Siddermark legacy

Why has Clyntahn been so vehement in his hatred for both Siddermark and Charis? We know that the St. Zherneaux documents has shaped Charisian religious and political thought along the principles of the Enlightenment. Those principles have guided a majority of Charis' recent rulers. That guidance has marked Charis as a threat to the CoGA in Clyntahn's eyes. His launching the attack described in OAR was inevitable.

Siddermark was also on his little list. Why? Text mentions Siddermark's staunch republican attitudes as a primary cause. I would ask how those attitudes manifested and why do they persist? One suspects that Siddermark was formed by something like the Brethren of St Zherneaux. One further suspects links to Shan-wei if not direct ties.

The best evidence for my views are the names of the cities near Old Province; Miami, Allentown and Tampa. Anyone in the command crew that allowed such names of terran cities to be remembered had to harbor strong feelings about where those cities existed. Could such strong feelings lead to another cache of documents trying retain some memory of that cherished nation/home? The only other name of terran cities I have recognized was Alexandria. The symbolism for that was obvious enough.

I'll grant that the Inquisition or command crew likely destroyed much of the cached documents. However, that group might have succeeded in hiding some key message or teaching that survives today. That's likely what drew Nynian's group to Siddermark. That sense of people with a common vision or cause. Not exactly the same, but similar enough to draw like to like, conspirator to conspirator. People who believe strongly in principles the CoGA would prefer people not hold with a passionate determination to keep regardless of opposition.

The biggest question to me is who planted that seed? I would hazzard a guess that Siddermark was a partial success of on of Shan-wei's seedlings.

Hi Peter as you know there has been long held suspicions that Siddarmark has had some influence from people who knew part of the truth and wanted to set up something in the beginning of Siddarmark that would be a seed of democracy and tolerance that might bear fruit centuries later.

But if that is true it would be interesting if they put some clues in the name places but of course there would have to be someone alive to interpret the clues correctly!

Hello Alistair,

I recall the discussions. They had revolved around the staunch republicanism of Siddermark. My point is that the names of those terran cities confirms it for me. Whoever instilled that republicanism also influenced the names. It was unlikely they chose the names as a signal for some future person who recognized the truth. More likely, the wanted the memory itself to live and the names of those towns are just one way the tried to keep the memory alive. Documents and teachings would be another.

I find it interesting that Charis means Grace and a sidder is a Jewish prayer book. Siddermark might refer to prayers made by Jews in the command crew. Also, in German schuler (with an umlaut) means student, desciple or scholar and perhaps it means all of these. The word resembles our Scheuler the archangel, no? Considering how often RFC plays with various languages in his naming paradigm, I suspect these might be clues.

PeterZ wrote:Hello Alistair,

I recall the discussions. They had revolved around the staunch republicanism of Siddermark. My point is that the names of those terran cities confirms it for me. Whoever instilled that republicanism also influenced the names. It was unlikely they chose the names as a signal for some future person who recognized the truth. More likely, the wanted the memory itself to live and the names of those towns are just one way the tried to keep the memory alive. Documents and teachings would be another.

I find it interesting that Charis means Grace and a sidder is a Jewish prayer book. Siddermark might refer to prayers made by Jews in the command crew. Also, in German schuler (with an umlaut) means student, desciple or scholar and perhaps it means all of these. The word resembles our Scheuler the archangel, no? Considering how often RFC plays with various languages in his naming paradigm, I suspect these might be clues.

I have always thought that Clyntahn's objection stemmed from Siddarmark's social contract didn't not enshrine the norm of monarch, aristocrat, serf/slave. Folks who are not held "in their place" can get real uppity. Also having that magnificant Siddarmarkan Army so close to them threatened them.

You guys other comments are fresh for me and you probably have a point.

Don

=2014/08/24=

Hi guys

I believe Clyntahn was worried about controlling Siddarmark because it was a republic, had no Church-backed debts which could be recalled if the Protector became too independant, and the Protector was elected which proved he had a HUGE popular support.

Clyntahn is a control freak, IMO, and that was one of the reasons he hated Siddarmark.

??Comments??

