Or at least, not until the Orca Emperor has overstayed his or her welcome and the cycle changes to Teckla . . .

The related phenomenon of slave revolts, about which I know more, has a total success rate of two out of many thousands throughout recorded history. In Haiti in 1804 and in St Croix in 1848. Plus one near success, Berbice 1763-1764. That's all in six thousand years of recorded history.

It's often struck me that there's a clear line in SF between authors who believe that sociology is a valid source for informing their worlds and those that don't, just as there is between those who think the impossibility of FTL is important and those that don't. If the asociological authors got their physics that bady wrong, it would be like that explosion in Blakes 7 where the ship in space gives off smoke that rises and debris that falls.

But SF fans have a long tradition of questioning the physics. We test it, and occasionally mock it too. Authors give the bits that don't work in the real world names like "ansible" to highlight that they're concious dodges. But then those ansibles have to work within the rest of the real-world physics, or the reader falls out of the story, and the author hears about it.

You could say that what we're seeing more of these days is readers broadening that questioning, testing culture. And it turns out that some of the sociological and historical "truths" we've been taking for granted are the equivalents of Newtonian physics in this chaos-theory world.

It's what Kameron Hurley gets into with We Have Always Fought; it's what the medievalpoc Tumblr does.

Don't get me wrong; I'm OK with a good, well-chosen sociological ansible as a conscious choice in worldbuilding. But my standards for the sociological aspects of worldbuilding are higher than the unconscious mirroring of a simplistic vision of history and human interaction. Build your society unconsciously, and I may bounce off of your unconscious biases. Do it consciously, and I'll judge its realism.

Shorter me: as the snarky tweet goes, you can either tell me that women aren't soldiers in your world because history, or you can have that dragon.

Floating up out of a decades-deep memory sinkhole is Darko Suvin's observation about narratives in which the cosmos is favorably inclined toward a character. Might the Mary Sue be part of that category? (Fanfic [as a coherent subculture] and the Mary Sue are both after my time, so maybe this has already been asked and answered, as they say in TV courtroom dramas.)

Another upfloating thought--or maybe just an oddball association: Renaissance Faires.

Slave revolts: completely OT for literature discussion.

The slave revolt in St Croix in 1848 is an atypical revolt; the revolt sped up the process of emancipation, but slavery was already going to be eliminated (that decree was in 1847). That's a much easier thing to do than to overturn a system that everyone expects to persist.

Haiti in in my thinking unique in that it overthrew what the masters intended as a continuing system.

(My father is Cruzan--I remember reading the story of General Buddhoe in my early teens; he belongs in the pantheon of revolutionaries (Gandhi, Mandela) who wanted peace more than they wanted revenge.)

King Louis XVI in Mel Brooks's "History of the World: part I"

Speaking of the political views of authors, has anyone else noticed that Teckla is immediately preceded in the Cycle by the House of Orca, which controls the finance industry?

YES. Yes yes yes. I've been trying to figure out a way to explain this to people -- I've started to say "the physics of these relationships is wrong," which is better than "people don't work that way", even though it doesn't seem necessarily more likely to be received well by them. I don't know how to explain to someone that people don't work the way they seem to think they do. (For spherical people in a vacuum, of course.)

And sociological ansibles aren't even confined to fiction -- we're living through one now, with sharply-falling violence rates. Turns out we really could change people for the better, if we just sharply reduced childhood lead exposure.

No Man's Land @338: Okay, so that's what Larry Correia thinks.

Trouble is, he's wrong about how literature works, and how writers build meaning into it. The political beliefs he perceives as "messages" wedged willy-nilly into the defenseless story are, as near as I can tell, political beliefs he disagrees with. Political beliefs he finds congenial are perceived as well-integrated elements, organic parts of the stories in which they occur.

He's got the wrong end of the stick. The relationship between an author's assumptions about the universe and the story they tell is not a characteristic that's separable from "quality." It's an expression of how the writer thinks the universe works, and what they expect will happen in it. Call it a sense of causality.

A person's sense of causality is not separable from their political views. Instead, it's worked into the foundations of their experience of literature.

It explains why some fiction which I find rings true as a bell other people find to be clunky message fiction.

I'm sure skzb is entirely capable of expressing his own views on peasant revolts in our world, but I don't think the Cycle is the only thing (or even the main thing) keeping peasant revolts from working in Draegara. I think the main thing is, they're hard.

