Who's going to pay for information about the progess of a minor seige in foreign lands? How much notice does the modern news media pay to what's going on in Iraq outside of Baghdad and Basra? And that's in a world with instantanious communications. Of course if a Heartland regiment suffers heavy casualties that'll be news but most of the army in Sartar is from Tarsh and provincial casualties will just be numbers.
>Absolutely. Perhaps the intelligentsia start murmurs of discontent
>after Whitewall - kind of like the US Congress in the last few years
>(I make modern comparisions a lot, which I'm sure is not to
>everyone's taste, but it's for my own understanding rather than to
>force other people to make the same comparisons), and the rest of the
>lunar citizenry only wake up after the Dragonrise.
And like the US administration the Lunar government will disparage as defeatist those who criticise and concentrate on the good news. "We've taken the port of Karse, the Red Earth faction is leading Esrolia and the Phaoroh is gone. What are you mithering about a minor barbarian kinglet for? The Warlord Tatius has it all in hand."
>I always felt that Tatius has been portrayed as an overly cautious
>idiot. Doesn't it say in KOS that after his appointment all Lunar
>military successes stop? Do we reckon that Tatius is hampered by his
>fear of the political repercussions of committing his phalanxes and
>thus stops making decisons and fails in his leadership, or is he
>simply incompetent in the use of the Lunar army? Is he perhaps a
>slightly tragic figure who has been given a poisoned chalice by
>backstabbing politicians in Glamour, jealous of his rising star?
My interpretation is that Tatius is an effective manager who organises and plans well. He lacks military knowledge so tends to go for overkill - the preparations and size of the final assaults on WW are excessive even for an enemy who have defeated the Bat. How much of the delay in taking the city is due to this and how much is waiting for the right time to trap Orlanth isn't clear.
I don't think he's an idiot, the Lunars have plenty of those. He is steadily if unspectacularly successful right up to the Dragonrise. I'm sure his enemies blame him for not predicting and allowing for that but it's hardly a common occurance.
The practice of not committing your elite units until the crucial moment is very common in history. Up until Waterloo Napoleon never committed his guard until the battle was almost won. That's how they came by the reputation for being invincible.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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