Speaking of the Comyn

[james_davis_nicoll]

If you could overthrow one fictional set of aristocrats and nobles whose creator clearly thinks are the bee's knees, which lot would you pick?

I'm more inclined to be harshest towards the SFnal aristocracies, since they have actual history to have learned from.

Comments

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

The Bushes?

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

No, they just think their creator is the bee's knees. We don't know what He thinks about them.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Oh, the creator I was referring too is the neocon cabal.

[quicktongue.livejournal.com]

The ones from Sleeping Beauty. I know not our usual genre, but think of all the people's lives that were thrown into turmoil when they ordered the destruction of every spinning wheel in the Kingdom. Talk about an abuse of power for personal reasons.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Heh heh. I actually said that over Christmas: "And then the economy collapsed." The five year old didn't get it. Her mother did.

[casaubon.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the wicked fairy was bribed by some foreign textile magnate?
Anyway, 15 years later all the royals fell asleep for a 100 years, allowing the people to set up a autonomous collective.
I imagine there was a vicious civil war when the royals woke up again.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

A vicious civil war involving a quick visit to the royal napping vaults with extra pillows?

[casaubon.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a big thorny magic forest to stop the proles just offing the sleeping court?
Though I'm sure the peasants knew all about slash'n'burn forest clearances...

Thinking about it (probably far too deeply), it was the "good" fairy who sent the whole court to sleep rather than just allowing the princess to die.
So she probably had some power grab in mind, possibly in league with the "wicked" fairy. Come to think of it, has anyone seen them in the same room together?

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

<Growly singing voice>
There ain't no wicked fairy, just good fairy when she's drunk.
</Growly singing voice>

[zeborah]

I keep meaning to write about that.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

After 100 years? Nah. It would be like trying to re-establish the Romanov dynasty in Russia. The nobles would be socially and politically marginalised, and probably decide that exile was the best thing for them.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

The Klingons.

[mikedavsi.livejournal.com]

This.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The royal family and nobles of the Honor Harrington stories - if everyone apart from Honor and the Queen is corrupt the system is obviously irreperably damaged.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

But it's only the *liberal* nobility who are really self-centered idiot bad guys there. Many people other than Honor and the Queen are not corrupt, and only a few of the worst are clearly corrupt; the rest are just self-centered and stupid. (Which, when you think about it, is a much more offensive position for the books to take. If they were demonstrating that corruption was nearly universal, arguably they'd be arguing on the right side.)

[naitsirk.livejournal.com]

I'm just finishing with On Basilisk Station, and I have to ask whether it gets any better.

I took the chance this Christmas season to catch up with reading and went through... Three plus ten, plus fifteen fantasy and scifi novels (Bartimaeus, Dresden Files and Vorkosigan saga) and assorted short stories and novellas books, so maybe I'm just a tad tired. Or maybe this book is crap idno

If it's so, I'll continue with something else.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

On Basilisk Station imho is the best one until you get to the one where they get captured (which is the equivalent of Forester's A Ship of the Line and comes at about that point in the series.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I personally thought the HH books got progressively better for the first, oh... four or five? and then started a gradual (at first) downward slide.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

It depends what you're reading them for. If you're reading them to watch Honor grow and learn as a commander, and to see a fairly decent description of how a good commander can turn around a neglected ship full of fuckwits, there are other quite good ones.

If you want interplanetary politics on a grand scale, Weber thinks they're good for that but I don't.

If you love page after page of detailed broadside-by-broadside ship battles, they're there, but you can skim them and not miss plot (I know, I do).

And there's lots of good treecat bits in.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

The Manticoreans from the Honor Harrington universe.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

The tall beautiful ruling caste aliens in A Distant Soil. I never finished the series because I hated them so much. Also, the human society in the Uplift series disgusted me so much I didn't even really start it.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Why the Uplift humans?

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I have too agree that they were pretty hateful, but I don't think the author liked them much either- they were designed to be scenery-chewing villains that needed to be put up against the wall.

I didn't continue with the series either (mainly because of the characterizations of the heroes), but I would assume that later on they got their just desserts. Or at least I hope so.

[oh6.livejournal.com]

I never got the impression that they were supposed to be the good guys, but if they're so repellent that they make the whole thing repellent, I guess something's not working.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The Draka. They deserve it.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Stirling gave them lots of story breaks but I don't think he views them as "the bee's knees", except in the stylish evil sense.