For instance, I don't really think Vlad's grandfather is telling him about the Cycle when he upbraids Vlad for getting involved in Teckla. I'm not sure how much he believes in or knows about the Cycle, really. His objections seemed to be on grounds that would be equally valid here or in the land of his birth.

(And regarding the sociological ansible of the Cycle, I think there's another out besides waiting for the downslope of an Orca reign. The Cycle only applies to the Draegaran Empire, right? And the borders of the Empire do change. So a peasant revolt could succeed in removing land from the Empire. You'd have to stop being Teckla first, presumably, and I'm not sure how that works, but it's probably possible.)

But wars of independence are not quite the same thing as a revolution, despite the Revolutionary War name, and revolutions tend to failure, either immediately or in terms of not actually making things any better for anyone except those who became the new elite to replace the old.

The question in both places is whether or not a writer's work can be separated from his politics.

'The war that accounts for much of the difference between the USA and Canada' isn't quite as catchy a name though.

soru @ 19: please elucidate. As a USian I didn't grow up with Roses history and as a tech geek I haven't read as much history as I ought to have, but AFAICT Roses were a struggle for who would have the approaching-absolute power, not telling a particular absolutist off. One could speak to what I've heard called the English Civil War -- but that ended up with the monarchy back in place.

tnh @ 345: "Trouble is, he's wrong about how literature works, and how writers build meaning into it. The political beliefs he perceives as "messages" wedged willy-nilly into the defenseless story are, as near as I can tell, political beliefs he disagrees with. Political beliefs he finds congenial are perceived as well-integrated elements, organic parts of the stories in which they occur. He's got the wrong end of the stick. The relationship between an author's assumptions about the universe and the story they tell is not a characteristic that's separable from "quality."

It's an expression of how the writer thinks the universe works, and what they expect will happen in it."

This makes a lot of sense to me. Often the most off-putting message in a story isn't the Message, which the author is inviting us to consider, but rather the bits of the author's worldview that constitute the backdrop of the story. It demands suspension of disbelief without acknowledging it. I'm happy to accept that for the purposes of this story that magic works this way. When it comes to human nature, I've got some thoughts of my own.

It's far more problematic when the suspension requested isn't something internal to the story logic like "sensible and level-headed character A does rash and heated action B" but ties into larger, societal demands for suspension of disbelief like "women aren't as capable as men." These aren't just interesting thought experiments but powerful social narratives with real impacts on the lives of real people. Thus, when hypercapable lady-soldier gets captured yet again, necessitating rescue by the male protagonist, that is at a bare minimum bad writing, just as much as any poor characterization. But it's also part of a larger, damaging narrative about women in the real world. For a reader that thinks women really aren't as capable, however the question of bad writing doesn't even exist.

And now I'm thinking about Tooth and Claw.

I was told, when startled by the statue of Cromwell prominent outside the House of Parliament, that the important thing was that a *limited* monarchy was back in place. Like a relatively harmless drug filling a neurotransmitter receptor, maybe.

Considering The relationship between an author's assumptions about the universe and the story they tell is not a characteristic that's separable from "quality." It's an expression of how the writer thinks the universe works, and what they expect will happen in it. :

I am sometimes struck by not believing an authors' view of how people work in some practical or causal sense, and sometimes struck by not agreeing with an authors' sense of right and wrong -- I think I can find examples in all four quadrants of agreeing or disagreeing. (And brilliant writing can suspend my disbelief in either, which is mind-opening or deeply squicky or both.)

The above mentioned annuals are grown for color. If you prefer fragrance, try Nicotiana alata. Known as "Jasmine Tobacco," it has long white flowers which exhale their fragrance at night. They are also popular with hummingbirds. This is a plant for the back of your beds, as they grow to be 3-5 feet tall.

As for the monarchy ... if Cromwell hadn't been a reformer of sorts, and his son Richard too weak to buck the trend, there'd have been no Commonwealth and no Restoration: just a new royal dynasty.

And then there was 1688 and the Glorious Revolutin, when Parliament decided the King was unreliable (read: too Catholic) and sent off for a more acceptable replacement ...

TL:DR; British politics in the 17th century laid the kindling for the bonfire of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. Yet most people remain largely ignorant of its significance.

