KING OF SWORDS 10-156
Chapter: 10
“When the rage of the princes of the world could no longer be contained within their golden bodies, it spilled out into the land.
Thus also with their sorrow.”
– Glass Scroll, SC 45
“When the rage of the princes of the world could no longer be contained within their golden bodies, it spilled out into the land.
Thus also with their sorrow.”
– Glass Scroll, SC 45
Spontaneous speculation. Solomon throws (or just casually drops) White Chain exactly onto the tribune with Allison & Co, where she explodes. And there, in raging mixture of white and black flame, the Rising King is born to bring new and terrible eon upon the Multiverse.
Doubt it really is going to turn out that way, but if so, it will be quite epically badass.
That’s… unlikely, but man, wouldn’t that be great!
Hopes the Salami be right proud o thum’s ramshacklin, shanty-town o un sposed capital city right outside yon grandisome palace.
Quick question to anyone, do we know the name of his capital, is it also Rayuba?
Previous shots of it show it classical in design, of the ilk of Venice or Ottoman say, and well kept, but the rain does do it a disservice.
Is that another sea at the far end of the city, or is it just fading into the distance? If sea it is, then it is a nice example of a tarbert, somewhere there’s a thin isthmus where boats were dragged across it in preference to sailing/rowing all the way round.
Dave’s fury makes it look like he was expecting a gas attack, with his beardy black-rage gasmask.
I never hoped for a competitive showing from White Chain. I was hoping for a compelling one. I think we got it.
Told you guys two pages ago, she’s definitely gonna die. Only question is whether she takes Dave with her in a blaze of glory first.
The first blow settled the match. The many after settled his mind.
Are those boats just stuck in the harbor until the arena is smashed?
Solomon’s causeway design not befitting a being of his power.
Incidentally, the boats have also previously been seen sailing directly into the wind, not even on a tack.
White Chain’s narrative arc isn’t finished until she turns selfish, seizes Solomon’s key, and discovers the joy of power for its own sake. (A mirror to Clio’s rejection of deviltry and learning to understand selfless acts.) 5 gets you 10 that Alison will have to face down White Chain as the final boss.
Armor piecing question time.
“Why haven’t you done anything to make the world not need men like you?”
Is this technically a ringout?
Men like you never needed to exist, Solocup Davidson.
I disagree. He essentially rebuilt and protected Rayuba from an universal war which included individuals as strong and perhaps more dangerous than he. Had he not existed, Rayuba and the empire probably would not exist at all.
Considering that before he got his Key, Rayuba had been stripped of literally everything, even its SUN, I think you’re right.
She *does* have him on the ropes.
Y’all so worried about that drop of blood you don’t even get she’s not even trying to work that health bar.
This whole contest was designed BY Solomon to make sure no one ever won. It’s a Kobayashi Maru. So the only way to win is to change the game.
Waiting for one of those Angel’s Nails to go through his flesh
Get ‘im monolouging, White Chain!
uh oh!
… and White Chain responds with a scathing comment, so piquantly bitter, so Oscar Wilde clever, that Solomon plucks the Key from his forehead and jams it into hers.
Then I woke up.
Oh, I think she scratched him, all right. Note the subject of his soliloquy.
The positions of Solomon and White Chain remind me of those of Solomon and the Ki Rata master he sucker-punched. Feels like it might be forshadowing, but not sure in which way.
There it is. His particular hypocrisy. “People like me should not exist, but I will maintain power through overwhelming force”. Like Mottom, Mammon and possibly Incubus, he likes having the power and it terrifies him.
Not Incubus. Every piece of evidence we’ve had is that he enjoys/seeks power for its own sake and wants more. He is deathly afraid of losing the power he has, and hates that others do not consider him having earned what he has.
Men like him never needed to exist. But those men will do everything they can to convince others that they do, and convince themselves that they wish it were not so.
Excerpt from ‘Oedipus Rex’
Chorus :
“Ο that ’twere mine to keep
An awful purity,
In words and deeds whose laws on high are set
Through heaven’s clear æther spread,
Whose birth Olympos boasts,
Their one, their only sire,
Whom man’s frail flesh begat not,
Nor in forgetfulness
Shall lull to sleep of death;
In them our God is great,
In them He grows not old for evermore.
But pride begets the mood
Of wanton, tyrant power;
Pride filled with many thoughts, yet filled in vain,
Untimely, ill-advised,
Scaling the topmost height,
Falls to the abyss of woe,
Where step that profiteth
It seeks in vain to take.
I ask our God to stay
The labours never more
That work our country’s good;
I will not cease to call on God for aid.”
Oedipus The King, by Sophocles,
Translation by Edward H. Plumptre, 1865
Do you have a site or something. I always looks for your post on the comments for more quotes like these.
Hello MAth,
I have not created a site, my intention has been simply to cheer Abbadon on in my own way, while just possibly providing some inspiration to his writing, while amusing my fellow votaries and myself.
It is mostly for my own fun, and I took it on as a personal challenge to find some kind of artistic, literary, mythic, historical, or other comment that might relate ( however obliquely ! ) to this unfolding Epic of Abbadon’s.
Sometimes my comments are silly and sometimes I find myself struck by serious aspects of this Saga and try to match the moment.
Finding and sharing excerpts from the ancient myths, or a poem or play to quote from the past is fun for me.
And sometimes I find I’m so Inspired an original poem of my own is generated.
Cheers,
Oneirimancer
The reason no one can replace you is because people like you exist.
Yes, which is why he exists. He became one of Those Men and forged a corner of the multiverse while not some spontaneous beacon of freedom is a sight better than what he have seen in other domains. If Solomon disappeared tommorow, that bubble would pop and other Those Men would take it. Nothing would change.
