#valdemaran politics

[softlysilverfountainsfall]

There is almost no way that anyone with an ounce of monarchical political knowledge would believe that Jisa and Treven's marriage came about the way it actually did. The theories must range wildly:

Jisa's mother Shavri used her position, both as King's Own and King Randale's lover, to ensure that her daughter would become Queen Consort if not Queen Regnant. (Very, very possible given the influence of both those positions and even likely, except for the fact that it couldn't be more wrong, Shavri was doing her best to keep Jisa off the throne)

1a. Debate ranges over how much Randale was involved, whether as a co-conspirator to being completely manipulated or too sick to do anything.

2. Randale used his position as King to make Treven marry his daughter so that Jisa would quasi-inherit even if she wasn't Chosen.

3. That one historian who is incredibly right about Vanyel being Jisa's biological father (probably not recorded in the Chronicles) and incredibly wrong about all the conclusions drawn from that. (No, Vanyel, arguably the most powerful person in the kingdom, did nothing to make Jisa queen.)

4. Treven had to marry Jisa to satisfy some court faction that supported her/bloodline traditionalists willing to overlook the out-of-wedlock part if it meant keeping Randale's direct bloodline (joke's on them).

5. Jisa seduced Treven to keep a position in the royal family.

6. What actually happened (which is probably in the Chronicles): two teens in love eloped with complete disregard for politics, they just happened to be the King's daughter and his distant Chosen heir.

[inexplicifics]

Oh my gosh, inex! and i thought *MY* Wip list was long! Just what you posted was 46 wips!!!! i think I'm at about half that for *active* Wips (and i lost count of stuff i had ideas for and filed away and never got back to). (one of these days, my muse will return in more than intermittent bursts)

Anyway, a while back, I had started my first Valdemar fic, got sidetracked for whatever reason (probably that muse taking off again), set it aside and then because of you, i managed to get my inspiration back and finished it up! Which caused 2 sequel ideas to bloom (we'll see how they go) as well as a complete separate crossover idea.

So i think you can see where I'm going with this - Vanyel's always been a favorite of mine in that world and so I'm interested in your Vanyel fic :D (heck, I actually reread what you had so far recently!) Not sure you've had time to poke at it recently, but if you have, I'm definitely keen on it.

-Pherryt, because apparently you can switch blogs for replies but not for asks.

Yeah, I have Wordy Bitch Disease pretty badly, and an unfortunate habit of getting new ideas pretty much daily. It's a problem.

Valdemar was a childhood formative influence, and frankly Vanyel needs some fix-its, so if I can dump the poor traumatized bastard into Kaer Morhen with slightly less trauma than canon, it seems like a good thing to do!

Here's a bit I wrote relatively recently:

Vanyel lifts a hand in a tentative wave. The wiedzmin feel muted but definitely cheerful against his Empathy; they both wave back, and reach the steps in a very short time, dropping down to hunker on their heels a polite distance away. Axel says, “Hello!” - In Valdemaran. “You speak our tongue!” Tylendel blurts, excitement flaring up through their bond. Axel shakes his head. “Hello, goodbye, yes, no, Companion, Herald, food, ale, privy,” he rattles off. Vanyel laughs. Those are the most important words to start with, he supposes. Cedric smirks and adds, very smugly, “Fuck.” Tylendel falls over into Vanyel’s lap, laughing too hard to even make a sound.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The First Valdemaran Legend

The more I read of Valdemar and it's expansive universe, the more convinced I am that it's becoming Discworldian in the fact that Mercedes Lackey's flagship universe has multiple entry points. Arrows of the Queen was my entry point (and is the publication order entry point), Magic's Pawn is where a lot of people start, I would argue that you could also start with The Oathbound: Book I: Vows and Honor, and now people have the option to begin with the founding of Valdemar itself. Let's talk Beyond.

