Nick Brooke replied:
>Yeah, but that's missing the point completely. Once your clan had decided to
>launch a surprise attack the day after harvest festival through a weapontake
>moot at which everyone had their say, did anyone who'd argued *against* such a
>course of action at the moot go off and inform the Orlevings of your plans?
No but thats not simply obeying the Chief, thats also obeying the fact that a Clan member follows the majority or else suffer the anger of the rest of the Clan for breaking custom and law. If someone did that, think of the effect on their family!
>Now, *THAT* would be a level of disloyalty to chief and clan just about
>equivalent to those disgruntled kids bopping off lone Lunars and effectively
>launching their clan into a war against the Empire when it has reached an
agreed
>policy of non-provocation through weapontake votes. And it would *anger* the
>chief just as much: and *nobody* wants to do that (either he's a nice guy and
>gets sympathy, or else he's a hard case like yourself...).
I agree with this parallel. It is of equivalent disloyalty and would deserve the Chiefs anger. Hell, if some little squirt got the Clan into a war without me sanctioning it, I'd kill him myself.
However my point was related to the Chiefs personal power rather than the Clans attitude. These can be two seperate things. Its perfectly feasible for the Clan Chief to be pro Lunar and to ignore Lunar actions that are destructive to the Clan eg raping a popular Thanes daughter or stealing food or provoking warriors to fight them and gang up on them etc. If this was the case, the Clan Chief would find himself becoming increasingly distanced from his people and minor actions of dissent would become major actions. Eventually the Chief would be killed and replaced by a Chief who _would_ fight the Lunars (or whoever).
The most succesful Chiefs would be pretty much in tune with the peoples needs and attitudes. If, as Varmand, I'd decided that I wanted to war with the Colymar I would have soon been outvoted in the Weapontake. They'd have said "Varmand's a good Chief but he gets carried away at times" and all of a sudden being Chief doesn't look so impressive anymore.
In the case of the Varmandi this is unlikely to happen because Varmand created the Clan personally so they bonded to him over years, trust him totally and know he's interested in their joint futures, not in some insane schemes for his own aggrandisement.
In the case of a Clan where a son inherits who is plainly an idiot but is placed in power via convention rather than merit, conflict is _very_ likely. In effect thats how the whole Borngold the Usurper incident happened among the Colymar. Look how long _he_ lasted! Look at Bolthor of the Bolini, see where his incompetance and collusion with the enemy of life led him. Getting as big sword through your head is hardly what I'd call sucessful leadership.....
I think Orlanthi tribal and Clan history is probably loaded with incidences like these.
Martin Laurie
Powered by hypermail