Is Clyntahn an atheist?

Given a strong enough belief, it is amazing how well hidden a group can keep itself. After the opening of Japan in the 19th century, various Christians who came to Japan were astonished to learn that Christianity had been kept alive in Japan during the Edo period when almost all contact with the west was forbidden, and practicing Christianity in any form was punished by death.

It is believed that not all of the groups in Japan have actually revealed themselves, and some continue to secretly practice a form of Christianity based on the oral tradition while on the surface adhering to Shinto and Buddhism today.

The bible of the 隠れキリシタン (hidden Christians) is available in print (in English) to those that may be interested.
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-563-9780824818241.aspx

McGuiness wrote:I've wondered if some of them fought on Shan-Wei's side though, since they knew who was actually in the right! On second thought, the risk to their families (and anyone else who might have been like them) was probably too great. If the Inquisition learned that some colonists knew that the CoG was a complete lie, and the CoGA was an even bigger lie, there would have been a worldwide hunt for them. Since as far as we know that didn't happen, so either none of the re-educated colonists fought for Shan-Wei, or if they did, none of them and were captured and cracked under torture. Of course they were fairly old by the time the War of the Angels began, and most had died by the time it ended if I recall the dates correctly. (The calendar of the CoGA begins about 125 years after the day of creation if I remember the textev correctly. Feel free to correct me with the proper number!)

I think you have a mistaken impression about the War of the Angels. David has told us that this war was not really a war between Langhorne's followers and Shan-Wei's followers. It was mostly a war of succession, after the leadership was wiped out by Pei's nuke. See: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/321/1.

As for the chronology, you're a bit off. The calendar starts when Pei set his nuke off 54 years after Creation. The war of the Angels ended 70 years after Creation. None of the original colonists had died of old age yet.

About Aristocrats. Aristocracies are naturally arising. See Merovingian Gaul(Or the entire world) for an example. Also David Weber thinks they are a natural occurrence. See Honorverse.


Republics, though usually of an oligarchical sort are also naturally arising though less so than aristocracies. See, Kingdom of Jerusalem(Crusader state). Norse Things(capital T) sometimes called All Things, though that refers to a different thing(both upper and lowercase t). Roman Republic and Sparta. Also the holy Roman Empire, which had an elective monarchy, though eventually the franchise got extremely limited. Poland-Lithuanian also had an elective monarchy and a parliament, with a fairly broad franchise. However it had big problems.


Democracies/Republics with a very broad franchise are extremely rare. I in fact know of only one example, prior to the 19th century and that example is in one place and only then for relatively small periods of time, with frequent disruptions by coups and political takeovers. That would be Ancient Athens. the best example would be around the time of the first Peloponnesian war.


Note on the Emergence or Aristocracies: I could point to more examples of them, as stated almost the entire world has had a legally enshrined aristocracy at some point or other. But, Merovingian Gaul, emerged from a complete collapse of government. That is the Merovingian's didn't inherit their power from someone else, or take over another group's system, like the Carolingians(See Charlemagne's grandfather) did. The Merovingian's created a state from scratch, so the emergence of an aristocracy can be said to be truly a change in the way things were.

n7axw wrote:Just a couple of comments... "So far as we know..." Truth of the matter be known, we know very little of that early period from textev. Just enough to fuel speculation; good speculation, perhaps, but speculation nonetheless.

Why the earth pattern for an aristocrisy? My own guess is that the archangels must have implemented it. They are the ones who would have known of dukes, earls, barons, etc. And it does fit the medieval pattern they apparently wanted.

Now about the republic... That had to be one of Shan-wei's re-educated colonists; no other way to account for it. For the archangels themselves to have told Safehold about republics and offer choices would be completely contrary to character and the strait jacket they were trying to impose in other ways.

Don

RFC has told us quite a bit about the War of the Angels here in the forums - I'm not sure if those comments made it into the Pearls of Weber or not. So there's a bit more info out there than just what's in the series. Not that he's told us some of the really good stuff - like where Shan-Wei put her colonists and what happened to them!

The honest answer to why there are so many monarchies is that RFC likes them. (Check out his video interviews on the Baen.com website by clicking on his name in the list of authors.)

From the textev we know that the Armahk family became the rulers of Charis several generations ago by being the most successful pirates around, to quote Cayleb. (I'm guessing at least eight generations ago based on how many had confessors from St. Zherneau's, but that isn't set in stone.) That bit of self-deprecation aside, it's quite possible that the CoGA did indeed set up most of the monarchies on Safehold, but I don't know of any textev of how the nations came to be other than Charis.

