Given how much we all post, I think some repetition is inevitable.lyonheart wrote:Howdy JeffEngel,
Kudos and thanks again for another great post!
I agree very strongly with all your major points as I have in long ago threads.
Let me reiterate that I'm not rejecting some kind of 'Modus vivendi' after the alliance takes Zion and the temple, only before when there will be too much chaos.
To clarify further, I expect no attempt by the alliance to conquer let alone attack Northern Harchong or the western KotTL in this war [aside from some naval raids], since it'd be beyond their resources and unnecessary in the first place, being as you put it so well, beyond their desire.
OTOH, I don't think the CoGA remnant is going to command that much loyalty from its far right, like most of the Harchong and other aristocrats, who will wish to restore things to how they were in the far more comfortable past, creating their own schism with all that portends.
L
Yeah. "Far right" is going to be relative. It could well be that a post-war CoGA with Duchairn (or someone like-minded) in a leadership position is going to represent a kind of centrist faction, with schismatics on the right and the CoC and/or other national churches on the left. (Or along other dimensions - anyway, on a far side from Masada... er, Harchong.) So the role there could be less pivot within the Church as an element of a Church that enables it to suck up followers for whom the right-schismatics are too scary (or look too likely to attract peasant revolts etc.)
Another possible role for Duchairn - though this one is less critical in terms of being a real alternative to the pike - is as a voice for Safehold theological reconciliation. In this scenario, he's not trying to salvage the CoGA as one church among several - he's trying to heal the rifts among the various splinter churches of Safehold so that they can all get along beside one another well enough. It means abandoning his dream, his faith, in a single, unified Church, but if it comes about that that's just impossible anymore (it has, he's just still in denial on that score), making sure that the shattered Churches don't stick sharp ends in one another is the next best thing.