The Draka In The Galaxy

SM Stirling's Draka begin to sound like Poul Anderson's Merseians. See here.

(i) The Archon anticipates:

"'...the galaxy under the Domination of the Race...'" (Drakon, p. 275)

(ii) - but recognizes that this will take a long time and that:

(iii) "'...interstellar government will never be very tightly centralized.'" (ibid.)

Thus, for the snakes, as for the gatortails, it is the Race, not any particular nation or state, that counts. Each extrasolar colony has its own Archon.

By "the Merseians," in this context, I mean the Wilwidh Roidhunate culture, not every member of that species. This culture envisages a transcendent but nevertheless racially partial deity (!) whereas the Draka eschew all religion, having failed to revive Norse polytheism.

The Merseians face many intelligent species in their version of our galaxy whereas the Draka are reasonably confident that there are no nearby technological civilizations in the galaxy of Earth/1. However, there are such civilizations in parallel timelines. The Director of Technics suggests that there might even be dinosaurs that (a) did not become extinct and that (b) did later become intelligent.

There might be. However, I do not believe that (b) follows from (a). Intelligence is not inevitable. If reptiles, both large and small, had continued to flourish without requiring the advantages of intelligence, then there would not have been any natural selection of intelligence.

But it is to be hoped that the Draka "'...run into more than we can handle...'" (p. 276)

Merseians And The Draka

See here.

Kinds of Regimes
democracies or dictatorships
real or sham democracies
flexible or inflexible regimes

Poul Anderson's Merseian Roidhunate and SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka cannot change their basic policies. The Roidhunate regards diplomacy as war by other means. Thus, in war or peace, the goals remain racial supremacy and galactic domination. Clearly, Terrestrial Intelligence needs to know this. If Merseian peace negotiators were honest, then they would require a reciprocal response. However, Anderson shows us that such an approach to the Merseians would be fatal. But this is fiction. In real life, how many intelligence services learn their enemies' real motivations and how many instead are driven by the ideological presuppositions of their own ruling elites? I suspect that there are more of the latter.

The Draka cannot invade North America immediately. Therefore, they expect their grandchildren or great-grandchildren to do so, and plan accordingly. There is no way that any vote in the Draka Assembly will change this:

"'...if there's one thing the Eurasian War showed so's even a Yankee couldn't miss it, it was exactly what the Domination is an' what we intend. The Alliance will hold; we may be able to convince a few useful idiots of our peaceful intent, but not enough to matter. Pity.'"
-SM Stirling, Under The Yoke (New York, 1989), p. 115.

Useful idiots? Knowing that that was what they thought would certainly harden positions against them. 

On Merseia and in Drakia, education incorporating military training is one practical application of a supremacist philosophy, the only difference being that Merseian females do not fight...

Flandry's Life

"The Game of Glory" gives a unique account of Dominic Flandry's life over a period of two or more years, not just during a single incident or assignment.

During this period, Flandry:

has a first encounter with the Merseian agent A'u on the frontier planet Conjumar in the Spican province;

dispatches agents who search, unsuccessfully, for the escaped A'u on nearby planets;

has a first encounter with the Merseian agent Aycharaych in the Betelgeusean system;

infiltrates the Merseian Rhoidunate;

there finds an uninhabited terrestroid planet set aside as an aristocratic hunting preserve where the Terran Navy then builds an advanced base;

has leave on Terra where he spends three months at the Lyonid family's perpetual banquet, then fights a duel;

returns to Spica;

is involved in the conquest of the planet Brae where a clue enables him to track down A'u on the planet Nyanza.

We wish that the Flandry series had provided more such details.

Talwin

In the Wilderness between the Terran Empire and the Merseian Rhoidunate, the system of the star Siekh includes many asteroids but only four planets, including Talwin: 

eccentric orbit, probably disrupted by early passage of another star;
distance from Siekh varying from 0.87 astronomical units to 2.62 a.u.;
three degrees of axial tilt;
planet-wide seasons;
twice-Terran year;
six month summer, six week autumn, fifteen month winter, six week spring;
eighteen hour day;
no moon;
blue vegetation;
ankle-high equivalent of grass, called wair by Merseian explorers;
many scattered islands;
one continent (400 kilometers wide, wedge-shaped, stretching from north pole to equator, divided by an east-west mountain range);
huge icecaps forming, extending 45 degrees, then melting each year;
spring floods;
in summer, snowless mountain peaks, northern swamps, boiling southern lakes and rivers;
Domrath, winter hibernators, feast and copulate all autumn;
Ruadrath estivate as sea animals all summer.