Note that successions are required to be approved by Mother Church, accompanied by the appropriate bribes of course, which was why the succession in Hanth in OAR ticked off Charis so much, since a crook bribed his way into being named the successor. The Earl Hanth who is currently kicking Desnairan and Dohlaran fannies around Thesmar was the legitimate successor.

When Cayleb's succession papers arrived in Zion with the Church's seal already attached, stamped, and signed by Staynair and a couple of dozen other Charisian clergy, it was a spit in the face of the Go4 and Mother Church, and also the official beginning of the schism that resulted in the CoC being formed. IIRC Staynair included a nasty denunciation of the Go4 and the corruption of the CoGA to help things along...

The CoGA has to approve the king or queen of every monarchy - and it certainly has a say in who becomes the next ruler in the existing monarchies, although earldoms and duchies seem to be up for sale to the highest bidder. (See Hanth.)

That said, the Republic of Siddarmark becomes an even greater mystery. since as much as the CoGA hates it, I presume it's always given its support to the winner of the elections in Siddarmark. RFC has said very little about it, and nothing that tells us how the Republic ended up being formed when it was surrounded by monarchies - many which it has conquered over the centuries. I'd guess there weren't a lot of tears when the conquered countries found themselves able to elect their own leaders. I'm rather surprised that Siddarmark stopped expanding when the CoGA stepped in and created Silkiah and the Border States as buffer zones. I don't expect either of those to survive this war, although I expect Silkiah will sign on with the allies.

McGuiness wrote:

n7axw wrote:Just a couple of comments... "So far as we know..." Truth of the matter be known, we know very little of that early period from textev. Just enough to fuel speculation; good speculation, perhaps, but speculation nonetheless.

Why the earth pattern for an aristocrisy? My own guess is that the archangels must have implemented it. They are the ones who would have known of dukes, earls, barons, etc. And it does fit the medieval pattern they apparently wanted.

Now about the republic... That had to be one of Shan-wei's re-educated colonists; no other way to account for it. For the archangels themselves to have told Safehold about republics and offer choices would be completely contrary to character and the strait jacket they were trying to impose in other ways.

Don

RFC has told us quite a bit about the War of the Angels here in the forums - I'm not sure if those comments made it into the Pearls of Weber or not. So there's a bit more info out there than just what's in the series. Not that he's told us some of the really good stuff - like where Shan-Wei put her colonists and what happened to them!

The honest answer to why there are so many monarchies is that RFC likes them. (Check out his video interviews on the Baen.com website by clicking on his name in the list of authors.)

From the textev we know that the Armahk family became the rulers of Charis several generations ago by being the most successful pirates around, to quote Cayleb. (I'm guessing at least eight generations ago based on how many had confessors from St. Zherneau's, but that isn't set in stone.) That bit of self-deprecation aside, it's quite possible that the CoGA did indeed set up most of the monarchies on Safehold, but I don't know of any textev of how the nations came to be other than Charis.

Note that successions are required to be approved by Mother Church, accompanied by the appropriate bribes of course, which was why the succession in Hanth in OAR ticked off Charis so much, since a crook bribed his way into being named the successor. The Earl Hanth who is currently kicking Desnairan and Dohlaran fannies around Thesmar was the legitimate successor.

When Cayleb's succession papers arrived in Zion with the Church's seal already attached, stamped, and signed by Staynair and a couple of dozen other Charisian clergy, it was a spit in the face of the Go4 and Mother Church, and also the official beginning of the schism that resulted in the CoC being formed. IIRC Staynair included a nasty denunciation of the Go4 and the corruption of the CoGA to help things along...

The CoGA has to approve the king or queen of every monarchy - and it certainly has a say in who becomes the next ruler in the existing monarchies, although earldoms and duchies seem to be up for sale to the highest bidder. (See Hanth.)

That said, the Republic of Siddarmark becomes an even greater mystery. since as much as the CoGA hates it, I presume it's always given its support to the winner of the elections in Siddarmark. RFC has said very little about it, and nothing that tells us how the Republic ended up being formed when it was surrounded by monarchies - many which it has conquered over the centuries. I'd guess there weren't a lot of tears when the conquered countries found themselves able to elect their own leaders. I'm rather surprised that Siddarmark stopped expanding when the CoGA stepped in and created Silkiah and the Border States as buffer zones. I don't expect either of those to survive this war, although I expect Silkiah will sign on with the allies.

I am certain that Siddarmark stopped expanding because they were not willing to consider defying the CoGA, who had basically said "Stop, or else". They would not have been happy about it, and the uncertainty that Siddarmark would stay cowed drove a lot of the suspicion of the Republic by the CoGA authorities.

