King of Swords 10-172
Yem Yeddo was astonished, and a great terror overwhelmed him. He was a quick and cowardly man, and fled. The people rejoiced and the granaries were broken open. The bodies of the tyrannical lord’s men were burned without rites and stomped upon. Flour was dragged forth by the sackful, the well Intra dug was quickly filled with fresh water and reinforced with stone, and soon many loaves of bread were emerging, steaming, from his oven. A goat was slaughtered and a great feast was had.
“Thankyou for the hospitality,” said Intra, when the night had grown long. “I will not impose upon you any longer.”
The populace were desperate for him to stay. “Lord Intra,” said they, “Yem Yeddo may yet return, with more men!”
“That is true,” said Intra, “And that I cannot help with you. But remember, men like him have forgotten their mothers. Their feet do not touch the earth, and they grasp at feeble things. They are like a mangy dog fighting over a fetid corpse. They have forgotten that with their brothers, working together, they could bring down a magnificent ox.”
He reached down and picked a goodly sized rock from the floor of the valley.
“This valley is broad and beautiful. It may have one Yem Yeddo, but it contains many more stones.”
– The Song of Maybe
This page is everything. White Chain is grace and dignity. I hope Solomon hears her.
I am just a LITTLE WORRIED that Mister Purple here will take the same path as Vladok and refuse to honor the terms of the deal.
Life in general, and history in particular, is a study in missed opportunity.
Imagine if Solomon had spent the last thousand years of his, yes, stable and generally prosperous reign actually encouraging his subjects to better themselves, to grow out of his protection, to leave the nest.
As opposed to literally culling the audacious and unruly every three years in a bloody public spectacle to his own ego, each round of slaughter “justified” more greatly by the previous. The same old MISTAKES, endless and needless, nipping at the heels of the Conquering King whom could have told you straight-well the inevitable and bloody shortcomings of Individual Supreme Authority.
That’s why you still have stone-age engineering techniques Solomon. It’s why your people were GODS-DAMNED-THRILLED when you got punched in the face.
It’s time to make new mistakes.
You. I like you. You’re able to admit that the Celestial Empire has been prosperous in certain ways without trying to pretend it excuses the empire’s calcification, and aren’t afraid to point out that Solomon the God Emperor has failed to do either God or Emperor things outside of nannying his biological sons and hosting the arena. Nor are you yammering about the encroachment of the other Demiurges as if Solomon hasn’t handled that the same way Lord Cheeto of the Russian-backed White House handles Corona: completely failing to acknowledge it outside of his own lawn, and forcing the people to improvise, with mixed results.
Also, I posit a new form of swearing for these comments, considering the failed state (and literal failed states “run” by multiple members of the Seven) of the Demiurges: replacing Gods-damned with Gods-be-damned. Have a great day!
>That’s why you still have stone-age engineering techniques Solomon
I’m really curious about this. The page with the soldiers bleeding to raise that stone, Pharaonic style, seems like one of the more obvious ways Solomon’s empire is an artificial society. Other worlds have, you know, forklifts, magic or otherwise, they have power tools, they don’t have their construction workers breaking their bodies like this with only the intervention of a kindly God-Emperor to spare them. (I wonder about those stone age engineering techniques– are Empire citizens allowed to visit other worlds? Do they know how much they’re being held back? Might have something to do with why they were so thrilled to see him get hit) It’s completely unnecessary and seems like it comes from the same place of controlling infantilization+ nostalgia that the rest of Solomon’s rule does, and that place has its root in a whole lot of unresolved trauma, because it looks like the level of technology Rayuba had before it was invaded and destroyed. It’s not just Solomon’s citizens who haven’t been allowed to grow and move on. The entire empire is set up in a way that keeps them from bettering themselves and keeps Solomon in a state of constant mourning for his first family and first planet, he’s keeping himself and his entire empire crystallized at his point of deepest trauma. He’s living in a giant mausoleum to his family and culture, refusing to let go, refusing to let his culture develop naturally, refusing to sire daughters because they also would grow past the daughters he lost, raising generation after generation of sons in a way that guarantees they’ll disappoint him so he has an excuse to stay in charge. He’s a tyrant but there’s some solid grief—> control adult child of alcoholics/trauma psychology going on with the way he’s being written. I keep pushing for him to recognize White Chain as a surrogate daughter because his story is genuinely tragic and I want to see the narrative catharsis of Solomon finally reaching the acceptance stage of grief and then moving past it. Because right now he’s become more like the original Ki Rata monks than he probably wants to think about. The democratization of power is what Solomon wanted when he came to them and begged them to teach him– he wanted revenge for his family but the invasion wasn’t complete, and he was trying to gain the skills to fight it. I don’t think Solomon is exactly Yem Yeddo here– he’s an incomplete Intra, one who stayed behind to protect the people, instead of teaching them. I sincerely hope White Chain gets through to him.
