Frustrations with tactical blinders on the Inner Circle

Randomiser wrote:

Expert snuggler wrote:Merlin has already crossed the Rubicon. He's killed people under circumstances with no natural explanation.

One of the perpetrators of the Sarkyn atrocity died of a slit throat inside his own guarded tent.

Any number of rational explanations for that, mostly centring around the premise that the guards got very sloppy or sloped off for a while and are now lying through their teeth about it.

Or of course the rational explanation that the guards were complicit it in; either killing him or agreeing to stand aside while it was done.

thanatos wrote:..snip..
Re assassinations

As you say, assassinations has a tendency to create unintended consequences which may manifest directly or several years later.

I think the best way to deal with people which have great influence is usually to discredit them, a more difficult and laborious process compared to assassinations.

Seriously people assassination is a valid tactic, the problem is that modern society do assassinations the dumb way, you want to do proper assassinations you need to do them like the french and english of the 15 and 16th century did it, they researched not only the target but also the guy that would replace him, and sometimes they researched several of the guys who would succeed the guy, they checked that the guy who was going to replace the main guy was not better, if it was, then either the assassination tried to get them both or they killed the subordinate first and later on they killed the target.

Doing an assasination without knowing who will replace is like throwing dice, certain governments do not survive the death of their leader, others become worse, without proper intelligence using assassination is stupid.

Do I think merlin can use assassinations? yes very simply because he can investigate the subordinates and make sure that the guy ho will replace whatever target he choose is a complete incompetent. Merlin have the technology and the tools to be able to do it, it is simply RFC choice why it has not happen.

Charles83 wrote:Seriously people assassination is a valid tactic, the problem is that modern society do assassinations the dumb way, you want to do proper assassinations you need to do them like the french and english of the 15 and 16th century did it, they researched not only the target but also the guy that would replace him, and sometimes they researched several of the guys who would succeed the guy, they checked that the guy who was going to replace the main guy was not better, if it was, then either the assassination tried to get them both or they killed the subordinate first and later on they killed the target.

Doing an assasination without knowing who will replace is like throwing dice, certain governments do not survive the death of their leader, others become worse, without proper intelligence using assassination is stupid.

Do I think merlin can use assassinations? yes very simply because he can investigate the subordinates and make sure that the guy ho will replace whatever target he choose is a complete incompetent. Merlin have the technology and the tools to be able to do it, it is simply RFC choice why it has not happen.

Apart from the moral considerations which I will agree in advance is not a completely one sided discussion, I strongly doubt that there is any such thing as an assassination that does not suffer from the law of unintended consequences no matter how well the target is researched. That is because the context which placed the target in his role will still obtain after that individual is removed.

Don

-

And don't forget the lesson of King Sailis. He was assassinated and his immediate replacement was but a 12 year old girl. Surely all of Chisholm will fall into ruin and civil war if Sailis were assassinated right?

Right?

Wrong!

The other side has been using assassination for quite a while now. And in the long run, every single assassination has ultimately worked in the victim's favor. Assassinating Charis' First Counselor allowed Charis to get a First Counselor with Inner Circle access. Assassinating Hektor Daykin gave Charis some short term trouble but ultimately welded Corisande to Charis. And all the FAILED assassinations have worked in Charis's favor as well.

So with all those object lessons in front of Charis, I don't see "assassination is a good idea" being one of those tat Charis would learn.

evilauthor wrote:And don't forget the lesson of King Sailis. He was assassinated and his immediate replacement was but a 12 year old girl. Surely all of Chisholm will fall into ruin and civil war if Sailis were assassinated right?

Right?

Wrong!

The other side has been using assassination for quite a while now. And in the long run, every single assassination has ultimately worked in the victim's favor. Assassinating Charis' First Counselor allowed Charis to get a First Counselor with Inner Circle access. Assassinating Hektor Daykin gave Charis some short term trouble but ultimately welded Corisande to Charis. And all the FAILED assassinations have worked in Charis's favor as well.

So with all those object lessons in front of Charis, I don't see "assassination is a good idea" being one of those tat Charis would learn.

Or in the Honorverse, the Peeps assassinated King Roger believing they would get a weak girl in his place...

Yeah, right. What they got instead was Elizabeth III, the monarch the tree cats named "Soul of Steel."

Another "brilliant" idea that crapped out...

Don

-

Merlin has promised himself that no matter what, if Clyntahn steps out of range of the Temple defenses he will immediately become the late Grand Fornicator. That's probably an emotional decision rather than a tactical one.

Expert snuggler wrote:Merlin has promised himself that no matter what, if Clyntahn steps out of range of the Temple defenses he will immediately become the late Grand Fornicator. That's probably an emotional decision rather than a tactical one.

Yeah, that was at the time of the purge of the Wylsyns' circle. That one should probably be the exception although one could argue that getting rid of Clyntahn could risk putting someone competent and rational in charge, making the allies task more difficult.

Don

-

n7axw wrote:... although one could argue that getting rid of Clyntahn could risk putting someone competent and rational in charge, making the allies task more difficult.

That is a decision that would run into a Strategic vs Tactical conflict.

Tactically, assassinating Clyntahn would be a fairly straight-forward decision; most of the atrocities and fanaticism are driven by a cult of personality and replacing Clyntahn with anyone, no matter how competent should be an improvement. It might even lead to a negotiated peace.

Strategically, the inner circle needs Clyntahn to keep authorizing exceptions to the Proscriptions and encouraging innovation, to make overturning the Proscriptions easier post-war. They even need the atrocities committed by the Inquisition to shape public opinion for abolishing the Inquisition post-war.

There is a great deal that Merlin could do that would make sense on a tactical level but would be counter-productive to Merlin and the Inner Circle's Strategic goals.

The discussion here of unintended consequences seems to omit one key issue. Unintended consequences can work both ways. If you assassinate the other side's brilliant general, his successor might be better, be he might also be much worse. Furthermore, if you are targeting the uniquely good enemy, well, as a statistical matter the outcome will be regression to the mean.

evilauthor wrote:And don't forget the lesson of King Sailis. He was assassinated and his immediate replacement was but a 12 year old girl. Surely all of Chisholm will fall into ruin and civil war if Sailis were assassinated right?

Right?

Wrong!

The other side has been using assassination for quite a while now. And in the long run, every single assassination has ultimately worked in the victim's favor. Assassinating Charis' First Counselor allowed Charis to get a First Counselor with Inner Circle access. Assassinating Hektor Daykin gave Charis some short term trouble but ultimately welded Corisande to Charis. And all the FAILED assassinations have worked in Charis's favor as well.

So with all those object lessons in front of Charis, I don't see "assassination is a good idea" being one of those tat Charis would learn.