McGuiness wrote:

n7axw wrote:Just a couple of comments... "So far as we know..." Truth of the matter be known, we know very little of that early period from textev. Just enough to fuel speculation; good speculation, perhaps, but speculation nonetheless.

Why the earth pattern for an aristocrisy? My own guess is that the archangels must have implemented it. They are the ones who would have known of dukes, earls, barons, etc. And it does fit the medieval pattern they apparently wanted.

Now about the republic... That had to be one of Shan-wei's re-educated colonists; no other way to account for it. For the archangels themselves to have told Safehold about republics and offer choices would be completely contrary to character and the strait jacket they were trying to impose in other ways.

Don

RFC has told us quite a bit about the War of the Angels here in the forums - I'm not sure if those comments made it into the Pearls of Weber or not. So there's a bit more info out there than just what's in the series. Not that he's told us some of the really good stuff - like where Shan-Wei put her colonists and what happened to them!

The honest answer to why there are so many monarchies is that RFC likes them. (Check out his video interviews on the Baen.com website by clicking on his name in the list of authors.)

From the textev we know that the Armahk family became the rulers of Charis several generations ago by being the most successful pirates around, to quote Cayleb. (I'm guessing at least eight generations ago based on how many had confessors from St. Zherneau's, but that isn't set in stone.) That bit of self-deprecation aside, it's quite possible that the CoGA did indeed set up most of the monarchies on Safehold, but I don't know of any textev of how the nations came to be other than Charis.

Note that successions are required to be approved by Mother Church, accompanied by the appropriate bribes of course, which was why the succession in Hanth in OAR ticked off Charis so much, since a crook bribed his way into being named the successor. The Earl Hanth who is currently kicking Desnairan and Dohlaran fannies around Thesmar was the legitimate successor.

When Cayleb's succession papers arrived in Zion with the Church's seal already attached, stamped, and signed by Staynair and a couple of dozen other Charisian clergy, it was a spit in the face of the Go4 and Mother Church, and also the official beginning of the schism that resulted in the CoC being formed. IIRC Staynair included a nasty denunciation of the Go4 and the corruption of the CoGA to help things along...

The CoGA has to approve the king or queen of every monarchy - and it certainly has a say in who becomes the next ruler in the existing monarchies, although earldoms and duchies seem to be up for sale to the highest bidder. (See Hanth.)

That said, the Republic of Siddarmark becomes an even greater mystery. since as much as the CoGA hates it, I presume it's always given its support to the winner of the elections in Siddarmark. RFC has said very little about it, and nothing that tells us how the Republic ended up being formed when it was surrounded by monarchies - many which it has conquered over the centuries. I'd guess there weren't a lot of tears when the conquered countries found themselves able to elect their own leaders. I'm rather surprised that Siddarmark stopped expanding when the CoGA stepped in and created Silkiah and the Border States as buffer zones. I don't expect either of those to survive this war, although I expect Silkiah will sign on with the allies.

Yeah, RFC does seem to like aristocracies and monarchies. I don't particularly share his bias, but don't care as long as he writes a good story...

But that is not really the issue. The issue is that they are called emperors, kings, queens, dukes, etc after the Old Earth Western Medieval pattern. They could just as well been called knotheads, idiots and dorks with those terms having suitably reverent connotation, just as the Republic could have been called something else altogether. What I am saying by that is that the use of pre-Safehold terminology in a manner consistent with how it was used on Earth implies information that was passed through. The aristocratic stuff would have been more consistent with the agenda of the archangels for example, just as the use of the term "Republic" implies someone different with a different bias passing along information, perhaps one of the educated colonists.

Don

n7axw wrote:Yeah, RFC does seem to like aristocracies and monarchies. I don't particularly share his bias, but don't care as long as he writes a good story...

But that is not really the issue. The issue is that they are called emperors, kings, queens, dukes, etc after the Old Earth Western Medieval pattern. They could just as well been called knotheads, idiots and dorks with those terms having suitably reverent connotation, just as the Republic could have been called something else altogether. What I am saying by that is that the use of pre-Safehold terminology in a manner consistent with how it was used on Earth implies information that was passed through. The aristocratic stuff would have been more consistent with the agenda of the archangels for example, just as the use of the term "Republic" implies someone different with a different bias passing along information, perhaps one of the educated colonists.

Don

Technically, we don't know that they are called kings, dukes, etc. It is quite possible that they are called something else in their language (which has drifted a bit from Federation), and in fact we don't know that the Federation name for those things are king, duke, etc. All of the text has been translated from the Safeholdian and the Federation into our English language. So we do not actually know for certain that they terms used on Safehold are the same as the terms used by the Federation or the terms in English.

