I re-read the Ancillary trilogy
Aug. 27th, 2024 05:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyAnd I have some thoughts about the third Anaander Mianaai, and also about the conspiracy theorists in Translation State.
Note: I don't want to have to keep doing ctrl+c every time I want to refer to Anaander Mianaai, so I'm gonna refer to the three of them as Alpha, Uno, and Prime, and if they don't like their designations they can fight each other over it.
So, to quickly recap the first trilogy, we meet two Anaanders, but right from the start our Protagonist - herein known as Breq because it's shorter to type than "Justice of Toren" - speculates that there could be any number of them. And we know that this speculation is accurate because when your viewpoint character repeats something so much you have to take it seriously and also because Seivarden independently notes that nothing that happened on Athoeki Station makes any sense at all unless there's at least one more Lord of the Radch running around with her own agenda. (After this point, Breq reiterates the speculation again.)
So what does this third one want?
Well, Alpha is the more sympathetic of the two we've met. This is the one who appears sincerely willing to accept that she might make mistakes. She's the one who wants to stop outright annexations, stop taking huge numbers of people for ancillaries, and readjust the aptitudes to allow more people from less prestigious families into good jobs. I say she's more sympathetic, but that doesn't make her good or nice - she's also the one who decided to expand her own operation into Tisarwat's body, and at least one captain's - and if she's done it to two people then she may well be doing it to whoever is unlucky enough to cross her path. And she may not be turning new people into ancillaries, but she didn't exactly release all those in storage to be turned into ancillaries - no, she either put them aside or she destroyed them. She's still a dick, and she still thinks she's the rightful ruler of all humanity, and the only person who can keep everybody safe from everything. The whole universe would fall apart if she didn't stand there!
Uno is the less sympathetic one. She's the one who absolutely refuses to reconsider anything, putting the blame everywhere but herself. I mean, the plot of the trilogy kicked off because she wanted to show that redoing the aptitudes was a huge mistake that could only lead to disaster if people from lesser houses got appointed to responsible positions, and if that was true you wouldn't have to prove it, would you? The disasters would rapidly make themselves know, except they didn't because all those people stubbornly refused to be bad at their jobs, so instead she had to set a plot in motion to prove her point. And the plot failed miserably, because Lieutenant Awn spitefully insisted on being competent! This is the sort of thing that'd make the fiercest die-hard reconsider their starting premises, but not her! Oh, gosh no. (She's not very sympathetic, but she is easy to understand.) All this refusal to ever readjust her beliefs or reconsider her actions in response to results and reality doesn't just make her less sympathetic, it also means that in any conflict between the two of them she's bound to lose. Eventually.
So where does that leave Prime? Well, it's hard to say, because we never meet her. It's only possible to know she's there by very carefully examining the gaps in what the other two appear to know when speaking and acting probably candidly. When Breq goes to the Palace for her little meeting, two Anaanders meet her - not three. This civil war is being openly fought between two of them - not three. If I had to guess, I'd say this one's motivation is very simple: she intends to be the last one standing. Whoever wins the civil war will have exhausted herself completely, and Prime can just swoop right in. And building off of this, if this one didn't appear concurrently with the other two, then my guess is she's the oldest independent split from the whole, the one who first realized that splitting was a possibility and started putting in contingencies for the day it happened, while of course pretending to the rest of herself that it wouldn't. But that's just speculation.
And on the other note, there's the conspiracy theorists in Translation State, who believe, among other things, that the Presger aren't real, it's all a Radch fraud to help them better control others. (This dovetails neatly with the opinion some expressed in Provenance, that the AI-conclave was a Radch fraud to help them gain more influence in the Treaty and better control others. There's a theme here, and there's a reason for it.)
Nowe, we know that the Presgar are real. We've met a few people old enough to remember the days when they were destroying ships left and right, Anaander Miaanaai, who ought to know, certainly believes they're real, and in Translation State two of our three viewpoint characters are Translators and the third thinks this conspiracy theory is insane. Plus, we met two (or one?) Translators in the original trilogy, she kept a live fish inside her for weeks after eating it. It eventually came out, still alive, along with several other non-food items she'd ingested.
And consequently, plenty of reviewers have remarked that you'd have to be batshit in this universe to believe this conspiracy theory.
Putting aside the fact that conspiracy theories, like cults, have little to do with facts - let's actually look at the evidence available to the average person:
1. The last Presger attack was a thousand years ago. People in this universe can live a very long time, but the only way you're making it a thousand years, or even half as long, is if you have multiple bodies and don't much care if one dies.