Yet somehow it doesn't make the list. What am I missing?

*Or British, but I think this one was pretty English.

I'd say we had a social revolution stretched out across eighty years- 1750s to 1830s. Somewhere between Washington triggering the French and Indian War in the 1750s and Jackson ordering the Trail of Tears. The end of slavery in the North was a big deal. 1830s New York was Merchants versus Workies- big change from Tories versus Whigs. Jackson would not have been elected or appointed to much in the 1750s. Big Cotton sure changed the South.

Remember the Vandals vandalizing the Roman Empire? No? Before my time too. But if I won a slave revolt, I'd pay historians to say I was never a revolting slave.

The other obviously protagonisty character I've met is a tough ex-convict called something like Jake Bullet, who, while inside, kept himself to himself except when provoked by more troublesome inmates, whom he apparently killed. I guess they had it coming, or something. For this cleanup service, and for being really good at breaking rocks, he was rewarded with access to the prison library. Now released, he's helping the authorities bring in other magically gifted criminals.

I kind of want to keep reading, to see if these things make more sense when I know the context better. Then again, I have so much else to read.

But it's still as crappy a crop to pick when they have to pay people to do it, at least according to Stompin' Tom. All I can remember of Tillsonburg was the UAW Hall where the bridge tournament was held; specifically the A/C unit that would spark. About - and this is a real about - every 30 seconds. If it were regular, it would be fine; as it was, by round 6, you were jumping every time it hit slightly before or after when you expected it.

If I had to take a wild guess as to the reasons, it might involve successive generations of the British Establishment considering what useful or self-appealing narratives they might draw from the epoch, and abandoning the consideration rather quickly.

I asked my friend JY about it. JY knows all about European, especially British, royalty (he's the only American I know who can recite all the English Monarchs in order).

As for lessons to extract: how about "make sure it's absolutely clear what the succession is after you"? To their credit the British appear to have taken that lesson to heart. Maud teaches a lesson about not being arrogant and high-handed with people whose support you need, a lesson learned the hard way over and over all over the world.

Over in the in forums for the grand strategy game Crusader Kings II, I remember someone once making a post in response to complaints that it was unrealistic that -- in the game from the 1066 start -- England usually ended up in a pretty much constant state of civil war all the way up to the game's end date of about 1453. The post listed all the actual revolts, rebellions, succession wars, and such that actually took place in England during that period.

Summary: Pretty much any period the Norman or English nobility weren't attacking their foreign neighbours, they were busy with some sort of internal civil war, usurption, revolt, factional strife, or succession crisis.

'The Anarchy' (Stephen vs Matilda/Maud) just sits there as the biggest, nastiest, most treacherous blot in the middle, in an era bookended by the Norman Conquest, and the Wars of the Roses.

And then the Tudors and Stuarts come along and somehow put an (unstable, wobbly, iron-fisted and brutal) lid on things for 150 years, until Charles I, oblivious to how precarious the whole setup is, cocks it up completely.

Maybe that's why 'The Civil War' gets top billing as the The Civil War. The historians have a run of years to get out of the habit of assuming civil strife is the natural state of the English.

There used to be a fellow in my area (western Oregon) who was known for growing his own tobacco and making his own cigars, so I know it can be grown around here. But I haven't heard of anyone doing it recently.

Meanwhile, here in a substantially warmer zone, I can't get some of my blasted peppers to set fruit if I don't start them absurdly early indoors...

Yeah, what I sometimes mean here is that the author hasn't done demonstrated anything about the structure of the world which explains why the characters are behaving as they're behaving, or if he did, I didn't buy it. Nor does the characters' behavior illuminate anything about the structure of the world. Worst is when I can't even flagrantly make up enough details to tell myself a satisfying story about the structure that must exist to support that behavior, because the characters' actions on the page are just completely incoherent.

There is as well stuff "everybody knows" about how people acted as part of various structures that just ain't so. Various bits of the Middle Ages that give lie to at-times-commonly-held beliefs about Extruded Fantasy Product ("women could never be rulers!"), and similar reality-is-unrealistic bits of that nature. Some of it is facile and some of it insidious.

"When Christ and his saints slept"

So I understand from what I've heard and read.

There's this.

