Annotated 48-7
The last time we saw Jarvis, I was somewhat less than impressed with his strategic capabilities. Here, at least he and Ardaic come across as highly competent, with a sense of what can be controlled and what cannot.
So we got that “Why Was The Silver Centurion Sometimes NOT Ardaic” question settled…again, not our most compelling loose end, but it would’ve felt wrong not to tie it off in the text.
I feel like I can answer Ardaic’s question. What he should do…well, what he should do is what he’ll eventually do: give up. But the best way he could defend the nation would be to pass the power to someone else, since that someone else may not be compromised by the doubts he’s feeling. But since he can’t admit those doubts yet, he can’t make that choice.
FB: There may not be FIGHTING in the war room, but when things get stressful there’s plenty of passive-aggression.
“I serve… our country” — replacing Gastonia with Iwatania didn’t help Ardaic’s “mid-like crisis”. After all, the country he dedicated his life to serving has already been destroyed, in a way, replaced by a different one.
A different one which is inarguably worse. Gastonia had a rotting core, but one could still see its good sides. With Iwatania, only the rot remains.
Canegham was right after all, wasn’t he?
In what sense?
Sorry, late reply – but I mean that if all the sky elves had joined the rebellion, they would be amongst the chief targets of Gastonia. Perhaps Taro would even have turned the ultimate engine against their cities first.
It is difficult to argue with Canegham’s decision.
How exactly would anyone be able to pose any danger to a concerted sky elf effort?
Instead of fighting the soldiers, the sky elves could literally just summon their weapons, their belts, their boots, and leave the threat of summoning their pants, teeth and other parts to do the rest.
There’s no real way to deploy a big tank against a city in the sky, either.
There is no credible threat there for Caneghem to be right about.
Caneghem was just an old racist who didn’t like how the cultural exchange was going – losing standing among the younger sky elves.
¿Could Iwatania have done something at this point that might have turned the tide to their favor? I mean, other than dethroning Taro…
Assuming “Iwatania” includes Taro: I suspect they might have. I imagine if Taro didn’t run amok close to the end and started behaving like a respnsible ruler, that could have stopped a lot more people from defecting and improved morale.
It might also have allowed some much smarter and more effective ways of using the ultimate engine, and better coordination.
… but I suspect it would not have been enough to stop the Rebellion, not with Gnomes, Wood Elves and of course some Sky Elves already having switched sides. Turns out being likeable and nice to people does carry a tactical advantage, but it’s a long-term thing.
Makes me wonder what could have happened if ‘Gastonian’ identity had here been re-established. Because most of the soldiers? They signed up to fight for Gastonia, not ‘Iwatania’. Loyalty to the land was stripped away, replaced by a presumption of loyalty to an individual, and then HE quickly died and his untested and underage successor is assuming a loyalty from the people having done nothing of any sort to deserve it and carrying no true weight of historical continence. Whilst the World’s Alliance forged by Penk is not the rabidly-antihuman organisation that the World’s Rebellion was under Harky, so the need to fight for ‘species survival’ is no longer as convincing.
If someone of the calibre of Ardaic (or even Miyamoto or Pardo) had chosen this moment to plant the banner of Gastonia again, could they have resurrected enough loyalty to their old country to turn it against ‘Iwatania’ in alliance with Penk, giving the nation some small measure of a last-minute redemption arc?
Probably not. Most of the damage inflicted on the members of the Rebellion was done by Gastonia, with “Iwatania” merely being more and worse of the same. Even with Penk taking a non-genocidal approach to the war, I suspect he wouldn’t and arguably shouldn’t trust Gastonia any more than Iwatania. His followers and allies certainly wouldn’t trust or forgive what was done to them and theirs!