Without Clyntahn?

Actually, pretty interesting question. If Clyntahn wasn't around to mess things and provoke the conflict - what would Merlin do?

Let's assume that Wylsynn became the Grand Inquisitor instead. It seems, that he have enough power and support, to actually reform a lot inside the Church - thus defusing the whole situation.

What would Merlin do, without the looming religious schism to capitalise?

The way I see it, without knowing about Temple Thing yet, he could go two ways.

The Morally-Ambiguous way would be to engineer a necessary situation and capitalize on it the way he does originally. However, all those accusations he's hurling at himself right now? They'd be all true, and without the counterpoint of "if we let Church have it their way, it would be much worse". Merlin would probably turn into a much less sympathetic character and Safehold would turn out much, much darker.

The Long Way could see Merlin slowly work his way into high Safeholdian society - say, Temple Lands - and start working on loosening the Proscriptions and changing the CoGA "at the source". Why not? Safeholdian progress pre-Merlin wasn't all that fast, and for all he'd know, he'd have all the time in the world for necessary reforms. Who knows, maybe we'd wound up with Grand Inquisitor Athrawes. In this case, Safehold as a series would be much less action-ey and more of an intergenerational saga of political jockeying. Not that it'd be necessarily boring, but it would certainly end up much differently than what we've got.

Generally, yep, interesting idea. Gives some food for thought.

Dilandu wrote:Actually, pretty interesting question. If Clyntahn wasn't around to mess things and provoke the conflict - what would Merlin do?

Let's assume that Wylsynn became the Grand Inquisitor instead. It seems, that he have enough power and support, to actually reform a lot inside the Church - thus defusing the whole situation.

What would Merlin do, without the looming religious schism to capitalise?

The last Wylsyn to gain a position of influence, as Grand Vicar, iirc, got assasinated. It is hard to imagine Father Paityr faring much better in that snake pit. Best for him to stay in Charis as Archbishop Maikel's intendent along with running the patent office.

Don

n7axw wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Let's assume that Wylsynn became the Grand Inquisitor instead. It seems, that he have enough power and support, to actually reform a lot inside the Church - thus defusing the whole situation.

The last Wylsyn to gain a position of influence, as Grand Vicar, iirc, got assasinated. It is hard to imagine Father Paityr faring much better in that snake pit. Best for him to stay in Charis as Archbishop Maikel's intendent along with running the patent office.

Don

I think Dilandu was talking about Paityr's father. But, yes, he probably would have been assasinated. Unless Ninian found a way to assasinate the worst of his enemies first.

Kakai wrote:The way I see it, without knowing about Temple Thing yet, he could go two ways.

The Morally-Ambiguous way would be to engineer a necessary situation and capitalize on it the way he does originally. However, all those accusations he's hurling at himself right now? They'd be all true, and without the counterpoint of "if we let Church have it their way, it would be much worse". Merlin would probably turn into a much less sympathetic character and Safehold would turn out much, much darker.

The Long Way could see Merlin slowly work his way into high Safeholdian society - say, Temple Lands - and start working on loosening the Proscriptions and changing the CoGA "at the source". Why not? Safeholdian progress pre-Merlin wasn't all that fast, and for all he'd know, he'd have all the time in the world for necessary reforms. Who knows, maybe we'd wound up with Grand Inquisitor Athrawes. In this case, Safehold as a series would be much less action-ey and more of an intergenerational saga of political jockeying. Not that it'd be necessarily boring, but it would certainly end up much differently than what we've got.

Generally, yep, interesting idea. Gives some food for thought.

I think Merlin would have preferred the long way. Hold off the jihad as long as possible while upgrading Charis' tech base as much as possible so that when the war finally does arrive, Charis would be unassailable. In OAR I think, Merlin outright admits if only to himself (and thus the reader) that he didn't want the religious war to start as early as it did.

IOW, the more prep time Merlin and Charis has, the more one sided in Charis' favor any religious war would be.

