Proxies

From: Donald R. Oddy <donald_at_grove.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 22:51:22 GMT


>Nick:

>>So I think you'll find that Martin has already written up the One True Way
>>for Proxies to be created, which everyone in the Empire knows about, so that
>>nobody important is ever confused by Moonson's plethora of
>>(non-)impersonators.
>>Or something like that.
>

Martin:

>Nah, there is going to be confusion. but you don't need a stream of doubles
>for that. Simple ingorance and personal prejudices will work just fine.
>Most people have no clue as to the Emperors real appearance. Should someone
>with a lot of power and a following say he's the Emperor and everyone knows
>the Emp died recently, then there are many, many reasons why large numbers of
>people will believe him and obey his will. Of course this poses problems for
>otherwise loyal citizens who join the Emperor against his evil proxies to
>find that their dude is the proxy after all...

I find it curious that there should be a widespread understanding or even knowledge of proxies. Surely the average Lunar citizen only understands that there is a single Moonson who being divine can appear in more than one place at once. Any apparent conflicts between multiple emperors are a lack of understanding of that divine being. Of the rest only a minority would understand the full magical significance of the proxy, the rest can merely be told that the emperor reabsorbed his proxy without going into the detail of which was the emperor and which the proxy. Of course witnesses and those who really know what was going on are likely to have good reason to be somewhere else very quickly.

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