate against the stated policies of a newly elected party, their representative, addressing the media, begins by saying, "We are not, like Trump, denying the validity of the outcome of the election..." Beyond that, I cannot speculate about who will do what next. (Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop is better at doing that.) From the perspective of Poul Anderson's Technic History, we are still deep within the Chaos when many events must be inherently unpredictable which they are most of the time anyway. We want to live long enough to see what will happen next and maybe also influence it. Fiction illuminates possibilities although a future history series that combines later speculative fiction with earlier space opera cannot be fully serious futurology. Something will have to be done about the environment and in space before we can begin to approach a version of Technic civilization.
4 comments:
One of the weaknesses of the Roman, and then Byzantine Empires, was that they never developed a sense of dynastic legitimacy -- probably because they developed monarchy 'in history' rather than in 'mythic time'.
That lead to political instability.
Dynastic legitimacy is much less of an issue for a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch has little real power. Eg: The Dutch Republic was turned into a constitutional monarchy in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, ie: in history rather than in mythic time. There haven't been any coups to take over the Dutch Monarchy.
Though there was an odd maneuver to assure legitimacy during WWII.
Princess Juliana, the heir to the throne when Germany occupied the Netherlands, was in exile in Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliana_of_the_Netherlands
"When her third child, Princess Margriet, was born on 19 January 1943, Governor General Lord Athlone granted royal assent to a special law declaring Princess Juliana's rooms at the Ottawa Civic Hospital to be extraterritorial in order that the infant would have exclusively Dutch, not dual nationality.[6] Had these arrangements not been made, Princess Margriet would not be in the line of succession."
Kaor, Jim!
The Dutch republic was a de facto monarchy long before the Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars, due to the Stadholders of the house of Orange becoming virtually the kings of the Netherlands.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment