The book continues to throw surprises at me, though not fast in the last couple of days as the International Gut Bug has reached our house.\u00a0\u00a0 But leaving that unsavory subject aside…it dawned on me last night, working on a scene between Dorrin and some of her cohort, that this continues a conversation begun in the first Paks book, and resulting (ultimately) from a very old schism in human behavior.<\/p>\n
What is loyalty?\u00a0 Who or what can be the object of loyalty?\u00a0\u00a0 What are the theoretical and practical and ethical boundaries of loyalty?\u00a0\u00a0 Heavy stuff for New Year’s Eve…<\/p>\n
Most of the time, most cultures (including this one) view loyalty as a good thing…friends should be loyal, members of a group should be loyal to the group, citizens\/subjects should be loyal to their nation or realm.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet most cultures also recognize “mistaken” loyalty (being loyal to the wrong person, group, idea) and “excessive” loyalty (being loyal to the point that loyalty conflicts with another cultural ideal.)<\/p>\n
Years\u00a0 back, in ancient history classes (ancient history, not the classes themselves being ancient, don’t be silly…)\u00a0 both my profs were interested in how codified law interacted with human behavior to shift loyalty from the personal to the abstract–loyalty to an idea, a code, rather than loyalty to a person.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Without digging too deeply into the neurology involved (at least, not now) humans are, like other social mammals, hard-wired to form certain kinds of groups, and to be “loyal” (in the biological sense) to the group they’re in, but the cultural concept of loyalty does not exactly correspond to the biological wiring.\u00a0 And no other mammal, as far as we know, has “loyalty” for abstract concepts like flag, country, “way of life,” religion, “law and order.”<\/p>\n
Humans generally fall into one of two groups–either they privilege personal relationships, or they privilege a cultural concept (their religion, their country, their legal code) though few are purely in either camp–and this creates conflict (internal as well as external.) \u00a0\u00a0 I saw this firsthand growing up on the Mexican border, where in certain situations those of one culture would invariably choose personal loyalty over “the law” and those of the other would invariably choose “the law” over personal loyalty.\u00a0\u00a0 (Neither culture was devoid of personal loyalties *or* respect for law–but there were situations in which they divided sharply.)<\/p>\n
Where formal law prevails (and this may be good or bad formal law), citizens\/subjects will be loyal to the legal code and report breaches of the law, even if the lawbreakers are their friends or relatives.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Where personal relationships prevail, citizens\/subjects aim their loyalty only at persons–individuals, in a series of concentric rings of loyalty–greatest at the center, less at the outskirts.<\/p>\n
Bringing this back\u00a0 to Paksenarrion’s world–one way Paks organized her decision-making, as a young soldier, was by loyalty–she was loyal to friends, to her sergeant, to her captain, and to the Duke.\u00a0\u00a0 What they told her became her measure of right and wrong…up to the point where the “glue” lost its grip.\u00a0\u00a0 At that point she had only intuition to guide her (hence her mistaken loyalty to Macenion)\u00a0 and though she was innately ‘good’ she could easily fall into evil.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She had to overcome her tendency to be too<\/em> loyal before she could become a paladin.<\/p>\n This world was set up to have feudal (in the true sense) bits and less feudal bits…feudalism is built on a cascade of personal relationships, personal loyalties, in a sense very tit-for-tat.\u00a0\u00a0 “I grant you this land, and you will support me with x-number of soldiers when I ask for it…and you have these other duties as well…and I also swear to you this level of protection.”<\/p>\n At each level, the lower swears loyalty to the higher, right up to the monarch; there’s a chain of personal relationships from top to bottom. \u00a0 Everybody has duties–to those below, to those above. \u00a0 Possibilities for trouble are rife: what if the lower is disloyal?\u00a0 What is the upper is disloyal?<\/p>\n In the present case, who gave an oath to whom, and when, and under what circumstances, has become a live question.\u00a0\u00a0 As readers of the first Paks books know, Duke Phelan of Tsaia is now King Falkieri of Lyonya.\u00a0\u00a0 He has released his former vassals from their oath of loyalty to him,\u00a0 just as the Crown of Tsaia released him from his oath of loyalty to the Crown, so that he could take up his kingship without owing anything more to Tsaia.\u00a0 His former vassals include his mercenary company, of course, as well as the people who live on the lands he held as a duke.\u00a0\u00a0 But one cohort of that mercenary company went with him to Lyonya (and helped save his life when he was attacked.)\u00a0 What is their status?\u00a0 They’re foreigners, and no longer oathbound (though still emotionally bound) to him and the same is true of their captain, Dorrin Verrakai.<\/p>\n In an emergency move to restore the feudal order, the senior captain remaining at what was Phelan’s northern stronghold has the troops and residents there swear an oath to him–a provisional oath, since he does not have the right, at that time, to ask a permanent one.\u00a0\u00a0 (This is right at the first of the first book of the new group, so no big spoilers here.)<\/p>\n But Dorrin’s cohort isn’t there–it’s still in Lyonya, adrift.\u00a0\u00a0 Its connection with her is closer, and at least as strong, as its connection to Phelan.\u00a0\u00a0 Leaving out a lot of spoilerish stuff (that is, the rest of the first book) we come to the situation in the second book where the person who\u00a0 is now granted Phelan’s lands wants that cohort to return and swear loyalty to him.<\/p>\n Some will.\u00a0 Some won’t.\u00a0 What happens next may be very interesting, for some definitions of interesting.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tsaian law is an interesting mix of old feudal law and somewhat newer (not new in our sense) Girdish law.\u00a0\u00a0 Fintha is the only realm ruled wholly under the Code of Gird; in Tsaia, the Code has been adapted to a monarchy with strong feudal traditions.\u00a0\u00a0 Girdish people may feel more loyalty to Gird and the Code of Gird than to their feudal lord–and there are townships which have no feudal lord, though all landholdings other than towns are held that way.\u00a0\u00a0 Under Tsaian law, those who are part of a feudal domain (for instance, Phelan’s\u00a0 mercenary company as a whole) are unable to just up and leave without formally renouncing their oath of loyalty with permission of their\u00a0 lord.<\/p>\n Kieri Phelan always released those of his soldiers who wanted to leave (after the initial term of service) and did not have a formal ceremony for renouncing their oaths in most cases.\u00a0\u00a0 He wanted only soldiers who wanted to fight for him.\u00a0 But though a lord might be more lenient than the law, a lord could also insist on it being enforced.\u00a0\u00a0 Newly created lords, taking control of lands formerly held by someone else, are on the whole more likely to be sticklers for protocol.\u00a0 They feel the need to prove their authority.<\/p>\n And so the eight soldiers who do not want to return to the stronghold and swear loyalty to the new lord…who believe their earlier oaths are now dissolved, and that their long association with Dorrin means they can choose to be her vassals,\u00a0 are a problem.\u00a0\u00a0 For everyone.<\/p>\n I’ll find out what happens when I get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The book continues to throw surprises at me, though not fast in the last couple of days as the International Gut Bug has reached our house.\u00a0\u00a0 But leaving that unsavory subject aside…it dawned on me last night, working on a scene between Dorrin and some of her cohort, that this continues a conversation begun in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[22,27,13,25,26],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contents","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-ethics","tag-history","tag-law","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}