The SSK without Nynian and Sandaria (SPOILERS)

n7axw wrote:There is no indicater that the Abbess was a Wylsyn. What we do know was that a higly placed vicar who was a family member, her brother IIRC, warned her what was coming down. That's what was in one of the earlier snippets.

My thought was because the snippet had mentioned that not only was her brother a vicar, but their father was a vicar as well; it just seemed like it may have been a vicarate dynasty.

Louis R wrote:what you overlook is that those things, it turns out, are a result of the influence of the BSZ on the Charisian crown.

which is what I meant when I said they were starting to draw attention to themselves.

n7axw wrote:It's also important to remember that Charis' orthodoxy wasn't alone in being suspect. To some degree all of the island kingdoms were far enough away from Zion to be under suspicion. Sharleyan and Hector were both very sensitive to that.

Two things caused the temple, specifically Clyntahn, to focus on Charis. The first is that Charis was far too sucessful with its merchant marine providing the majority of the world's commercial shipping and its manufactories selling its products all over Safehold which allowed Charis to accumulate an uncomfortable amount of power economically while its navy roled the waves. Even worse, Haarahld never owed the temple any money, which denied the Temple which denied the vicarate that particular crow bar in influencing his actions.

The second thing was the Royal College which the Temple saw as encouraging people to skirt the edges of, if not outright violate the proscriptions.

Don

The relationship between BZV and the crown is multigenerational with a majority of Charisian kings of the recent to intermediate past in on the secret.

There is no indication that the inquisition is even aware of the Brethren as being anything other than another small order, let alone one keeping secrets.

However if what you are saying is that the fruit of the Brethren's work has started to become more and more evident to the inquisition even if they do not know the details of how it developed, then I suspect you are probably right.

Don

n7axw wrote:

Louis R wrote:what you overlook is that those things, it turns out, are a result of the influence of the BSZ on the Charisian crown.

which is what I meant when I said they were starting to draw attention to themselves.

The relationship between BZV and the crown is multigenerational with a majority of Charisian kings of the recent to intermediate past in on the secret.

There is no indication that the inquisition is even aware of the Brethren as being anything other than another small order, let alone one keeping secrets.

However if what you are saying is that the fruit of the Brethren's work has started to become more and more evident to the inquisition even if they do not know the details of how it developed, then I suspect you are probably right.

Don

Neither the BSZ nor the Charisian Crown are working in a vacuum. The BSZ has been able to maintain its secrecy and the concentration of influence in Charis in large part due, not just to security or the Inquisition having other fish to fry, but also because Charis' priesthood comes from and remains mostly in Charis, same as for each of the other Out Islands.

Charis' geography will incline it naturally to maritime pursuits, and it could step up easily from sailing Howell Bay to sailing around Margaret's Land, Charis proper, Silverlode, and Emerald, to sailing around the Out Islands, to sailing around the world. With that, you get a commercial powerhouse and with that more openness to mechanical and scientific innovations and less influence of a landed aristocracy as such. (The other Out Islands aren't quite so well suited to that, but they're not bad for it either and get caught up in Charis' sphere of influence anyway. Staving off absorption was Nahrmahn's motive all along, and I imagine Gorjah had a similar sentiment.)

Certainly the BSZ and the Crown have been pushing Charis gently in this direction for a long, long time. But even without them, other factors would be opening those doors and doing some nudging too. I'm not sure the Inquisition has the historical perspective to trace the line from geography to Royal College. It can certainly see the limitations imposed by Church policy on letting Out Island churches be effectively national with commissars from the mainland on top, though admitting that will be awkward. Setting their sights on finding and destroying conspiracies hidden in monastic orders going back to nearly the Day of Creation, bent on destroying the Church over many centuries... is the sort of thing to get a good Inquisitor quietly shipped off to a Bedardist monastery himself where he can get some rest and help.

That it turns out it'd be exactly the right thing to do won't help. Sometimes reality is wild enough you'd be crazy to suspect it.

"The Truth will out" became an aphorism for a reason.