Don't know whether you have read it, but that is a big part of the thesis of Kevin Phillips' The Cousins' Wars. He argues there's a continuum between the Civil War that you mention, the American Revolution and the American Civil War -- that they are internal conflicts in a way that, say, Franco-German wars over a similar period are not. It's an interesting thought.

The thing I find striking about that list is how quickly the Princes and Dukes are joined by names bearing no greater distinction than "Mr".

And, for the heck of it, D.H. Lawrence: "The essential function of art is moral. Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation. But moral. The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, not the mind. The mind follows after, in the wake."

I try to make everything I write consistent with these two ideas (this one idea).

All legitimate descendants of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, excepting those who (a) are Roman Catholic, converted to Roman Catholicism, or married a Roman Catholic, (b) is Edward VIII, or (c) is descended from anyone excepted by (a) or (b). The order of priority is male-priority primogenitor, except for descendants of William and Catherine, in which case the order of priority is simple primogenitor.

Sophia was the closest Protestant relative with a claim on the throne when Parliament felt the need to come up with the rules (in 1701), and even then they had to skip over a bunch of Catholics with better claims. England was really fed up with Catholic kings by that time. She herself died in 1714 without becoming Queen Sophia, but her eldest son, George, became George I of Great Britain.

Since the rules of succession are effectively shared by 14 different independent countries, changing them is now not a simple matter and typically requires years of diplomatic efforts to get everyone on board. Not that it happens often. The most recent change was eliminating male-priority primogenitor for W&K's descendants. Before that was, I believe, the change eliminating Edward VIII and his (non-existent) descendants from the Royal succession. The Queen cannot directly change the line of succession, it's set by laws written by Parliament.

The titles of Prince and Princess are given out by the Queen at her discretion, and are typically reserved for her children, grand children, etc. There are also a few hereditary noble titles (Dukes, Counts, etc) that are held by some of those in the line of succession (or issued by the Queen, at her discretion), but those are limited.

So if you are a protestant descended from Sophia (with no RC ancestors in that line), but aren't close enough to the Queen to get a Prince/ss title, and don't have a noble title in your own right, you are simply Mr, Mrs, or Miss whatever.

* Unless you're the Sovereign in which case all bets are off

If I am remembering correctly, the basic idea was noticed by de Tocqueville in his study of the nascent US in the early 1800's.

He noted a major difference in inheritance patterns between Europe and the US, in that in Europe it was standard for the eldest to inherent everything, leaving later children destitute or dependent. It was traditional for 3rd sons to go into the church or military, since they were neither the heir nor the spare, and as such would have no means of support. This served to keep wealth concentrated in the heads of the aristocratic lines. In modern terms, Prince George will inherit all the wealth of his grandmother Elizabeth the Queen, while his uncle, great aunts, great uncles, and cousins will get relatively little of that wealth.

In contrast, in the US the standard inheritance pattern was that all the children are heirs. So, as you mentioned, the wealth gets split between the children, and thus gets spread out, not accumulated. He felt this was a great equalizer and a strength of the US system.

Yeah, that's nasty. I don't think there's any way to do property taxes that doesn't have some kind of bad results, though. If you *don't* let property taxes go up as assessed value of the property goes up, then you get very wealthy people who don't pay much taxes on their houses, which were relatively cheap back when they bought them. ISTR reading that this is a problem in California thanks to a ballot initiative years ago to keep people from being driven from their homes by property tax hikes based on skyrocketing assessed value.

Fairly simple compared to what?

#69 ::: albatross

Some sort of progressive land tax? It will probably have some other ill effect, but it might be graded in some way so as not to force people without much income off their land.

Ideally, property tax assessments should affect taxes by making them proportional to the *relative* differences in property valuation. If a city needs $100M in tax revenue to run its services, and has $10B in total assessed property, then the property tax rate should be $10/$1000 of assessed value. A home-owner with a $100K house should be asked to pay $1K in property taxes.

If everyone's assessment jumped 50%, so the total assessed value is now $15B, then the tax rate should now be $6.66/$1000, and the same home-owner (whose house is now assessed $150K) should be asked to pay the same $1K in property taxes.

Of course, if you only reassess black neighborhoods, only they will see the 50% increase in assessed value, and their property taxes will go up while the white neighborhoods go down. So it's possible to game the system in a discriminatory manner, but generally rising property values should not cause property taxes to rise alone.