R
.

n7axw wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Hello Alistair,

I recall the discussions. They had revolved around the staunch republicanism of Siddermark. My point is that the names of those terran cities confirms it for me. Whoever instilled that republicanism also influenced the names. It was unlikely they chose the names as a signal for some future person who recognized the truth. More likely, the wanted the memory itself to live and the names of those towns are just one way the tried to keep the memory alive. Documents and teachings would be another.

I find it interesting that Charis means Grace and a sidder is a Jewish prayer book. Siddermark might refer to prayers made by Jews in the command crew. Also, in German schuler (with an umlaut) means student, desciple or scholar and perhaps it means all of these. The word resembles our Scheuler the archangel, no? Considering how often RFC plays with various languages in his naming paradigm, I suspect these might be clues.

I have always thought that Clyntahn's objection stemmed from Siddarmark's social contract didn't not enshrine the norm of monarch, aristocrat, serf/slave. Folks who are not held "in their place" can get real uppity. Also having that magnificant Siddarmarkan Army so close to them threatened them.

You guys other comments are fresh for me and you probably have a point.

Don

Yeah. This is further evidenced by the nation that Clyntahn holds up as the ideal society: Harchong.

What I find really funny is that for all the Church prefers nations where monarchs inherit their thrones and decry Siddarmark republicanism, the Church (and by extension, the Temple Lands) are not a monarchy themselves. They ELECT their leader after all (admittedly, only Vicars vote, but still). And for all that the priests of the Church form a kind of aristocracy, they'll still take priests from all walks of life and any priest can theoretically rise to the Vicarate or even become Grand Vicar.

In short, the Church itself is a meritocracy. Positions in it AREN'T inherited. So I found it odd how no nation on Safehold even tries to ape the Church's meritocratic structure, except perhaps for Siddarmark.

Perhaps, Evilauthor, nations have tried and received a sufficient amount of CoGA rebuke change their mind. Siddermark for some reason has refused to change their form of government. The observation might actually be that Siddermark is the last nation to resist CoGA's attempts to persuade against republics. Constant CoGA displeasure might have prevented other nations from adopting republicanism even if non had adopted it previously.

The reason is as kbuss888 mentions control. A Kingdom that requires CoGA approval to achieve legitimacy is easier to control than a democratic republic's elected leader with proven public support through elections.

Which still brings to mind why Siddermark's stubborn refusal to change their form of government?

DOes the republic even have nobility? We know they have the rich and entitled, the land owners, but do they actually have nobles. They do have old families that are long established in the power system, so the y are nobles without titles, that use democracy as a way to distribute power between themselves.
I figure that a strong republic was created in the old province, and their neighbours wanted to join, ot hey became enemies and when they attacked, the republic with a better empire just absorbed them. That part of howard was probally like a huge image of the border states, but one by one they became part of the republic. how many of their enemies were influence by the church attempting to limit or destabilise the the republic with out being seen as involved.

PeterZ wrote:Perhaps, Evilauthor, nations have tried and received a sufficient amount of CoGA rebuke change their mind. Siddermark for some reason has refused to change their form of government. The observation might actually be that Siddermark is the last nation to resist CoGA's attempts to persuade against republics. Constant CoGA displeasure might have prevented other nations from adopting republicanism even if non had adopted it previously.

The reason is as kbuss888 mentions control. A Kingdom that requires CoGA approval to achieve legitimacy is easier to control than a democratic republic's elected leader with proven public support through elections.

Which still brings to mind why Siddermark's stubborn refusal to change their form of government?

I believe there's a discussion in the last book (ah, that would be LAMA) about the nature of the franchise and who stands for office in the Republic. In short, Siddarmark should not be confused with a democracy, because both the franchise and the candidate pool are restricted. It is a republic which is much more representative than most other Safeholdian nations but which would give a 21st century Westerner hives because of its property qualifications and other franchise limitations/qualifications.

Clyntahn hates Siddarmark primarily because he fears Siddarmark. He fully accepts the doctrine of Man's fallen nature (a logical consequence of Shan-wei's fall and the War against the Fallen), which means that the Inquisition — and, in particular, its iron rod — is the only way to ensure that men will not fall into sin and set their own puny, corrupt mortal wills against the will of God (as revealed to one Zhaspahr Clyntahn). Because of that, he sees any realm which is not 100% in the hip pocket of the Church (i.e., of the Group of Four, its immediate predecessors, or its immediate successors) as a potential threat to Mother Church's primacy and thus to God's plan for Safehold.

