> At 10:12 04/09/2005, Maximilian Wilson wrote: > >According to the poem, a reborn Phoenix (if it's different from a > >decadent Phoenix) should come at the very end of the Great Cycle, > >followed then by a decadent Phoenix. But with Tortaalik/Zerika, we saw > >just the opposite, and then Zerika handed off power to a Dragon. > > > >Any comments? >Cracks and Shards! I have been reading these books for how many years?, and I never even >noticed that. Mr. Wilson, you have pointed out a notable Crack. >-- Mark A. Mandel I don't really see this as a Crack. The poem, after all, isn't discussing Great Cycles at all. It's simply describing the Cycle and using some poetic imagery to connect the tail back to the head and show that it IS in fact, a cycle. The poem says nothing about Great Cycles. It's clear that every Phoenix reign is expected to begin strongly, then gradually sink into decadence and ineffectual management. The transition between Great Cycles is the exception. In fact, we don't really know where the idea of a Reborn Phoenix comes from. I'm pretty sure that Aliera is the only one who mentions it at all. Paarfi, who ought to be reliable in matters involving the transition between Emperors, supposes that the Orb tried to move to Adron when Tortaalik died. Such a blatant error would reflect extremely poorly on him from a scholarly standpoint. So much so, that we can reasonably form the assumption that his readers (or at least his peers criticising his work) would believe the same thing. That is, despite Tortaalik's reign being the first of a new Great Cycle, the general expectation was that the orb would go next to House Dragon. The idea of a Reborn Phoenix taking the Orb was not one set in stone. Rather, it was more likely to be considered a theory or a philosophical problem. Until the Interregnum and Zerika's rescue of the Orb there was no practical experience to base an expectation upon. It is interesting that when Sethra sets out to retrieve the Orb and restore the Empire that she calls upon the Phoenix heir instead of the Dragon Heir. We accept this as a matter of History but we still don't really know why she made that choice or why the Gods accepted Zerika as the rightful Emperor. Apparently, it was simply "meant to be". Aliera certainly believed in the Reborn Phoenix. It was one of the first things she asked about upon being re-corporated. We can imagine, then, that Adron also believed and his motivation for attempting to take the Orb was not purely altruistic. At the very best interpretation, he was too impatient to wait around for a Reborn Phoenix to appear (or for Tortaalik to be "reborn") and attempted to circumvent the Cycle with disastrous results. At it's worst, he was power-hungry and was, as Aliera has intimated, trying to destroy the Cycle itself. In any case, with only one Great Cycle in the history of the Empire, I don't think we have any solid basis for deciding what's "appropriate" in the transition between Great Cycles. I certainly wouldn't use the poem as a hard and fast guide of any sort.