On Apr 8, 2005 10:12 AM, Scott Schultz <scott at cjhunter.com> wrote: [snip] I really like your description of what's really going on with Vlad's relationships. Perhaps you could put it up as an essay somewhere--isn't there a Dragaera FAQ? > Ultimately, the question is one that Vlad himself has to wrestle with > because it illustrates one of the central contradictions of his life. He's > an Easterner, an outcast, yet he's also a member of the nobility. He's an > alien in an Empire that he hates for the brutality and scorn that he grew up > with and that is inflicted daily upon his fellow Easterners, yet all of his > closest friends and associates are not only Dragaerans but also some of the > pillars that help uphold the Empire that has so mistreated him that he > became an assassin because it gave him an excuse to make money killing > Dragaerans. Vlad's entire identity is a contradiction, which is no better > illustrated by the fact that he has devoted friends who will risk everything > for him personally, yet who will calmly talk about making war on his > ancestral homeland as if it shouldn't bother him that they're doing so. <Phoenix spoiler in next paragraph> * * * Ah, a Yendi allusion. Do you remember how Vlad tells Cawti about how much he loathes Dragaerans, that he even has to work to forget how much he loathes his own employees? Bunk, I say, even though he might believe it at the time. Look at Vlad's reaction to Sticks' death. Either something has changed or Vlad has been kidding himself all along. In a way, Vlad is more race-conscious than many of the Dragaerans he meets. Teldra points out that the lifespan difference accounts for how many Dragaerans treat most Easterners, although of course there are bigoted thugs and nobles out there too--but in a House-conscious feudal society, that's only to be expected. I really don't think Morrolan cares what House or species you are if you're not a Dragon, for instance; which is not the same thing as thinking Dragons are superior to non-Dragons. Maybe Vlad's still hung up from being Dolivar, and the "Easterner/Jhereg" label provides a convenient explanation for why he feels like an outsider. It's like a man with a luckless love life complaining to his best friend about how much he hates women, without realizing somehow that it's a woman he's talking to. "But she doesn't count." What he really means is that he hates selfish cowards, but since the most obvious difference between himself and the selfish cowards he's thinking of is that they're female and he's not, he generalizes along _that_ boundary instead of the more subtle, true one. Vlad does that with Dragaerans. > What Vlad doesn't yet understand (and this goes back to the beginning of > this rather wordy post, making it a Cycle in and of itself, *heh*) is that > Morollan and Aliera don't think of Vlad as "an Easterner". They think of him > as "A Dragaeran (culturally, not racially) who happens to have Easterner > ancestors." Vlad has spent so much of his life building an identity around > NOT being a Dragaeran that I almost think it would break him if he ever > truly accepted the idea that he himself is a part of the Empire and that > being "Dragaeran" may mean something other than being an "elf" or a "dwarf". Aha! That's a very interesting way of putting it. Although we're going to need a new vocabulary to distinguish "humans" from "humans," as species go. Max Wilson -- I die! I mis-remember my friend's telephone number and dial into a hydroelectric dam's power line, electrocuting myself. My roommates mistake my flailing spasms for sign language, coincidentally describing a delicious recipe for fried tungsten with petroleum jelly. They try the recipe. All die! O, the embarassment.