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Sholio and I have been reading the Dragaera books up to date, and she has a great post pulling together strands from a long conversation we had about worldbuilding, plot, and foreshadowing in the entire series. Spoilers for the entire series, especially Vallista.
More thoughts on that, also extremely spoilery. Read her post first, then mine - mine won't make sense without hers.
So, going off the idea that the event 200 years ago which will allow the Dragaerans to start moving forward as a society was Adron's Disaster, and that the proof of it which Verra refers to in Vallista was the creation of something genuinely innovative (the time/space warping house)... the proof that they can now break barriers is them inventing a barrier-breaking device. Isn't that elegant?
I had found Teckla really depressing not only because Vlad and Cawti broke up, but because the revolutionaries were trying to do something which seemed inherently and permanently doomed by the very structure of the world. Because revolutions can only happen when the Teckla is due to be on top, and the republic can never last because the Cycle always changes back to monarchy, Cawti was effectively trying to break the laws of physics. Inequality and oppression were literally baked into the physical/metaphysical laws of the world.
It never occurred to me when I read Teckla that stuff like society not changing in 10,000 years and the rigid cycle was anything more than worldbuilding furniture, so to speak. But based on Issola and Vallista, it was in fact the actual STORY and also something I should have been interrogating a lot more than I did!
I think Vallista says that the Cycle isn't really based on the laws of the universe and therefore unbreakable; it's magical and also depends on everyone believing it's unbreakable, which is set by genetic engineering designed to make people believe in things and behave in certain ways.
And if that's breaking down, then what Cawti's doing isn't so crazy after all. The whole break with Cawti was in large part started because Vlad thought her goal was literally impossible - that you can't have a revolution when the Cycle says it's not time for it. So Vlad was behaving more like a Dragaeran (believing the Cycle is immutable law) and Cawti like an Easterner. I wonder if he's figured that out yet...?
The foreshadowing is so brilliant, if so. Here's an exchange from Taltos:
Aliera: "It is the reign of a reborn Phoenix, isn't it?" (referring to Adron) "I told him it would be. A Great Cycle--Seventeen Cycles. It had to be a reborn Phoenix. He wouldn't listen to me. He thought it was the end of the Cycle, that a new one could be formed."
Morollan tells her Zerika is the last Phoenix.
"The last Phoenix? There can't be another? Then the Cycle is broken. If not now, for the future."
"Maybe," said Morollan.
"Can there be another Phoenix?"
"How should I know? We have the whole Cycle to worry about it. Ask me again in a few hundred thousand years when it starts to matter."
I read that and assumed that there would in fact be another Phoenix, took that as the foreshadowing, and ignored the stuff about the Cycle being broken because anything that takes a hundred thousand years to happen won't be dealt with in this series. It neatly dangles the normal fantasy reveal (there's a secret heir) to distract us from what's really going on (the mad emperor was right, and what he was right about was the entire structure of civilization changing!)
I think Adron either started a new Cycle or broke the Cycle entirely, and not in a few hundred thousand years, but right after he and Aliera had that argument and he started the Interregnum. It's just taken everyone 200 years to notice because the Cycle at the Halls of Judgment, which everyone thinks IS the Cycle, doesn't show anything different. But I think it may well now be nothing but a spinny wheel on a wall that shows who's currently Emperor.
More thoughts on that, also extremely spoilery. Read her post first, then mine - mine won't make sense without hers.
So, going off the idea that the event 200 years ago which will allow the Dragaerans to start moving forward as a society was Adron's Disaster, and that the proof of it which Verra refers to in Vallista was the creation of something genuinely innovative (the time/space warping house)... the proof that they can now break barriers is them inventing a barrier-breaking device. Isn't that elegant?
I had found Teckla really depressing not only because Vlad and Cawti broke up, but because the revolutionaries were trying to do something which seemed inherently and permanently doomed by the very structure of the world. Because revolutions can only happen when the Teckla is due to be on top, and the republic can never last because the Cycle always changes back to monarchy, Cawti was effectively trying to break the laws of physics. Inequality and oppression were literally baked into the physical/metaphysical laws of the world.