It would be a mistake to make assumptions about Safeholdian history based on the words used.

n7axw wrote:
Yeah, RFC does seem to like aristocracies and monarchies. I don't particularly share his bias, but don't care as long as he writes a good story...

But that is not really the issue. The issue is that they are called emperors, kings, queens, dukes, etc after the Old Earth Western Medieval pattern. They could just as well been called knotheads, idiots and dorks with those terms having suitably reverent connotation, just as the Republic could have been called something else altogether. What I am saying by that is that the use of pre-Safehold terminology in a manner consistent with how it was used on Earth implies information that was passed through. The aristocratic stuff would have been more consistent with the agenda of the archangels for example, just as the use of the term "Republic" implies someone different with a different bias passing along information, perhaps one of the educated colonists.

Don

I also don't agree with RFC's bias towards aristocracies as good governments or their continued existence in the future(see Honorverse).


However. The issue of naming can be addressed in several ways.

One: The same issue came up with muskets and rifles. RFC could wabberjacks and splunged wabberjacks. But, he kindly translated those terms into twenty first century American English for us. SWM addressed this in the post prior to this one.

Two: The colonists could speak English directly after 'creation'. So they had to have a dictionary and unless words related to the various types of governments were deliberately removed they would have had those words. No, intervention required.



Note: The colonists would have to have words removed from their vocabulary(or have the meanings altered) to prevent knowledge of things like, flight, space travel, other solar systems, places on earth(can't have say Europe as a word because there is no Europe on Safehold). So this could have been done. We just haven't ever been told what exactly was done to the colonist's vocabularies.

Highjohn wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Yeah, RFC does seem to like aristocracies and monarchies. I don't particularly share his bias, but don't care as long as he writes a good story...

But that is not really the issue. The issue is that they are called emperors, kings, queens, dukes, etc after the Old Earth Western Medieval pattern. They could just as well been called knotheads, idiots and dorks with those terms having suitably reverent connotation, just as the Republic could have been called something else altogether. What I am saying by that is that the use of pre-Safehold terminology in a manner consistent with how it was used on Earth implies information that was passed through. The aristocratic stuff would have been more consistent with the agenda of the archangels for example, just as the use of the term "Republic" implies someone different with a different bias passing along information, perhaps one of the educated colonists.

Don

I also don't agree with RFC's bias towards aristocracies as good governments or their continued existence in the future(see Honorverse).


However. The issue of naming can be addressed in several ways.

One: The same issue came up with muskets and rifles. RFC could wabberjacks and splunged wabberjacks. But, he kindly translated those terms into twenty first century American English for us. SWM addressed this in the post prior to this one.

Two: The colonists could speak English directly after 'creation'. So they had to have a dictionary and unless words related to the various types of governments were deliberately removed they would have had those words. No, intervention required.



Note: The colonists would have to have words removed from their vocabulary(or have the meanings altered) to prevent knowledge of things like, flight, space travel, other solar systems, places on earth(can't have say Europe as a word because there is no Europe on Safehold). So this could have been done. We just haven't ever been told what exactly was done to the colonist's vocabularies.

I think you are right on this one. According to the story, they were using standard English with the accent of the various regions drifting apart over time. Language flows out of culture. What would have happened to language when the colonists memories were wiped undoubtedly could be a complex discussion all by itself.

Don

Precisely so, SWM. Like everything else apart from the spellings of names, the titles are translated into 21st Century English and we don't know what the actual Safehold words are. So there's no point in arguing about them.
Cheers
John

SWM wrote:

n7axw wrote:Yeah, RFC does seem to like aristocracies and monarchies. I don't particularly share his bias, but don't care as long as he writes a good story...

But that is not really the issue. The issue is that they are called emperors, kings, queens, dukes, etc after the Old Earth Western Medieval pattern. They could just as well been called knotheads, idiots and dorks with those terms having suitably reverent connotation, just as the Republic could have been called something else altogether. What I am saying by that is that the use of pre-Safehold terminology in a manner consistent with how it was used on Earth implies information that was passed through. The aristocratic stuff would have been more consistent with the agenda of the archangels for example, just as the use of the term "Republic" implies someone different with a different bias passing along information, perhaps one of the educated colonists.

Don

Technically, we don't know that they are called kings, dukes, etc. It is quite possible that they are called something else in their language (which has drifted a bit from Federation), and in fact we don't know that the Federation name for those things are king, duke, etc. All of the text has been translated from the Safeholdian and the Federation into our English language. So we do not actually know for certain that they terms used on Safehold are the same as the terms used by the Federation or the terms in English.

It would be a mistake to make assumptions about Safeholdian history based on the words used.