2. As we've seen, Translators are outwardly indistinguishable from humans, and can be taught to act largely like humans. Even their genes, though "disquieting", just say "very odd" rather than "the result of eldritch meddling".
3. Not that most people would know that, because the only people who have ever met Translators are high-up government officials, nearly all of whom appear to be Radchaai. Well, of course they are. And even fewer people have had any encounters with the Presger.
4. While one viewpoint character notes that the Radch doesn't really need to covertly control outside nations... that very much does not mean they don't do it. I mean, the US has the biggest army around, but that doesn't mean that our CIA hasn't historically fucked with other people's elections and maybe still does! (And to add onto this, several more sensible characters also note that the Radch absolutely gains no small measure of soft power by being the main party to negotiate indirectly with the Presger. That's not conspiracy theories talking, that's people whom we're supposed to believe. It's not such a huge leap from that truth to the conspiracy mindset that it's all a scam.)
4a. Indeed, the more I dwell on it, the more I think it's obvious that they do meddle. Even if the Lord of the Radch wasn't an absolute control freak, empires always think it'd be dangerous to not meddle if meddling is an option. And she's bound to think it's even more dangerous now that they're no longer doing overt annexations. Her justification for all that is to expand her control to protect the Radch, and it's clear she has not, any part of her, reconsidered her idea that the best way to protect the Radch is to personally make sure that every part of the Radch is surrounded by more of itself. If they aren't still doing covert ops outside Radch space then it's only because the civil war is going very, very badly all around.
So, all in all, while this Presger are really real in this universe, and those conspiracy theorists are very misguided in their actions... you can't really say their beliefs are totally batshit. If you look at what the average person actually is likely to have proof of, and add on the fact that outside the Radch Radchaai evidence may lack a certain amount of credibility, "They're not real" is not all that implausible. (And you might say "Okay, but would the Radch really care about your backwater polity that nobody gives a shit about, even the people who rule you? but... again, all versions of Anaander Mianaai are super invested in controlling everything she can get her gloved hands on so... yeah, probably? I mean, maybe not right now, but as a matter of policy, she'll get around to it.)
Note: I don't want to have to keep doing ctrl+c every time I want to refer to Anaander Mianaai, so I'm gonna refer to the three of them as Alpha, Uno, and Prime, and if they don't like their designations they can fight each other over it.
So, to quickly recap the first trilogy, we meet two Anaanders, but right from the start our Protagonist - herein known as Breq because it's shorter to type than "Justice of Toren" - speculates that there could be any number of them. And we know that this speculation is accurate because when your viewpoint character repeats something so much you have to take it seriously and also because Seivarden independently notes that nothing that happened on Athoeki Station makes any sense at all unless there's at least one more Lord of the Radch running around with her own agenda. (After this point, Breq reiterates the speculation again.)
So what does this third one want?
Well, Alpha is the more sympathetic of the two we've met. This is the one who appears sincerely willing to accept that she might make mistakes. She's the one who wants to stop outright annexations, stop taking huge numbers of people for ancillaries, and readjust the aptitudes to allow more people from less prestigious families into good jobs. I say she's more sympathetic, but that doesn't make her good or nice - she's also the one who decided to expand her own operation into Tisarwat's body, and at least one captain's - and if she's done it to two people then she may well be doing it to whoever is unlucky enough to cross her path. And she may not be turning new people into ancillaries, but she didn't exactly release all those in storage to be turned into ancillaries - no, she either put them aside or she destroyed them. She's still a dick, and she still thinks she's the rightful ruler of all humanity, and the only person who can keep everybody safe from everything. The whole universe would fall apart if she didn't stand there!
Uno is the less sympathetic one. She's the one who absolutely refuses to reconsider anything, putting the blame everywhere but herself. I mean, the plot of the trilogy kicked off because she wanted to show that redoing the aptitudes was a huge mistake that could only lead to disaster if people from lesser houses got appointed to responsible positions, and if that was true you wouldn't have to prove it, would you? The disasters would rapidly make themselves know, except they didn't because all those people stubbornly refused to be bad at their jobs, so instead she had to set a plot in motion to prove her point. And the plot failed miserably, because Lieutenant Awn spitefully insisted on being competent! This is the sort of thing that'd make the fiercest die-hard reconsider their starting premises, but not her! Oh, gosh no. (She's not very sympathetic, but she is easy to understand.) All this refusal to ever readjust her beliefs or reconsider her actions in response to results and reality doesn't just make her less sympathetic, it also means that in any conflict between the two of them she's bound to lose. Eventually.
