Given the tenets of Dara Happan religion and culture, I very much doubt that this fear is alive. Entekosiad gives a very edited and veiled account how Brightface ended the Green Age (or even the innocent Golden Age) by taking over power from the women. If the Dara Happans had a time of doubt and insecurity, by the time Umath was born this had become forgotten.
Naveria was made a subject of Dara Happa without suppressing their matriarchy. Likewise Darjiin did not suffer more than Shargashi enmity while their women were central to their politics.
> Added to this would be the
> ever-present fear of the Dark Earth goddesses. Push
> the peasants too far, and Gorgorma and her sisters
> rise. A nightmare for any Dara Happan noble, and one
> of the things that keeps them in check.
I'd daresay the average DHan noble fears a Lodrilite rebellion a lot more.
> The sacrifice of Kings of the Husband Protector
> cults would form a part of this greater ferment. If
> the Moonson is to be accepted as the new paramount
> King, then it is not at all impossible that he might
> be considered the most worthy sacrifice.
Indeed this seems to have been Fazzur's plan, possibly backed by some Imperial lobbyists looking for something useful for Argenteus to do. It wouldn't have been unprecedented, after all Argenteus also took part in the Darjiinian Stork Dance, another sacrificial fertility rite.
I don't think the Yelmite or Carmanians fear the harem. I agree they ought to.
> marrying the Feathered Horse Queen
> is still considered the legitimate way to become the
> King of Dragon Pass, so that can't reassure them very
> much.
I doubt they care. They have similar customs much closer to home, in areas millennia under their influence, and haven't been troubled there.
Jeff Richard
> One thing worth keeping in mind - the mastermind and commander of
> the invasion of Esrolia was Fazzur Wideread. Fazzur is not Dara
> Happan - he's Tarshite, with a long tradition of powerful Earth
> Priestesses (indeed, Hon-Eel is the patron goddess of the Lunar
> Tarsh dynasty).
Also keep in mind that Fazzur staged that "invasion" with barely a corps of engineers and military advisors - even less than his personal household forces. In Esrolia, Fazzur was about to show the Good Lunar face, and rely on the local forces to enforce the successes. He started building "a Lunar temple" in Nochet, in my unchanged opinion (contested by Peter Metcalfe) a Reaching Moon temple probably of the same scale of power as the Tarsh one, funded by the Provincial College of Magic.
> My impression is that the DH in the Imperial Court (especially the
> Assiday family) were not very supportive of Fazzur's Esrolian
> ambitions. They preferred to focus on destroying Orlanth once and
> for all and constructing the new Temple of the Reaching Moon in
> Sartar. Once Fazzur was removed from his position as generalissimo,
> the new DH warlord - Tatius the Bright - inherited Fazzur's Esrolian
> war.
Fazzur was faced with riots in Nochet rather than a war, riots which might have sprung from the fact that a good part of a city quarter was (about to be) leveled for the temple building site. No matter what political affiliation the residents may have held, I don't think they were pleased about that project.
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