This book is objectively not the first time Mercedes Lackey has told Baron Kordas Valdemar's story. The story of Valdemar's founding is given in some form or other in multiple books, including the Arrows of the Queen and Mage Wind trilogies and Exile's Honor. The story is also relayed in "Valdemar," for those of you in the Valdemar music Fandom, and Kordas also is the main speaker in "I Found a Land." So honestly it was only a matter of time before the founding got its own set of books, and Beyond is the first book.

We start in the old empire, which is...just kind of alarming in terms of how fast it's declining and how ugly it gets. Like, Kordas's kids are "officially" his brother's bastards so the emperor won't take them as hostages. It's BAD, y'all. Kordas is known in the imperial court as basically a not-terribly-intelligent fop, but that is entirely a cover for The Plan, which has been in the works for at least three or four generations of Valdemars, and The Plan is to take everyone on the duchy and basically gate as far away from the empire as they can to start over. Every possible industry and resource on the duchy is skimmed to prepare for The Plan, so they're building barges, stockpiling food, medicine, and other stuff, and insofar as Kordas can tell, he is going to be the Valdemar to implement the plan.

And then he's summoned to the imperial court.

I want to more or less leave the plot there to avoid major spoilers, because this book is absolutely worth a read. What is really well done is the simultaneous sense of a long-term, extremely detailed and well thought out plan and last-minute tap-dancing to make sure that things don't all go to hell because plans tend to fall apart the INSTANT you implement them.

The other really interesting thing about this book that I'm not actually sure Mercedes Lackey has done before in Valdemar--or at least not done in this much detail--is explore the long-term ramifications of a family that was composed politically rather than for love. We get a little bit of that in Exile's Honor and Exile's Valor with Selenay and Karathanelan, but Karathanelan is dead by the end of the second book and frankly they were a bad decision from the jump. Kordas and Isla, on the other hand, are fully like a decade and three children into their marriage that was largely of convenience and "the devil you know" and we get to see how they negotiate that. It's a really interesting dynamic and not one I feel like I see very often.

Unfortunately that comes with Isla's sister having a massive unrequited crush on Kordas which never manages not to be just...sheer cringe on the page. I could have done without that.

In general though, the plotting, intrigue, and overall worldbuilding in this book was fun and compelling, and as a plot-based starting point for the Valdemar universe, I honestly think it's a solid start.

[star-anise]

I'm rereading the first Heralds of Valdemar book so I can write a longer essay about how it shows a 1980s understanding of psychological trauma. But I also have like... little nitpicks. Little things that I think would improve the books a bunch.

Like, make the Holderkin Karsite-speaking Vkandis-worshippers. Make them like... the Protestants of Vkandis's religion.

We already know they're religious dissidents who got the fuck outta Karse a couple generations back, and we know Talia "can't talk right" when she gets to Haven. We also know that the super-insular Karsite state cult of Vkandis later gets reformed/brought more into line with its God's intentions, and when they form a military alliance with Valdemar, Talia becomes a Sun-Priestess

So I say, let's connect the dots and say: Sources of resistance to Karsite Vkandis worship include Karsite diaspora groups in Valdemar, Hardorn, and Rethwellan, which may still be puritanical and xenophobic towards their new neighbours, but they are less puritanical and xenophobic than the groups still left in Karse, and they're quite eager to fight against Karse, even if it's not precisely for their new homes. That kind of factionalism is why we get tiny little splinter-states like Menmellith.

So okay, Talia's kind older brother Andrean, when he taught her to read, also taught her Valdemaran so she could read books in that language too. That's part of why she gets away with reading subversive literature and learning Valdemaran ideals--none of the other women in Sensholding speak or read Valdemaran. But her vocabulary is better than her pronounciation, and adjusting to full Valdemaran immersion in the Collegium is still really hard.

This really affects her relationship with Alberich, because now they both speak Valdemaran as a second language; their first languages are mutually intelligible. He probably also understands her body language and conditioned responses a whole lot better.

