Dragaera

the Yendi Conspiracy

Davdi Silverrock davdisil at gmail.com
Sat Dec 3 21:30:16 PST 2005

One of the things that I like about the Wikipedia is seeing summaries
for a particular thing can sometimes bring new thoughts about what's
being summarized.

Case in point: The conspiracy in /Yendi/.

As it is laid out, what Sethra the Younger wanted was to conquer the
East.  OK, it's a goal, everyone has hobbies...  but how did she go
about achieving this goal?  Well, she apparantly decided that (a) the
Emperor had to be one in favor of conquest, and (b) the Warlord had to
be in favor of conquest.  Obviously, the Warlord would preferably be
herself, but it seems likely that she would have accepted an
immediately subordinate rank if she could just be the /de facto/
leader of the conquering forces.

And she enlists her friend, a Yendi sorceress, in order to carry this out.

OK, there's just one wee problem: It's stupid!  Or at least, woefully
incomplete.  And her Yendi friend should have been able to point out
what was *really* necessary.

In order to launch a conquest, what you need to do is:

(a) convince those that like to fight that there will be plenty of fighting.
(b) convince those that like profit that there will be plenty of loot.
(c) convince anyone not in the above that the target of the conquest
is a terrible threat.
(d) convince everyone that anyone who is skeptical about the venture
is a traitor, or just too weak.

So given a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign as events lead
up to the next reign, and maybe a few Easterner attacks (fabricated
from nothing, or real ones exaggerated wildly) it wouldn't *matter*
who the Emperor or Warlord is - the war would be sold, and K'laiyer
e'Lanya (had he become Emperor) would have had to permit the armies to
advance East for purely political reasons, regardless of his own
feelings in the matter.

Hm.  Although there may be other factors as well.