Clyntahn was neither the first nor the only inquisitor to sense that something was rotten in the state of Charis. The Charisians were incredibly lucky that he decided to maneuver Paityr Wylsynn into the intendancy - it occurs to me to wonder if even then he was expecting that the place would have to be dealt with, and planned to blame Wylsynn for the problem - since a Schuelerite with less tolerance than his but a greater gift for subtlety than Clyntahn's might have looked at the situation and gone 'Hmmmm... I wonder...' Anyway, the key point is that the upper levels of the Inquisition had correctly identified the existence of an active heresy influencing Charis and, by diffusion, its neighbours, albeit on the flimsiest of evidence at this point - possibly nothing more than that the usual corrective actions for doctrinal drift weren't working. Another Grand Inquisitor might have gone looking for solid evidence instead of going ape-shit on general principles. In which case it would have, eventually, been found.

Thinking about that, I realised something: Zion defines 'orthodoxy' as keeping the system working the way it is. The Charisians, led by people who don't _believe_ in the system, are not so interested in working within it the way Harchong did with gunpowder. That, umm..., impatience is probably what's been twanging antennae in Zion, and not just within the Inquisition.

The BSZ were perfectly aware of that, BTW. Harahld indicates at one point that he'd been hoping for another generation or 2 before the open break with Zion happened. But he did think it was inevitable.

n7axw wrote:
The relationship between BZV and the crown is multigenerational with a majority of Charisian kings of the recent to intermediate past in on the secret.

There is no indication that the inquisition is even aware of the Brethren as being anything other than another small order, let alone one keeping secrets.

However if what you are saying is that the fruit of the Brethren's work has started to become more and more evident to the inquisition even if they do not know the details of how it developed, then I suspect you are probably right.

Don

You don't appear to be wrong. There simply isn't any evidence that they were direct ancestors of Paityr.

My surprise was that those dynasties had started to form so early. Chihiro or whomever ought to have known better than that - the Western Christian churches ran into the problem repeatedly through the ages, which is why Rome became so insistent on priestly celibacy around 1100 [not, as the office of Cardinal-Nephew demonstrates, that that does much to fix it]. OTOH, as has been pointed out, Langhorne & Co. were cherry-pickers of history, not students of it.

ChaChaCharms wrote:

n7axw wrote:There is no indicater that the Abbess was a Wylsyn. What we do know was that a higly placed vicar who was a family member, her brother IIRC, warned her what was coming down. That's what was in one of the earlier snippets.

My thought was because the snippet had mentioned that not only was her brother a vicar, but their father was a vicar as well; it just seemed like it may have been a vicarate dynasty.

It was probably a bit early in the game to be talking about dynasties of vicars. But there is no doubt but what the lady's family was heavily involved in church politics at a very high level.

Don

Louis R wrote:"The Truth will out" became an aphorism for a reason.

Clyntahn was neither the first nor the only inquisitor to sense that something was rotten in the state of Charis. The Charisians were incredibly lucky that he decided to maneuver Paityr Wylsynn into the intendancy -
[...]
Thinking about that, I realised something: Zion defines 'orthodoxy' as keeping the system working the way it is.
[...]

I happen to disagree. What really riled Clyntahn (and most vicars) was the independence of Charis and the dynamic development of political and economic power out of their control. Royal college or not, innovations or not, the simple fact that Charis was an emerging, independent power was sufficient grounds for his actions. I would see this as part of the ongoing project of the fundamentalist branch of the CoGA of establishing a dictatorial theocracy directed from Zion. (That would help to explain why the Inquisition was able to pull of the Sword of Schueler against Siddarmark; you need to prepare such a major operation over the course of several years). This theocratic drive is what defines Clyntahn's understanding of "orthodoxy".
And the rise of Charis was only partly due to the Brethren; any halfway competent rulership would have led to that rise as population grew and trade picked up after the unification of realms at Howell Bay. Moreover, even Merlin didn't notice any clearly heretical tendencies in Charis when he decided to work from there. His assumption was that Charis was bound to be in conflict with the CoGA in the medium term, and he wanted to use that potential opening. But this whole Hanth business was seen primarily as a power struggle - as it was.
Now, Wylsynn was not Clyntahn's idea; he probably lost a power struggle with Samyl Wylsynn over that appointment, likely because the position didn't matter that much to him and he could use the appointment to his benefit on other matters.
In summary, even without some genuine heresy at the heart of Charis, the CoGA would have moved against them. And thereafter, they would have moved against Corisande, Chisholme, and Siddarmark over the decades, until they had established CoGA rule in all territories.
The reason why this had not happened at the start of the books is twofold:
Firstly, the CoGA was set off on its current course by the reforms of St. Evrayheart and the establishment of the Inquisition as we now it,
secondly, the Out Islands became significant in terms of population and economics only about 200 years ago, I guess.