So where does that leave Prime? Well, it's hard to say, because we never meet her. It's only possible to know she's there by very carefully examining the gaps in what the other two appear to know when speaking and acting probably candidly. When Breq goes to the Palace for her little meeting, two Anaanders meet her - not three. This civil war is being openly fought between two of them - not three. If I had to guess, I'd say this one's motivation is very simple: she intends to be the last one standing. Whoever wins the civil war will have exhausted herself completely, and Prime can just swoop right in. And building off of this, if this one didn't appear concurrently with the other two, then my guess is she's the oldest independent split from the whole, the one who first realized that splitting was a possibility and started putting in contingencies for the day it happened, while of course pretending to the rest of herself that it wouldn't. But that's just speculation.
And on the other note, there's the conspiracy theorists in Translation State, who believe, among other things, that the Presger aren't real, it's all a Radch fraud to help them better control others. (This dovetails neatly with the opinion some expressed in Provenance, that the AI-conclave was a Radch fraud to help them gain more influence in the Treaty and better control others. There's a theme here, and there's a reason for it.)
Nowe, we know that the Presgar are real. We've met a few people old enough to remember the days when they were destroying ships left and right, Anaander Miaanaai, who ought to know, certainly believes they're real, and in Translation State two of our three viewpoint characters are Translators and the third thinks this conspiracy theory is insane. Plus, we met two (or one?) Translators in the original trilogy, she kept a live fish inside her for weeks after eating it. It eventually came out, still alive, along with several other non-food items she'd ingested.
And consequently, plenty of reviewers have remarked that you'd have to be batshit in this universe to believe this conspiracy theory.
Putting aside the fact that conspiracy theories, like cults, have little to do with facts - let's actually look at the evidence available to the average person:
1. The last Presger attack was a thousand years ago. People in this universe can live a very long time, but the only way you're making it a thousand years, or even half as long, is if you have multiple bodies and don't much care if one dies.
2. As we've seen, Translators are outwardly indistinguishable from humans, and can be taught to act largely like humans. Even their genes, though "disquieting", just say "very odd" rather than "the result of eldritch meddling".
3. Not that most people would know that, because the only people who have ever met Translators are high-up government officials, nearly all of whom appear to be Radchaai. Well, of course they are. And even fewer people have had any encounters with the Presger.
4. While one viewpoint character notes that the Radch doesn't really need to covertly control outside nations... that very much does not mean they don't do it. I mean, the US has the biggest army around, but that doesn't mean that our CIA hasn't historically fucked with other people's elections and maybe still does! (And to add onto this, several more sensible characters also note that the Radch absolutely gains no small measure of soft power by being the main party to negotiate indirectly with the Presger. That's not conspiracy theories talking, that's people whom we're supposed to believe. It's not such a huge leap from that truth to the conspiracy mindset that it's all a scam.)
4a. Indeed, the more I dwell on it, the more I think it's obvious that they do meddle. Even if the Lord of the Radch wasn't an absolute control freak, empires always think it'd be dangerous to not meddle if meddling is an option. And she's bound to think it's even more dangerous now that they're no longer doing overt annexations. Her justification for all that is to expand her control to protect the Radch, and it's clear she has not, any part of her, reconsidered her idea that the best way to protect the Radch is to personally make sure that every part of the Radch is surrounded by more of itself. If they aren't still doing covert ops outside Radch space then it's only because the civil war is going very, very badly all around.
So, all in all, while this Presger are really real in this universe, and those conspiracy theorists are very misguided in their actions... you can't really say their beliefs are totally batshit. If you look at what the average person actually is likely to have proof of, and add on the fact that outside the Radch Radchaai evidence may lack a certain amount of credibility, "They're not real" is not all that implausible. (And you might say "Okay, but would the Radch really care about your backwater polity that nobody gives a shit about, even the people who rule you? but... again, all versions of Anaander Mianaai are super invested in controlling everything she can get her gloved hands on so... yeah, probably? I mean, maybe not right now, but as a matter of policy, she'll get around to it.)
no subject
Date: 2024-08-27 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-27 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-28 12:18 pm (UTC)