It never occurred to me when I read Teckla that stuff like society not changing in 10,000 years and the rigid cycle was anything more than worldbuilding furniture, so to speak. But based on Issola and Vallista, it was in fact the actual STORY and also something I should have been interrogating a lot more than I did!
I think Vallista says that the Cycle isn't really based on the laws of the universe and therefore unbreakable; it's magical and also depends on everyone believing it's unbreakable, which is set by genetic engineering designed to make people believe in things and behave in certain ways.
And if that's breaking down, then what Cawti's doing isn't so crazy after all. The whole break with Cawti was in large part started because Vlad thought her goal was literally impossible - that you can't have a revolution when the Cycle says it's not time for it. So Vlad was behaving more like a Dragaeran (believing the Cycle is immutable law) and Cawti like an Easterner. I wonder if he's figured that out yet...?
The foreshadowing is so brilliant, if so. Here's an exchange from Taltos:
Aliera: "It is the reign of a reborn Phoenix, isn't it?" (referring to Adron) "I told him it would be. A Great Cycle--Seventeen Cycles. It had to be a reborn Phoenix. He wouldn't listen to me. He thought it was the end of the Cycle, that a new one could be formed."
Morollan tells her Zerika is the last Phoenix.
"The last Phoenix? There can't be another? Then the Cycle is broken. If not now, for the future."
"Maybe," said Morollan.
"Can there be another Phoenix?"
"How should I know? We have the whole Cycle to worry about it. Ask me again in a few hundred thousand years when it starts to matter."
I read that and assumed that there would in fact be another Phoenix, took that as the foreshadowing, and ignored the stuff about the Cycle being broken because anything that takes a hundred thousand years to happen won't be dealt with in this series. It neatly dangles the normal fantasy reveal (there's a secret heir) to distract us from what's really going on (the mad emperor was right, and what he was right about was the entire structure of civilization changing!)
I think Adron either started a new Cycle or broke the Cycle entirely, and not in a few hundred thousand years, but right after he and Aliera had that argument and he started the Interregnum. It's just taken everyone 200 years to notice because the Cycle at the Halls of Judgment, which everyone thinks IS the Cycle, doesn't show anything different. But I think it may well now be nothing but a spinny wheel on a wall that shows who's currently Emperor.
From:
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Looking back on it now, he does the misdirection thing really well, seeding in exposition and clues that are obscured by either something that's such a genre standard we don't think to question it (the ageless empire, the mad evil emperor who broke the world) or by obvious narrative bias (Vlad's viewpoint on the revolution and on Dragaerans in general).
I read that and assumed that there would in fact be another Phoenix, took that as the foreshadowing, and ignored the stuff about the Cycle being broken because anything that takes a hundred thousand years to happen won't be dealt with in this series.
Yeah, based on genre-typical tropes, we assume there will be another Phoenix because there HAS to be. Even if for plausibility reasons it's literally impossible (Zerika is the last; her consort is an Easterner). You just assume there's going to be some kind of magical ass-pull. But then you look back on it and think, wait a minute, actually the plausible explanation might be the real one: there literally can't be another Phoenix after Zerika is dead. At least not in an unbroken line. And Morrolan's complete lack of concern about it is very Dragaeran.
I think it may well now be nothing but a spinny wheel on a wall that shows who's currently Emperor.
This is such a great phrase.
From:
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That is really elegant! (and I do think it's likely the Cycle is either broken or, IDK, at least, like, cracked by Adron's Disaster, and then Vlad is going to break it the rest of the way (or Sethra and Verra will, wielding Vlad and the others).
But I think it may well now be nothing but a spinny wheel on a wall that shows who's currently Emperor.
I also love that phrase! :D
From:
no subject
Other People are stagnant and cannot have new ideas! But Our Friends are the exceptional ones and they love new ideas! Yeah okay buddy. Two things there: one, I really feel like by the time you're in your 60s structuring books so that people with an affinity for your stuff are not the only interesting people should be more appealing. But two, we learn about people in books by the examples we see. So if we're supposed to learn how Dragaerans are...but the ones who are friends with Vlad aren't like that...and we mostly spend time with the ones who are friends with Vlad...eh. It's structurally unsatisfying to me, is what I'm saying. This is a case where tell and show are in conflict--the stagnation is mostly told--and that works less well for me with each passing book.