This also means that the random throwaway mention of a short story tucked into a side-anthology about Talia becoming a priestess of the Sun Lord and aiding the reform of the faith actually becomes really resonant. It's not enough to undo her horrible childhood, it doesn't even make her family un-disown her. But it recontextualizes her origins. It turns this part of her that was surely painful and inconvenient (because you know her political detractors would emphasize her soft Karsite accent) into a source of strength. It's the literal god of her forefathers saying, "Hey. What happened to you was fucked up. They were wrong. You get to be in power now and change the lives of children in the future."

It's a bookend to how she fled her home on Companionback as a child because she saw a religious life in the Lady's halls as more oppressive than every other option; she's riding on a Companion through those hills again, but this time it's for a holy purpose that's going to liberate and save.

[wuxiaphoenix]

A Long Road Chapter 11 Ficbit - Where, Oh Where

Where is he, anyway?

Talia kept the words unspoken. The middle of Companions’ Field was no place to hold a politically sensitive discussion. And the current location of the Yiling Patriarch - not in the Burial Mounds - was probably one of the hottest political potatoes you could toss into the Jianghu. Not least because if Wei Wuxian was the only person protecting the remnants of the Wen Sect-

“A-Yuan.” Lan Wangji sucked in a breath, as if he’d taken an arrow to the ribs. And spoke, a ripple of sounds not at all Valdemaran.

Nie Huaisang blinked. Ventured a question; bewilderment.

Talia shot a glance at her husband. Who was listening, but with a headshake that told her he was only getting a few words of Jianghu.

Lan Wangji spoke a few words, as if each were precious as diamond. Yiling was one of them.

Nie Zonghui stiffened; shock.

Beside him, Nie Huaisang paled; shock, hurt, fury. Fired quick, terse words back.

“Something about Qiongqi Path,” Dirk murmured. “I think that was the Wen prison camp?”

“It was,” Lan Wangji stated. Fixed his gaze back on the sect heir. “You did not know.”

“Ancestors, no!No wonder he went berserk....” Nie Huaisang cleared his throat. “I... can’t say if my brother knew. His hatred for the sect of our father’s murderer runs deep, even now.” He took a deep breath. “But Ithink the war should be over. There’s been enough dying. And before I left - before we left, my brother agreed it was enough. He wouldn’t go back on that.”

“Sect Leader Nie’s honor is not in doubt,” Lan Wangji inclined his head. Paused. “Wei Wuxian is in Haven.”

A fanned blink. “Well, yes, we all know that-”

Talia cleared her throat; Nie Huaisang as fluttery distraction might be amusing, but right now it wasn’t necessary. And could do real harm. “You should know that Queen Selenay is considering the option of rescuing certain war refugees. We expected to have to negotiate with the guardian of the Burial Mounds.”

Only Wei Wuxian is here. And the man Lan Wangji loves would never leave innocents undefended. So - where are the Wens?

[leveragehunters]

This is, like, maybe a completely pointless thing (probably a completely pointless thing) but it’s been going round in my head for the last, uhhh, how long have I been writing the Valdemar AU? A month or so now. So. Right. Heralds. Queerness. Steve and Bucky and Steve/Bucky and how I deal with that. The canon DOES NOT agree. And part of that is going to be an artifact of the order the books were written in (and probably when they were written, since Arrows of the Queen came out in 1987).

[look everything under the cut is really just me meandering on about Arrows and Vanyel and picking a way to go for my Valdemar AU so...if you click it that’s what you’re getting]

In Arrows we have Keren’s internal thoughts of most Heralds being uncomfortable both with her being a lesbian and her relationship with Ylsa ‘uneasy about getting too close, as if her preferences were some kind of stain that might rub off on them’ (although I suspect that was partly to make Talia Extra Special since she completely accepted Keren and Ylsa and their relationship). Additionally, shaych (the blanket term for same-gender attraction in Valdemaran) has completely disappeared from Heraldic/Valdemaran vocabulary (canonically; in reality, Lackey hadn’t invented it yet).

