CLOAK OF WOLVES: Tarlia meets Caesar Augustus
A question about how Tarlia rules her nobles in the CLOAK GAMES/CLOAK MAGE series turned into a long explanation. Historical references follow!
Tarlia’s problem and advantage is that she’s a lot like Caesar Augustus at the start of his reign. We remember Augustus as the first “Roman Emperor” but his position was a lot less formalized than that. He was a military dictator, but in 27 BC he made a big show of laying down his offices and commands since the Roman world was at peace. The Senate, no doubt well-rehearsed, begged him to keep his offices, and created the title of “Augustus” for him. His power came from the fact that he commanded the army, was the richest man in Rome, had command of the militarily valuable provinces, and held a variety of other offices – he was censor and consul a bunch of times.
Tarlia’s position is somewhat similar. Back on Kalvarion, the High King of the Elves was sort of first among equals of the Elven nobles – he could call the nobles together in war, and judge their disputes, but his power was limited. After her father was assassinated and Tarlia became High Queen, she started consolidating power under herself, and the exile to Earth gave her an opportunity to build a much stronger power base. The Wizard’s Legion is directly loyal to her and no one else, and a lot of human wizards in once place makes for a lot of firepower. The Inquisition started as an “emergency” wartime measure to root out Archon sympathizers and became a police force to keep an eye on the nobles.
The biggest change she made was to parcel out human cities and nations to the nobles as fiefs, but all the Elven commoners she concentrated in cities that act a lot like the Imperial Free Cities of the Holy Roman Empire – they’re sworn directly to her, and no one else. She also goes to great lengths to keep Elves and humans mostly separate from each other. An Elf can kill a human without suffering a human legal penalty, but Elven commoners are not allowed to leave their cities and travel among humans without a work permit or some other reason. And if they do kill a human, they have to pay a wergild to the human’s Elven overlord. Since the Elven nobles hate the Elven commoner cities, they’re always looking for a chance to screw them, and they’ll make a big deal about a human dead at Elven hands even if they don’t particularly like humans. (Not many humans are aware of this.)
There are lesser sources of her authority as well – if a human corporation gets large enough, she becomes a majority shareholder, and she owns businesses in every single one of the Elven commoner cities. The education system among both Elves and humans is designed to inculcate reverence for her. (“Get ’em while they’re young!”) She’s the only one on Earth with control of nuclear weapons. Her alliance with the dragons she allowed to settle on Earth allows her to call on powerful friends in a crisis. Tarlia saw on Kalvarion how the Elven serfs became a recruiting ground for the Archons, so at all costs she wants to avoid a large pool of unemployed (or underemployed), unmarried men.
All this means that she is able to wield much more political power than the Elven monarchs on Kalvarion ever managed, which numerous Elven nobles resent.
All her children are dead or presumed dead, so Tarlia has no heir.
-JM
Yeah I keep wondering why she doesn’t try to have another heir. If she dies it seems like there could be a massive succesion crisis. Also I think that was an interesting comparison.
OTOH, first she has to pick a father for said heir. That can lead to a crisis in itself.
In our own history, neither Elizabeth I nor Hatsheput ever got around to giving birth to an heir. But on the other hand, the lasting legacy of Empress Maud was that her son became King Henry II after King Stephen died.
Then, she had been married off before the question of her succession arose. That helped.
LOL. I love how you answer my slightly ridiculous questions. I mean it’s not like I’ll stop reading you if my nerd-y backstory probing questions are ignored, but it’s nice to be listened to.
No worries. 🙂 I do think about this stuff anyway, so might as well answer the questions!
I like the books with nadia, she’s an interesting character. But there’s something about Tarlia that irritates me to no end. I would absolutely love it if she got knocked on her backside (magically speaking) just to go “YEAH!!!!!”
True that might be slightly immature but hey we all have those moments 😏
How will this play out back on Kalvarion? A billion elves who haven’t been through Tarlia’s education system? relief from slavery will carry her for a bit but living under the system the elves did can’t have done anything good to them. Ptsd on a planetary scale. What bad habbits did they learn? what compromise’s moral and ethical did the survivors have to go through? All interesting things to think about.
My review of Wolves should be up soon. I enjoyed it.
Thanks! Glad you liked the book!
I suspect the situation on Kalvarion will be a lot like some of the more brutal Eastern Bloc countries after the fall of Communism. But it will probably help that all the Archons on Kalvarion are dead.
Though Tarlia has a *lot* of problems to deal with. Which is why she recruits people like Nadia and Tyth and the Family of the Shadow Hunters to deal with some of those problems.
The political system doesn’t look sustainable in the long term for 2 planets (one that just lost its administrators) unless she also raises human nobles with governing power. After 300 years of a complete technology hiatus that is now being broken, humans are also naturally becoming stronger at magic over time, including mental magic. With the war that threatened Earth over, folks have more time for the business of making trouble. And we can see that happening with the Singularity.
Mental magic was how Tarlia won the first time, completely circumventing the need to fight against advanced human weaponry. The ban on human wizards learning mental magic may be present officially, but it looks like its being slowly eroded with human wizards learning the same naturally.
If Tarlia wants to avoid any revolutions/disasters in the future (like the one Nadia prevented), she will need to parcel out some feudal power to humans too – some sort of growth path for talented and power-hungry folks – perhaps with a binding oath to serve her laws. Otherwise what happened in the past with Elven commoners will happen with humans too. Going to the Dark Ones because you have a problem with the Elven nobles is like a recurring theme in the series.