>Because right now he’s become more like the original Ki Rata monks than he probably wants to think about
Well observed! I have thought much the same. Though their path was rigid pacifism and his has been vastly-bellicose: Solomon has been just another old man, of vast power, sitting on his stone.
And just as the Ki Rata monks only *actually used* Ki Rata to annihilate anyone whom learned the secrets outside of their order? Solomon has thus far used his great power for little more than justifying and continuing his reign. Hells, he has even been a deal less engaged than those monks perched on their rocks; they might have had worrisome bad judgement in taking on students… but They Were Still Taking On Students
Funny how now that White Chain is a flesh and blood woman, half the comments are either about her breasts or how she’s doing everything wrong. Gee where have I seen that before.
To be honest, that’s not a “the readerbase is misogynist trash and always has been” thing, that’s a “Bob whined to one of the ‘chans and or Reddit to flood the comments” thing. Note how many seem to be arguing in bad faith, and how even the monarchists who try to seem as if arguing in good faith don’t seemnto have actually read that much of the comic. 1000 Mosquitoes is a good example of a bad offender. Where have you seen their name before the last three updates? Don’t think you have. Also, I’ll admit, as a transfeminine person myself, seeing White Chain able to finally revel in such a form as she has now is like catnip. I am willing to bet that a lot of the more good-natured jokes about “Suns out tits out” or “free the tiddy!” Are by trans people.
Although, I think my favorite comment on the subject was one person’s analysis that her bare-chested pronouncements of ROYALTY thing she’s doing here is specifically to mirror Salami the Don’s favored use of that affect.
Oh that’s a good point about Bob. If it looks like a bunch of GGers, sounds like a bunch of GGers, and smells like a bunch of GGers… 🙁
Re responses from trans people, yeah IDK, I’m also transfeminine; YMMV I guess, like with all things trans. This arc really has been something though, I’m like… super glad and honestly kind of grateful to see Abaddon giving White Chain this. Especially since experience has taught me to expect last-minute betrayal from cisgender authors.
I’m fully confident this is a raid. Lots of ostensibly bad faith posters who spam responses and posts. Scrolling down, you see a lot of their names repeat. It’s likely a small handful of awful misanthropic people posting from a few aliases each just to shit up the space with their reactionary bullshit, standard chan petty internet war tactics.
Digging the Lancer themed name btw.
I’d be slightly careful about using how often someone appeared in recent updates to tell if they’ve been following the comic for long. For example, I only post fairly sporadically.
That said, I suspect your overall analysis is correct. The … backlash against White Chains boon struck me as weird for this comment section, both because it seems to be missing most of the point of this comic (and the politics we’ve seen so far, for that matter), and because it was surprisingly loud and consistent.
Hopefully, there’s a for Abbadon to clean things up, because I rather liked the odd-ball mix of RP and insightful analysis that normally makes up the comments. This new invasion is just unpleasant.
Hmm, not sure how filling this request would work in practice. As WC said, this peace is an illusion held up by him and will shatter the second he passes on from the world.
He can’t exactly just abdicate and hand the empire over to “the people”. Setting his worlds up to be able to grow beyond him takes time. There needs to be some from of government and you can’t just flick a switch on a dictatorship. It’s not like they have systems in place for a democracy and people need to learn what to do with one.
I’m… a little confused as to where this is coming from. I get that the aesop here is “authoritarianism bad”, but that kind of hasn’t been *shown* by the story. Unless I missed something, we haven’t really seen much in the way of Solomon being a tyrant, and he seems to be well-loved by the people (who live considerably better than the rest of Throne). We haven’t really *seen* his failings- we’re just supposed to, like, assume they exist? Because that’s sort of intrinsic to dictatorships? I guess White Chain’s been around a while and would know, but I think the work to show us why we’re supposed to hate the guy has… sorta been skipped.
Maybe, like, a couple extra pages when Solomon is walking through the city with Zaid would do some work there? They happen across some kind of bad thing happening as a result of his laws, and Solomon gives a defense of it but it’s obviously pretty brutal and reveals an underlying tension in Celestial Empire society? Something like that to counteract what the rest of the book is doing- intentionally or no- to present Solomon as *justified*.
Without the buildup, this scene kinda comes off as… “yay, the-abstract-concept-of-antiauthoritarianism”? Cheering for the home team, rather than making a point- in a way that jars with everything everyone’s been doing or talking about for the last hundred-some pages. (Plus it’s weird that every single character on Team WC here is posing stylishly behind her, as if what WC is saying isn’t remotely surprising. You’d think the devils, at least, would be a little taken aback by her forgoing a selfish wish in favor of a vague demand for social reform that doesn’t benefit them in any way.)