Flash backwards 600 years to Vanyel’s time, and yes, we have Herald Jaysen, who has ‘all those Kleimar prejudices about same-sex pairings’, but it’s described as exactly that. As prejudices. Vanyel is not a reliable source for how other Heralds feel about him being shaych. Given how hard he initially got hit with Jaysen’s prejudice’s after Tylendel died and the aftermath (although a BIG part of that was that Jaysen thought Vanyel was a parasite, and Jaysen eventually smartened the hell up) and his childhood and his, just, everything he’s always going to believe people believe the worst about him because of it--sadly, a lot of the time he’s right, but I don’t think he’s right about Heralds since those people are never Heralds (show me your evidence, Van). I think our best source is Tantras, he of the ‘no one cares about your bedmates a quarter as much as you seems to think - they’re more worried a bird will crap on your head and you’ll level the palace’.

Heralds aren’t perfect. They’re human. They fuck up. But at their heart of hearts they are good. The whole damn point of Valdemar is ‘there is no one true way’. Baron Valdemar, canny bugger that he was, prayed to every damn god and goddess he knew for help to save his people (a desperate dude who was hedging every bet). No one true way is the point - not ‘there’s no one true way except for who you bone and who you love and who you’re attracted to’.

Yes, some of the people Companions Choose may, like Jaysen, have prejudices they were raised with--but part of becoming a Herald has to be getting past those (ref Tylendel and Savil trying to get him past the politics of his brother/family). That’s part of what makes Heralds Heralds . We see plenty of people who wallow in those prejudices despite all evidence to the contrary, like Vanyel’s father (sorry not sorry, but fuck Withen -- too godamn little too godamn late... I may still have issues), people who are homophobic as fuck, like the asshole brats at Lavan’s school, and there’s an entire country Van and Stefan can’t go to together, and Tarma and Kethry can’t risk being mistaken for lovers in, because being shaych is effectively outlawed (Rethwellan), but it makes no damn sense for Heralds, en masse, to be homophobic, queerphobic, etceteraphobic. (It actually makes more sense for them to be queer as hell, but that’s an entirely different pointless post.) So I don’t accept the premise of Arrows. I reject it utterly and take Tantras as my guide.

Which is my roundabout way of saying that’s where I ended up: rejecting it for my Valdemar AU. Maybe the time from Vanyel’s death to Selenay’s reign was so long that things changed, but my fic’s set about 400 years after Vanyel’s death and Herald’s don’t care who sleeps with who or falls in love with who...except as exciting new gossip fodder, because that’s always been a Heraldic problem (and Companions are frankly no better).

[darkcloud-kcalifornia]

The final tale of Finding the Way is The Groom’s Price, by Michael Z. Williamson and Gail Sanders.  This story is about a Shin’a’in boy being Chosen, and not being particularly thrilled about that fact.  First off because he doesn’t see why he should go to Valdemar, and secondly because he really doesn’t want to learn how to be a mage.  But a mage he is, so he must be trained no matter how much he rails against it.  He blames his ancestor, Kethry, for this one.  Also apparently the Shin’a’in do occasionally use family names outside of the Clan name as the boy’s name is Keth’re’son.  Subtle, there.  Anyway, they eventually manage to convince him he needs training, but he’s still trying to think of ways to get out of being a Herald at the end.  Which actually does raise the point of why Companions assume that somebody would be OK with serving another country.  It seems like the sort of thing that should be hammered out in treaties, allowing foreign-born Chosen in the Alliance that sprung up from the Hardorn War and Second Cataclysm to choose to serve their homelands instead.  It’s not like the idea is totally out there, the Valdemarans were thinking the political marriage with Ancar might open up Hardorn to Heraldic service before Ancar proved to be an insane megalomaniac.

Anyway, there was something I found funny in this series.  Apparently it’s still close enough to the previous books for Kerowyn’s old mage, Quenten, to still be around.  And after the near heart attack Elspeth’s crew gave him last time just by showing up in all their glory he set alarm spells to let him know if any other Companions were arriving so he wouldn’t be caught off guard again,  Still pretty eager to get Keth’re’son out the door ASAP, but at least he knew what was coming this time around.