A clean COGA would actually be in a _better_ position to crack down on Charis. Since the conflict was being - gingerly, but consciously - engineered by forces in Charis, that crack down was always inevitable. The timing would be very different, and the initial phases far less bloody [and probably less unwelcome within Charis], but a Wylsynn Church would, when it comes down to it, be no less inflexible over the Proscriptions than a Clyntahn Church. It would, however, be believed when it said why there was an issue with what Charis was doing. Nimue Alban's options in this situation might well be wider than they were in the 'real' Safehold: instead of intervening openly in Charis, she might have been able to work at widening the fissures in other societies that the Charisian example was already opening up. Also, a longer period of observation, and/or deeper historical analysis, would have eventually led her to the Brethren, and possibly to... the other group[s] not fully in communion with the COGA.

Fortunately for those who prefer blood, guts and feathers over political intrigue, by the time Samyl Wylsynn stood for Grand Inquisitor the Church was beyond repair. Which is why he lost the election that he didn't actually lose.

Dilandu wrote:Actually, pretty interesting question. If Clyntahn wasn't around to mess things and provoke the conflict - what would Merlin do?

Let's assume that Wylsynn became the Grand Inquisitor instead. It seems, that he have enough power and support, to actually reform a lot inside the Church - thus defusing the whole situation.

What would Merlin do, without the looming religious schism to capitalise?

Sorry, but the longer the run-up to the war, the more diffusion there will have been from Charis to the rest of the planet, and the _less_ surprising and overwhelming the advantage.

OTOH, the more diffusion, the less one-sided the conflict. Simply put, the more comfortable people are with innovation, the less suspicious they are of the source and the more likely they are to try their hands at it themselves.

Which, short of an Archangel sitting on the Grand Vicar's throne spouting fire and brimstone, puts the Church in something of a quandary.

evilauthor wrote:

Kakai wrote:The way I see it, without knowing about Temple Thing yet, he could go two ways.

The Morally-Ambiguous way would be to engineer a necessary situation and capitalize on it the way he does originally. However, all those accusations he's hurling at himself right now? They'd be all true, and without the counterpoint of "if we let Church have it their way, it would be much worse". Merlin would probably turn into a much less sympathetic character and Safehold would turn out much, much darker.

The Long Way could see Merlin slowly work his way into high Safeholdian society - say, Temple Lands - and start working on loosening the Proscriptions and changing the CoGA "at the source". Why not? Safeholdian progress pre-Merlin wasn't all that fast, and for all he'd know, he'd have all the time in the world for necessary reforms. Who knows, maybe we'd wound up with Grand Inquisitor Athrawes. In this case, Safehold as a series would be much less action-ey and more of an intergenerational saga of political jockeying. Not that it'd be necessarily boring, but it would certainly end up much differently than what we've got.

Generally, yep, interesting idea. Gives some food for thought.

I think Merlin would have preferred the long way. Hold off the jihad as long as possible while upgrading Charis' tech base as much as possible so that when the war finally does arrive, Charis would be unassailable. In OAR I think, Merlin outright admits if only to himself (and thus the reader) that he didn't want the religious war to start as early as it did.

IOW, the more prep time Merlin and Charis has, the more one sided in Charis' favor any religious war would be.

Here comes some truly wild speculation which is probably wrong.

Could a reformed church have served Merlin's long term goals?

An honest enforcement of the Prohibitions would have involved putting Charis on notice about what the Inquisition considered erroneous, and offering them a chance to reply and explain.

A Wylsynn might even have been willing to listen to the explanation.

That explanation could have been made very convincing. There must be buckets of humane and egalitarian material in the Writ that could be used to justify labor-saving and medical technology.

It probably wouldn't work, and would almost certainly stall out before introducing electricity.

Without Clyntahn, maybe Merlin would have been better off setting up shop in Harchong, which would naturally come into conflict with any non-corrupt church organization. Then Merlin could have gotten dispensations for military and other technology by offering local Inquisitors careful theological per$ua$ion.