Anwi,

I believe the outislands were a dumping grounds for those glergy that were least corrupt...or least willing to play politics to land in a lucrative or politically prominent diocese. That resulted in clerical base that felt alienated from the Vicarate. I agree with you that the outislands would have been targeted eventually and only Merlyn's help let any of them escape destruction.

In some ways that explains the drive that motivated Hector and Nahrmahn. They were trying create a soft landing for their people as the hammer fell. I suspect even they did not suspect the destruction Clyntahn was willing to inflict to ensure they were all docile dependents.

PeterZ wrote:Anwi,

I believe the outislands were a dumping grounds for those glergy that were least corrupt...or least willing to play politics to land in a lucrative or politically prominent diocese. That resulted in clerical base that felt alienated from the Vicarate. I agree with you that the outislands would have been targeted eventually and only Merlyn's help let any of them escape destruction.

In some ways that explains the drive that motivated Hector and Nahrmahn. They were trying create a soft landing for their people as the hammer fell. I suspect even they did not suspect the destruction Clyntahn was willing to inflict to ensure they were all docile dependents.

Nahrmahn definitely saw the hammer falling, as his summation of the "character" of Go4 that Merlin recorded that was later read back to him verbatim when he was tapped as the Imperial Spymaster (to keep him from being tempted to stray) showed that he fully understood the corruption in Zion, an deeply resented being whistled up like a dog to help a rather untrustworthy "ally" (Corisande) destroy their greatest competitor. (Charis) He was also smart enough to realize the the Go4 were certainly NOT going to allow Hektor to keep Charis, which Hektor never figured out. What survived would have been seized by the Go4, and either ruled as a CoGA vassal state, or split up like the border states with the Go4 selecting some of their cronies to rule Charis the way Mother Church wanted it ruled - with massive profits for the Go4 and the vicarate, of course!

Sharleyan certainly figured it out, and expected that Chisholm would end up on the chopping block as well. The phrase "if they can do it to Charis they can do it to anyone" comes to mind. I'm feeling too lazy to look up the exact text of what she said, but IIRC she was ticked and said Charis was a natural ally, and being forced to attack it was galling. (Hence her fleet's willingness to surrender, Cayleb returning it to her after the Battle of Darcos Sound, and her agreeing to marry Cayleb and create the EoC.)

PeterZ wrote:Anwi,

I believe the outislands were a dumping grounds for those glergy that were least corrupt...or least willing to play politics to land in a lucrative or politically prominent diocese. That resulted in clerical base that felt alienated from the Vicarate. I agree with you that the outislands would have been targeted eventually and only Merlyn's help let any of them escape destruction.

In some ways that explains the drive that motivated Hector and Nahrmahn. They were trying create a soft landing for their people as the hammer fell. I suspect even they did not suspect the destruction Clyntahn was willing to inflict to ensure they were all docile dependents.

Hi PeterZ,

Hector was into empire building, pure and simple. He was aware of the suspicion of the out islands, was very careful not to behave in such a way as to encourage it toward Corisande and then used it to focus Temple suspicion on Charis.

Hector's ambition was to rule the empire Cayleb ended up with. That was his primary focus even before he was offered Temple help in dealing with Charis.

Don