Korval/Liaden are also ambiguous, since there's all that loving detail, but really the Houses are pricks, and Korval's reaction to exile is "Finally! see ya!" Of course *Korval* has noblesse oblige out of their pores and the authors do love them, but they actually work.

The Highborn of the Kencyrath would be tempting, though difficult. The poor Kendar.

Vor or haut? But Vor are changing and may not be bee's knees, and the haut almost certainly aren't.

Something Pournellian?

[almeda.livejournal.com]

You've reminded me that we've never once gotten a good look at what life looks like from a non-noble Cetagandan perspective.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

That's too weak. I don't think we've ever *met* -- I'm not sure Miles has ever seen -- a Cetagandan not of the haut or ghem classes. We're not 100% certain that ghem is a noble caste/class, vs. just "everyone else".

[wakboth.livejournal.com]

Well, there are the ba...

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

In fairness to Stirling (and boy, does that phrase come out with difficulty), while the Draka get the author on their side it's only to create the crapsack world he was aiming for. So far as I'm aware, he's always insisted the Draka are dystopian.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

J Random Law-Oblivious Corporate State (start with Neuromancer and work outwards) always feels as if it could be very much improved by a thorough auditing with automatic weapons, probably led by Grey-Haired Media-Savvy Grandmothers Against Random Street Shootings.

Figuring out a legal system capable of taming Bullfrog's Syndicate would be an exercise and a quarter.

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

Even though it's fantasy rather than SF here, I have to go with the Haldanes.

Followed by the 'gimme' pick of the Jedi Knights.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

The who? From the Deryni books? I thought they were decent. The human aristocracy, or conversely the Deryni rulers of Torenth, might be other matters. Not that those would have authorial imprimatur like the Haldanes do.

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

Well, they are a hereditary monarchy acting consistently in an antidemocratic fashion. The definition of 'decent' for monarchs includes at a minimum ceding the vast majority of their power to a demcratically accountable governing body of some sort. It certainly does not include systematically neutering and subverting the only power structure that serves as a check to the royal power, nor shielding and empowering a conspiracy of accountable-to-no-one-but-themselves people with super powers which are by their very nature an affront to such basic human rights as privacy.

And that's leaving aside the jus ad bello and jus in bello arguments against the continuing Mearan occupation.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Heh, good points. I was using a different definition of decent, e.g. enlightened despot where you're actually enlightened; liberal autocracy (contrast: illiberal democracy). But they might be more "not openly oppressive monarchy in standard fantasy that doesn't care about socioeconomic issues". Also I'd forgotten the Mearans. And the "only power structure" -- Church, or Privy Council? Of course we usually see this as defending the persecuted minorities, a la Jews or mutants.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

The Spartans in the Pournelleverse.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I'll see your Spartans, and raise you the spartans in the Miller/300 verse. they really needed to get the crap beaten out of them be a bunch of peasants.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that just be the Spartans in the real universe? Role models for the Draka, where your rite of passage is stalking and murdering a helot?

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Or boy loving Athenians.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

The Psychohistorians.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Reseune. I'm not sure what the author thinks of them, really. People from Earth are supposed to be generally suspicious of them, so I suppose I'm falling right in with the standard prejudices.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

similarily the konstantines and their ilk - the high nobles of the stations in the Alliance/Union-verse were incredibly messed up in a whole load of ways, and the near or compete lack of any real democratic processes on the stations made the propensity for the stations to end up hulled from the inside a less than surprising thing.

[bricklovinfreak.livejournal.com]

I don't know that you can reasonably call the Alliance-side stationers an aristocratic society. Then again, I don't remember enough about Downbelow Station to say with any kind of authority. Who your people are is important, but I don;t remember it being much more important than in the here and now.

Union, though, Union is itching for a nice Marxist worm in the azi tapes.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

all of them?

[(Anonymous)]

The Jedi.

(I have almost concluded that in my next Star Wars campaign, every level of Jedi a character takes will include a -1 INT score...)


Tony Zbaraschuk

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Technically, the Jedi are not an aristocracy--they're a meritocracy. They must demonstrate actual skill before they can assume their positions of authority; also, they are forbidden from breeding and thus cannot form family lines. Further, the Jedi are government enforcers rather than rulers.