In addition to being a republic, and hence less amenable to the Church's top-down control, pre-jihad Siddarmark was a wealthy, prosperous nation with long-standing ties to the Kingdom of Charis (thus the "Charisian Quarter" in Siddar City and other cities of the republic), the most powerful mainland army, and a secular banking sector which represented the only real challenge to the Church's total control of the mainland financial sector. The various Lords Protector borrowed money from their own banks, rather than from Mother Church, which deprived the Church of one of its primary mechanisms for controlling heads of state. The Republic's role as the gateway for the increasingly valuable importation of Charisian goods for the entire mainland interior not only made Siddarmark even wealthier than it was, not only strengthened the banking sector the Church didn't control, but also pushed it further and further "into bed" with Charis and seemed to contribute to a society which was generally far more tolerant than Clyntahn could stand. Freedom of conscience was not very much of a reach for Siddarmark even before the jihad, and Clyntahn strongly suspected (correctly, as it turned out) that even though it wasn't hugely evident on the surface, there was already a powerful strand of Reformist sentiment in the Republic.

The fact that Siddarmark's army was the most powerful in the world (pre-Merlin, at least) also meant the Republic was the only realm which posed a potential military threat to Mother Church's secular hegemony over the Border States. The Republic had demonstrated against Desnair just how capable its military truly was, and although Greyghor Stohnar had absolutely no intention of or desire to ever directly challenge the Church or threaten it with some sort of military aggression, Clyntahn didn't believe it. And the reason he didn't believe it was that if he'd been in Stohnar's place, he most certainly would have been thinking about it.

So Clyntahn (and by extension, given his growing control of the entire Group of Four) saw in Siddarmark a very large, very powerful, very wealthy nation which was resistant to his control, entirely too comfortable with Charis (the realm he had — correctly — identified as the greatest threat to orthodoxy), and potentially capable by itself of waging war against most of the mainland realms combined. All of that made the Republic a potential threat to Mother Church's supremacy, and in Zhaspahr Clyntahn's eyes, there is no real difference between a potential threat and an actual threat. As far as he's concerned, the only minor difference between them is a matter of timing: the "potential" threat simply hasn't reached maturation and hatched yet.

He really doesn't need any deeper or more devious motivation than that, guys. In many ways, he and the Gbaba have quite a lot in common. They apparently see any other intelligent species as a competitor = threat = enemy, which means it must be annihilated. Clyntahn sees any powerful entity he can't control as a threat to orthodoxy = a threat to his power as Grand Inquisitor = a threat to God's plan, which means it must be annihilated. It's actually that simple in his mind, and once that's grasped, everything he's done makes sense. It may be an insane sort of sense, but it's still sense because it represents a logical (much though I hate to use that term in connection with him) response to the nature of the world as he sees it.

I really don't like him very much.

IIRC there's plenty of text evidence that the Republic doesn't have nobility.

While the Republic has rich land owners, IMO they lack one of the key qualities of nobility.

That is, a Nobleman has political power over the people living in his domain.

The Judges in his domain answer to him and he creates the laws that his people must obey.

Mind you, there can be "national" or "royal" laws that restrict the noble's power in his domain but the hallmark of nobles is that they have political power to make laws unless said laws violate the laws of the overall nation.

From what we've seen (and Word of Weber), the only political power that the wealthy have in Siddarmark is they are the only ones that can vote or be elected to public office.

Mind you, IIRC in the last book it was mentioned that the standards of wealth for voting were less than the standards of wealth for holding public office.

SYED wrote:DOes the republic even have nobility? We know they have the rich and entitled, the land owners, but do they actually have nobles. They do have old families that are long established in the power system, so the y are nobles without titles, that use democracy as a way to distribute power between themselves.
I figure that a strong republic was created in the old province, and their neighbours wanted to join, ot hey became enemies and when they attacked, the republic with a better empire just absorbed them. That part of howard was probally like a huge image of the border states, but one by one they became part of the republic. how many of their enemies were influence by the church attempting to limit or destabilise the the republic with out being seen as involved.