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30 comments
I read with interest the exchange between you and lesjones (whose talent and intellect I also treasure). While it was interesting I must admit I chuckled a bit at the part about France having a violent revolution and England not having one. Living in a country that owes it's existence to a violent revolution and separation from England gives me a different perspective (think also of Ireland, Scotland and India). But the subsequent discussion about potential or perceived parallels between Xolhia's situation and RL is intriguing. While I understand why you might say that our time sees revolution is bad, I cannot in all honesty agree. If you limit the phrase to "violent revolution" I think there is truth to what you say. However, history is replete with non-violent revolution (industrial revolution, sexual revolution, women's rights. digital revolution) but you are correct that it is usually a matter of those that are "well off" see no benefit (for them) and so oppose revolution while it is fomented , grows and expands among those, not "well off" and see a chance to become well off. There are, of course, exceptions but generally I believe that holds true. Good comments and great posting, Thank You and lesjones also.
Damocles my respect her for who she is, and he respect others in the Shadow Legion, because he probably fought with them during the war at High Rock, and some of the people in the Shadow Legion might respect him, but not trust him as well. Damocles in my world is a antihero like character, but still has his good moments. Damocles also wants Titus Mede dead and the Thalmor, Damocles started to become a more darker and angry person, after learning the truth for his fathers death, and wife. He wanted to walk in the Whit Gold Tower and kill Titus Mede for what he done to him and his people. kartika stops him and talks him out of it, because she loves and cares, and she knew it would not end the way he wants it to, just ends with him dead.
I hope in your world, kartika's love is strong enough keep Damocles rage at bay and not leave him, because it he can get bad and become another person, he actually hit her, and regretting it and started to punch walls and hurting himself, because he does not like the man he is becoming and cry's all the time. Lol sorry for dropping this on you, but this is how much I love your work and characters. I wanted to tell you a bit more about Damocles.
Love her!
However, at the same time I regard Xolhia Vetius as one of the most dangerous people in any Skyrim game I have ever read of. She presents a face of the Penitus that will set the whole country aflame and has the potential to pitch it into the kind of civil war that will make the conflict between the Stormcloaks and Imperials look like a Saturday-night bar-fight.
I can see families rent apart as father turns against son, mother against daughter, brother against brother......but with an almost animal savagery fuelled by an idealism that can never create, but will only ever destroy, masquerading as a "liberation" from "ignorance"based upon her own self-serving political motivations.
I LOVE her and your storyline is just superb!
Since you're an Englishman, the revolution that your nation did not have the traits of violent regicide, because the royal power has agreed to cede power to the parliament, receiving in return a guarantee of the preservation of its privileges.
In France, things went very differently, the outcome is cruel and tyrannical of the French Revolution, were definitely one of the reasons for the peaceful political changein your country.
Xolhia couald accept definitely a turning peaceful ofconstitutional type, but she believes that the road is impassable because the emperor is not a king and the world she inhabits is still deeply immersed in feudal and religious dimension. The emperor is a housekeeper transnational too impressive to be kept on the throne. The emperor, by definition, has absolute power and only falling can open the way for a political renewal for her absolutely necessary.
Also Xolhiais not so selfish as you consider her. Despite having reached a great power, such that a general offers to help help to take the imperial throne. She refuses because certainly would become a puppet, but above all, because it would be a betrayal of all that she believes. Her belief is that the Republican revolution is the best way, just to avoid the bloody civil war that threatens to explode at the death of Titus Mede. Without direct heirs no one can camp the right to succeed to him. Act before, assassinatehim, maintain the initiative is for her the best way to avoid a bloodshed, to anticipate the moves of Thalmor, and create a new type of government in which the people will recognize and be ready to defend it in the Great War that is prepared.
The problem is ideological, the question is why we now consider the revolution in this contemporaneity (the real one) bad, and the revolutionary a villain? Because we are deeply conditioned to defend our political situation, although this is currently terrible and has no vision of a possible future that is not the catastrophe. Xolhia will face catastrophe, and yet she is a character in the storm, she knows yet see her guiding star, she knows to remain true to herself, to the point that she will rebel at the same Merhunes Dagon, according to her "a fucking reactionary".
I understand the underlying premise of your viewpoint in relation to the historical fundamentals, in terms of both the French Revolution and the revolution that is to remove the power of the emperor in Skyrim.
However, one is given to wonder if that is where the similarities end. The fundamental cause of the French revolution was as the result of a real grievance, the massive and debilitating gap between those who held power, and those who were under it's heel rather than that of a perceived need for ideological change at a political level, which is the apparent reason for revolution in Skyrim.
Whilst the gap between the poor and the rich in Skyrim certainly exists, it cannot be said to be in any degree comparable with pre-revolutionary France, surely? Yes, there exists a feudal society within Skyrim, although in truth the reach of the emperor seems distant and weak, but the feudal hierarchy of Skyrim was not imposed upon the land by the Imperial regime, but in fact pre-dates Imperial influence, unless my understanding of the lore is very badly mistaken, and in general appears to be a rather benign version of English feudalism.
As to England's failure to embrace violent revolution, I would say that you are correct...to a degree, but it must be recognised that revolution in England did not start in the mid 18th Century, but can be reasonably argued to have started with the forcing of King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. Whilst it is a fact that the curbing of the King's power by the signing of that document only immediately affected the English barons, the elite of their time, it established the basis for the fundamental freedoms which followed and were refined over later centuries, and I would put it to you that the major impact of the French revolution upon the English political psyche was the recognition and fear that it could spread to England, especially if it was manipulated to do so by the various discontented minorities that existed there at that time.
It is also important to note that the English King, Charles 1, was beheaded by the consent of what became the parliament of England under the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, so the English did in fact engage, to a lesser degree than the French, in revolutionary regicide.
The fact that parliament invited his son, Charles II, to ascend the English throne again after the death of Cromwell (albeit with much reduced power over both Lords and Commons) also cannot be ignored.
One thing in passing though, (and you could not have known this) is that I am not English, nor do I have any English blood. My father was a proud Welshman and my mother was from Padova, in Northern Italy. I was borne in Benghazi, Libya and my sister in Hannover, in Germany.
as regards the context of the game instead I find I too agree with you. As the comments move on skyrim are partly correct, although we must remember that there are two civil wars in the course, cities like Riften letteralemente have been devastated by the economic crisis, is full of bandits, all signs that indicate a situation does not exactly thriving. But the real objection that I move to you, is that I have never spoken of Skyrim, but of Cyrodiil, where the situation is not clear. Camilla Valerius says this: "I came here from the Imperial Province, to work with my brother Lucan. It got bad back in Cyrodiil. The war with the Thalmor ruined ... everything. I came to Skyrim looking for a better life."
Cyrodii passes through a much deeper crisis than that the one presented in Skyrim. after 30 years Cyrodiil has not yet recovered from the war, there maybe there are the conditions to foment a political revolution. Xolhia still does not intend to rely on a popular uprising, for which, according to her, the people are not ready, but through a coup, overthrow the empire. Fallen the Empire given the difficult social conditions of Cyrodiil, the people will be more inclined to accept the political change and the assignment of all powers to the elder council as to Ocato times. I naturally build a fairly credible chronicle of Cyrodiil condition, passing through a deep crisis of economic, political and religious nature.
Thanks for the clarification about your origin,do you speak Italian as well?
p.s I know...