On his field trip with Zaid what we saw was his people running themselves bloody trying to fulfill his wishes and Solomon stopped them, gave them the day off, and then finished it for them. This could have been staged and he was just flexing in front of Zaid to give an impression of his benevolence, or it could be illustrating that his cult of personality has grown beyond his personal wishes and has his people act in ways ‘for the empire!’ that he personally wouldn’t condone if he was witnessing it.
The way the crowd is shown jeering and grotesque might confirm this as well, the Mass is not a bunch of noble citizens that he had tried to inspire. Solomon is perhaps disappointed in them, and himself for not creating a nation that matched his vision.
While I too find it kind of eye-rolling how White Chain seems to hand wave the results of her decision, ultimately the Empire’s bureaucracy runs all these planets already. I doubt Solomon coordinates all the paperwork and logistics, that can stay in place. He can stay on as guardian of the Republic, even be head of the military or whatever. That though is sort of an unfair demand of his time and would be putting him from one prison to another, still delaying his pursuit of royalty. If he is as noble as he likes to think though, perhaps he’d be willing to take up that burden without the station to go with it.
A poster above pointed out though how likely it is that each planet will choose to go its own way, they a patchwork of very different cultures with only Solomon’s irresistible power to hold them together. Self-determination sounds fine, though in this universe that will likely to lead to them getting gobbled up one by one by the other demiurges. Unless they’re only accessible with Solomon’s key, in which case he could just cut the Celestial Empire off from the rest of the universe and they can mind their own business as long as Allison doesn’t open them again?
I’d believe that anyone who can “ride the lightning” could go wherever they please, and bring with them things at least as big as Nadia’s flying palace. Opening the proper gates to the King’s Road probably needs that’s world’s key, though.
Though I think the point might be that there are more stones than demiurges.
Mottom moves her palace through the gates, as we saw in book 2, so the matter of what a demiurge can transport is not quite so clear.
BTW, the book-2 pages suggest to me that Allison’s Earth was next on Mottom’s list for harvesting after Mykos, and that was why so many devils had gathered by the Earth-gate waiting for access. Diverting Mottom into a war with Mammon may have saved Earth from despoilment. It’s another example of how unwise action *by a favoured, fated person in a multiverse of miracles* can save worlds rather than doom them.
Hmm…I’d like to see this granted. I mean…this is still Salami Dave, the smug, smirking jackass. He’s going to find a way to give them exactly what they want in a way that makes them feel terrible, while he gets the last laugh.
At least, this is what I’d really like to see.
And then Solomon invites the team to discuss such subjects as sociocracy, the viable system model, methods of voting and polling, network theory, prediction markets, the importance of public outreach in the sciences, the social dynamics of cults and how to thwart them, and other such matters as are instrumental to the maintenance of democracy.
Tits: Out
Words: Hardline
Team: Jojo pose
titties: out
monarchy: abolished
man’s whole career: ruined
Or a return to his original career of seeking Royalty before he ended up as royalty.
“Your struggle must be a terrible fire, which only grows as you pass it to others”. And now everybody’s got a little flame hovering above their heads. Nice.
Still worried about the green tint of Nyave’s flame, though.
I got that reference
The parable of Intra and the stone is frankly my favorite.
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They all have flame above their head, not just Allison and the angels.
Awesome.
You know, I think this will be a debate that will never, ever have a simple answer.
I guess most people will rally behind the cause of democracy immediately because that’s what we were, in a way or another, raised to do. Freedom, will, independence, the greater good and all that stuff. We’re supposed to detest Solomon’s way of doing things. And hey, any reign that stiffles creativity, that entirely prevents new possibilities for making the world a better and more variated place, that denies one the possibility of chosing their own path when it would hurt nobody is certainly a thing to beware.
But then again, I’ve grown up in democracy, as have most of you, I suppose. And after 200 and something years fo freedom, the more remarkable things about my country is how torn apart it is by zealotry, by ignorance, by hunger, by the hate of the fanatics who rally behind political parties whose only purpose is to blame the other for all our troubles while almost publicly filling their pockets with our hardly earned money. Look how democratically free we are, how ignorant our people is, how poverty will never be removed from our land.
Solomon’s reign is an asphixiating thing. But his subjects don’t seem to know poverty, cold, hunger, they haven’t seen their people squabbling endlessly and killing each other for political pettiness, for the result of a fucking football match, for a piece of food. It is not something to be discarded carelessly.
That’s all.
so… is he supposed to establish a republic in every world he rules over ? let the people pick his successors through election ? he could still rule in a constitutional monarchy
Authoritarianism sucks but I think King Solomon David is the better alternative. The people will run that shit to a flaming hovel or a dictator will come in and lay claim to vulnerable pieces