There is a valid question to be asked why there are princesses and dukes running around governing a supposed republic. Or, more correctly, there would be such questions to be asked if the Star Wars universe were assumed to make any coherent sense, but it obviously doesn't.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Well, the Galactic Republic seems strong federal if not confederal in nature, so member planets could easily have royal or aristocratic titles locally without breaking anything. Plus Queen Amidala was an elected queen; at the time I squipped "beauty queen! with survival and resistance skills as part of the talent show" but Earth has had a lot of elected monarchies. I never gathered why Leia was Princess Leia, and I don't know what Count Doofus was a Count of, so I don't know if locality will work everywhere, but it doesn't seem necessarily incoherent. Especially with legacy titles and such, like if England got rid of the Crown but not the House of Lords and the hereditary titles.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

So they're Janissaries, sort of.

Inversion

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Are there any F/SFnal aristocracies that the local progressive LJ community could be convinced are justified, and/or inevitable short of genocide?

Item one: the Minds of the Culture, depending on how seriously you take the claims of democracy.
Item two: the Exalted. More problematic...

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Every single noble in the Song of Ice and Fire. Quite obviously the current situation in the books is a product of those violent idiots, and so even the brave and admireable ones need a quick trip to the guillotine, and then we can replace the system with something democratic.

But actually, I'm a bit more moderate then that. I would just be happy to have a UN peacekeeping force descend on Westeros, deport the ruling nobles for trial in the Hague, and set up enclaves to stop the incipent religious war. Then we can start importing food and technical assistance to get the population through that winter that I can't believe they would survive in the best case.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

to get the population through that winter that I can't believe they would survive in the best case.

Maybe there's a Cycle of Fire relationship between the humans and the ice-zombies? Which dominates depends on the climate but one always has the seeds for the others return.

[oh6.livejournal.com]

I had second thoughts about the aristocracy in Nausicaa, but it appears that I was supposed to. However, apparently Hayao Miyazaki also had second thoughts about them when completing the manga version, but from another direction. So I still have second thoughts about it.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

There was an sf novel that I plucked off my sister's shelf years ago in which a lazy, shiftless underclass (who had "golden skin") were continually getting in trouble for breaking a draconian law or other. One of the characters observed that they could be easily spared the effects of the harsh rule of law they lived under by simply following all the rules. I would have happily scotched those idiots.

I didn't read sf again for quite a while after that one.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

The John Galt groupies. Blech.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Though if we're actually talking about a fossilized aristocratic caste, then I'd be happy snuffing Ricardo Pinto's aristos right quick. (Trying to remember the series name: The Chosen, perhaps?)

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

Most of the main characters from the Belgariad were aristocratic or worse, and the majority of them could profitably have been acquainted with the business end of a nailbat.

If we're allowed to branch out into real life, my pick would be the Confederacy. I had to stop reading Civil War era historical fiction, because I hated the Southern aristocrats so much that I would be reduced to gibbering rage until I got to the part where Sherman burned their houses down.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Hey, there's a new book out about Sherman's march to the sea. Southern Storm.

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

Most of the main characters from the Belgariad were aristocratic or worse, and the majority of them could profitably have been acquainted with the business end of a nailbat.

The same can be said for the Gods in that universe[1]. (Though really, what are pantheon-type gods if not a self-proclaimed aristocracy, usually of the worst sort?)

1: And, really, for just about everybody in that series of any power level above "peasant" except for Kid Clueless himself.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

For a relatively recent book (ok, fantasy trilogy) that ends up being an uprising against the gods themselves -- and saying more would be a spoiler -- I can fairly highly recommend Trudi Canavan's 'Age of the Five' books -- Priestess of the White, Last of the Wilds, and Voice of the Gods, in that order.

Ignore the romance-novel-style cover art; the books are much better than their cover paintings. They also have really neat continent-spanning geopolitics and intrigue. They start out looking shallow and a bit superficial, but trust me, all that is just setup for the kick-to-the-back-of-the-protagonist's-head reveal. Or series of them.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

Choosing just one is pretty hard.

The Vor in Bujold's Vorkosigan series remind me of the Prussian Junker aristocracy in 19th-century Germany. Left to themselves they'll happily sleepwalk their serfs into the interstellar equivalent of World War I, so here's hoping their 1848 turns out better than ours did.

The Numenoreans in Tolkien's Middle Earth run a feudal system not unlike that of the Normans in medieval England. They seem pretty secure though; I think the best we can hope for here (as in the case of England) is that eventually intermarriage and the passage of time will erase the racial distinctions on which the feudal hierarchy is built.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes. Whack Tolkien's nobles with a BFG.

[rotty-0079.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd want to overthrow any SFnal aristocracy, because democracies make everyone wear dull jumpsuits.