Machiavelli points this out to rulers who want to be good to their people and be righteous in thought and deeds. If you refuse to ever do anything dishonorable, you are likely to lose power to those willing to. And then where will your people be? Under the yoke of someone without your qualms. So do what you must to protect yourself position if you honestly have good intentions.
He has yet to find someone he felt could defend the people, and for whatever reason hasn’t cooked up a scheme to empower the people enough to protect themselves or trained a guardian for them himself (after all, he required the monks to train him, he is not self-made)
But as long as there are other people like him out there, how can he in good conscience step down? And so the Tower is a prison and it doesn’t even require Solomon to be a moustache twirling villain.
He has his people literally hauling huge stones by hand to make an arena where he can showboat how strong he is.
This guy is not a good guy or even a good leader.
And yes, if he dissapeared tomorrow there would be chaos, anarchy, fire in the streets, but only for the sole reason that he never trusted anyone with any real power or responsibility and placed it all on himself, because he only saw himself as good enough.
There are likely thousands or millions of people who could do an adequate or even better job of ruling his worlds, but he simply refuses for anyone to be less than perfect (i.e. chosing to do what he would do).
The only benefit David gives his people is stability at the cost of being able to govern themselves, to be inventive, to learn how to defend themselves. He is the overbearing controlling helicopter parent who tssks when his child turns into a homeless drug addict when they finally rebel because they have never been allowed to learn how to do things for themselves. And they say “see, under my rule things weren’t so bad. I only controlled your ever action because it was necessary while patting themselves on the back for how tragically misunderstood they were.
A good ruler knows that the tighter you put your hold on your own people, the more they rebel against you and the weaker they are when you finally get toppled or die. A good ruler builds something that outlasts themselves.
Spreading the enormity of his power, enough to be able to fight back against the other Seven without his own intervention has a name. It’s called the universal war, and it was already attempted by Zoss long ago.
We know how well it worked.
Modern terran morals and ethics are fine and well in a universe where Galactus doesn’t have a vested interest in ruining your day.
When Injustice Superman is the only thing protecting you from Galactus, I doubt the moral high ground of spitting in his face.
I would still spit in the tyrant’s face. And he would kill me for it.
And if the people under his rule have no impact on the defense of their kingdom and Solomon is the sole reason they haven’t fallen to the other seven, why doesn’t Solomon just step down and become a mere protector of the kingdom instead of the ruler?
He can just say “Hey, other dudes and dudettes, I’m stepping down from ruling this kingdom, but if you touch it I’m still kicking in your shit. If my kingdom attacks you however, feel free to push them back to the original borders and no further”.
But, if you say that he needs to organise the defense of his kingdom and therefor needs to rule, than it admits that the people in it do have an impact on the defense and they can stand a chance of warding of invasions themselves. I’m sure there are much more competent generals and logistic officers in the kingdom that outstrip Solomon’s capabilities.
Tyrants always argue that without them things will be much worse, but we’ve seen, even in a world where there a nukes which can destroy our entire planet, that a people that is liberated and is free to think for themselves and to self govern will be pound for pound a better society than one under “a strong leader” that “controls the power balance”.
This situation with the seven and his kingdoms inability to rule itself are both clear flaws in Solomon his skill as a diplomat and a ruler. He is nothing but a one man military dictatorship that only understand violence. Heck, this entire tournament to chose a new leader is only based on someone’s ability to do violence. Maybe diplomacy, charm, logistical skill and admnistrative abilities are much more important traits in a leader, but we can’t have Solomon amitting that someone else could do his job in a completely different way and do it much better.
Solomon has allowed a cold war to go on for thousands of years and his impotency to change it is masked as “stability and protection”.
I think this is largely because Solomon is genre savvy. In his experience in the end it doesn’t come down to logistics, or administration, or even diplomacy, it comes down to wuxia nonsense because that is the world they live in. Trying to tie it logically to our own world has certain limits due to that. Everything else you listed is possible as long as you have a certain level of martial prowess available, then you can have governments and markets and all the other shiny bits of civilization because otherwise a kung Fu work god comes along and wrecks everything, for example. He also likely thought that it was a better deterrent for him to be the face of the Empire than simply a public servant in the wings as the other empires are organized like the former and it is what they know and respect.
Obviously the narrative is saying he is Wrong for doing what he has done all these years, and we will wait for the author to spell out how with dialogue and consequences, what third path had been available to him that we don’t know right now would have worked had he been brave enough and not too risk adverse.
As for his impotency, certainly. All the genre talk of ‘true strength’s is to highlight that here is a man who can at least imagine a different world, one he professes to prefer, and lacks the strength to make it so in the face of others like him.
Kung fu gods certainly would be less of a problem if technology wasn’t explicitly nerfed in this universe. It does indeed put a bit of a damper on my argument, but it also shows that the universe literally has to be completely different than it actually is compared to ours for Solomon to have even the beginning of a point.
I guess I can live with that.
“See, there! Not even an ANGEL can defeat Solomon David! What hope do any else have? His tournament is a SHAM and always has been!”
If I were a betting person, I’d put money on 10 Vigilant Gaze saying much the same thing within 3 comics.
Let me ask you something fellas, if you were Salami Dave, what would you have done?
Invest in results based rehabilitation programs, instead of rat infested medieval dungeons.
1000 pages of laws, and no thought for what to do with the people who break them.
The lights in the town end up looking as if the town is on fire, I almost hope it is. That his people are already revolting against his order upon witnessing the spectacle.