You know, I've always wondered about this series--which I greatly enjoyed in its own right--and its claim to be a reinterpretation of Asimov's Foundation series. Until you get up through Fox and Empire (the title of which of course makes it quite obvious that it's intended to be an Asimov tribute, of course) the installments bear only the most superficial similarities to anything that can be found in Foundation and have nothing to do with any of the Seldon crises. What's more, they shoot between the eyes the underlying premise of the Foundation series, which is that individual action cannot derail the tide of historical inertia, but will over time be factored out by larger forces. When you get to F&E, you have Imperial numerical advantages leading to a series of tactical victories over the good guys, only to be undone by palace intrigue well behind Imperial lines; but that's not the story that's told. In fact it's the opposite of Asimov's work, hinting at the intrigue while describing the battles in great detail--This is very interesting in its own right, but not Asimovian. I had really missed the days when I believed the series was an original work.
This still doesn't make the series much more Asimovian, and certainly not more Foundation-based, but I recently came across "Nightfall," which I had somehow always missed. Werenight resembles that one very closely. Turtle Fan 04:05, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Divorce[]
I'm thinking of adding him to Divorced People, but I'm not sure. For those who haven't read it, he marries a woman at the end of the first book and has a son with her, but she's left him by the beginning of the second book. By the third book he's remarried. And, despite the fact that civilization is crumbling all around them, marriage is still a legal institution. Since his various titles (first baron, then prince, then king) pass by primogeniture, his sons' legitimacy is an important issue. The sons of both marriages are legitimate, and contrasted with the many children of one of his lieutenants, none of whose mothers are married to him, and none of whom will be allowed to inherit his own titles.
And the first wife is encountered in the fourth book, long after the second wife has been legally married. So that marriage was not dissolved by the death of one spouse.
So the question is whether monogamy or polygamy is the law of his society. If the former, the first marriage would have had to have been dissolved legally for the second one to take place. If the latter, he might have been legally married to both wives at the same time. There's no indication in the text. We don't encounter a single polygamous character in any of the books, which is not definitive but is, sadly, as close as we'll ever get unless Mak finally gets his fifth novel. (Or sixth--Werenight and Wereblood were originally published seperately, just like the constituent parts of the books of the original Foundation trilogy.)
So call him divorced, or leave well enough alone? I'm inclined to the former, but really just because somewhere along the line I convinced myself that if I put people like Gerin and Otto of Schlepsig into lots of categories, I wouldn't have to feel so guilty about putting off writing their articles ad infinitum. Turtle Fan 02:14, April 11, 2010 (UTC)
- I'll trust your judgment. Divorced is fine with me. TR 02:16, April 11, 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'll call him Divorced; what's the harm? If someone complains, we can always ban him. Turtle Fan 03:09, April 11, 2010 (UTC)
- I don't know about banning him. If he is knowledgeable enough to complain about it, then a better punishment might be to ask him to write more Gerin the Fox articles. ;-) ML4E 21:12, April 12, 2010 (UTC)
- That would be so inhumane. Useful, but inhumane. Like making a prisoner submit to medical experiments, or sending him into the cinnabar mines ofthe Mamming Hills. Turtle Fan 23:23, April 12, 2010 (UTC)
Picture[]
A good picture of Gerin can be cropped from the Prince of the North cover.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 10:46, December 22, 2019 (UTC)