The whole idea was that the exceptionally cutthroat and desperate nature of Romulan politics of the past few years created enough space for non-fanatics like Gell Kamemor to rise to power.
Could She Still Be Alive? *Potential Spoiler*
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The whole idea was that the exceptionally cutthroat and desperate nature of Romulan politics of the past few years created enough space for non-fanatics like Gell Kamemor to rise to power.
Exactly. And that the rise of Romulan moderates as a result of the Machiavellian games of nationalist elites has now created an ideological conflict within Romulan society between the nationalists and the moderates which is affecting the rest of the Pact and the Khitomer powers.
Bottom line, Zombie Redshirt, is that you do not know what you are talking about and will not until you read Plagues of Night and Raise the Dawn.
As even the authors mentioned in this very forum (Christopher, but it could have been Keith; it was some time ago - feel free to perform the search) Donatra and the IRS were an addition that didn't pan out and, as such, was made to 'disappear', tidied up neatly and rushedly.
As for the fan rationalizations posters came up with in this very thread - they are only real in their imagination; at no point were they the motivation behind the IRS.
As for the fan rationalizations posters came up with in this very thread - they are only real in their imagination; at no point were they the motivation behind the IRS.
Post all you want, but don't expect others not to call you out when you don't know what you're talking about.
And?
There are good reasons for that, established in the novels by multiple authors.
Rough Beasts of Empire explicitly and repeatedly states that the IRS' collapse had to do with its subjects' highly contingent loyalty to the personality of Donatra, not a desire for a separate existence, something that collapsed altogether when she was arrested on seemingly legitimate charges. From this, it's not a big leap at all to say that there were no deeper reasons for the IRS, no desperate longing on behalf of (say) the Ship Clans or subject species or East Romulans to be free of the rule of the homeworld. And from that observation, it's not too big a step to conclude that the division of Romulan space into two states wasn't stable in the long run.
It's not as if there wasn't opportunity to establish grounds for a more durable separatism in the novels. The Duaneverse novels that the current Trek continuity draws upon so heavily establishes all kinds of clan and planetary rivalries among Romulans, while the eventual secession of the Remans from the Empire was a major theme of the novels. As for non-Vulcanoid subject species Death in Winter was largely set on the homeworld of one of those subject species. The failure to exploit any of these sorts of opportunities does lend itself to some reasonably secure speculations.
rfmcdpei
Rough Beasts of Empire explicitly and repeatedly states POST FACTUM that 'insert parts of your post - excluding the fan rationalizations'
What RBoE established was in no way, shape or form the authors' reason for the creation of the IRS in the previous books - contrary to your previous claims/heavy implications.
Indeed, what RBoE established is a rather implausible and rushed affair:
RBoE terminated the IRS with far too much haste for it to be believable - it went from RSE ships hunting and blowing up ships full of IRS civilians in 'Losing the peace' just because (events treated with little surprise by the crew of the Enterprise) - feel the "love" between them - to these two entities merging together seamlessly in mere days.
Rough Beasts of Empire explicitly and repeatedly states POST FACTUM that 'insert parts of your post - excluding the fan rationalizations'
What RBoE established was in no way, shape or form the authors' reason for the creation of the IRS in the previous books - contrary to your previous claims/heavy implications.
Indeed, what RBoE established is a rather implausible and rushed affair:
RBoE terminated the IRS with far too much haste for it to be believable - it went from RSE ships hunting and blowing up ships full of IRS civilians in 'Losing the peace' just because (events treated with little surprise by the crew of the Enterprise) - feel the "love" between them - to these two entities merging together seamlessly in mere days.
If you choose not to find the failure of multiple authors not to mention deeper causes for the adhesion of particular worlds to the IRS other than "Donatra had enough supporters among the population/in the ranks of the military to take over" telling, that's your decision.
The worlds of the Imperial Romulan State swore allegiance to Donatra based almost entirely on very contingent, and potentially changeable, grounds. Multiple authors wrote novels wherein just a little effort could have established grounds for a more durable division: "The IRS is the homeland of the Ship Clans that have rejected the unjust domination of the Two Worlds," say, or "The example of the multispecies Federation inspires many Romulans and non-Romulans in these spaces alike." The presumably intentional failure of these authors to do so leads straightforwardly to the conclusions I raised.
Who said that the two entities merged seamlessly? One of the minor characters in Bennett's Watching the Clock is an ex-IRS physicist who sought refuge in the Federation. The limited detail paid to post-reunification Romulan society allows for many possibilities, and possible space for future writers.
As things stand, especially given the high tolerance of the Romulans for limited and managed amounts of internal bloodshed, the scenario for Romulan reunification presented in Rough Beasts of Empire--after Donatra is "revealed" to have conspired in any number of dishonorable acts, the worlds and military units that seceded from the Star Empire flock back to the welcoming arms of the restored Senate and RSE--isn't implausible.
I never said anything of that sort, and I don't recall any other author saying it either. That phrasing implies that the IRS storyline was a failure, and that's certainly not something I ever said. I simply said that the people who came up with the idea of the IRS moved on and the new editor had a different story direction in mind. No value judgment about the worth of the story development; if Marco and Keith had stuck around and continued to shape the story direction, I suspect the IRS would still exist. But different editors and the different authors they hire have different ideas about what stories to tell.
Only because I didn't find out until the IRS's dissolution until after I'd written the manuscript for WtC, so I had to come up with a quick rationalization for why a Romulan physicist would still be on friendly terms with the UFP.
It seems to me you've already done that just by replying to his post.
SO - The intent behind the IRS' creation was not to snuff it out in the immediate future for whatever reason.
This changed with a new author/editor in RBoE.
Well, this is my very point, Christopher:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=7133227&postcount=27
How can you not have said "anything of that sort" when you just said it?
See Christopher's post for the 'why' behind his mentioning of an ex-IRS plant.
It was NOT to evidentiate how rough the unification was.
You equating high-ranking political murder with blowing up ships full of civilians for no reason at all is a blatant straw-man, rfmcdpei.
Also - blowing up ships full of civilians - as a matter of course, apparently - can under NO circumstances be described as an euphemistic "limited and managed amounts of internal bloodshed".
Going from such acts to unification in days remains highly implausible.
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I never said that was the case. I said the following.
We know nothing, really, apart from the fairly welcoming posture presented by Tal'Aura in her speech and the apparent plausibility of Ronarek being an exile. To what extent was this reflected on the ground? We've little idea. (I'd suggest it's a reasonable assuption that Kamemor would hardly have been less welcoming.) Who knows, maybe someone is working on a novel that will see what happened after reunification on Archernar Prme and the rest.
I'd suggest that bloody but limited reprisals against partisans of one side or another do fit into the Romulan political tradition. The RSE went after ships of refugees, presumably from devastated worlds, not after intact worlds; manageable, perhaps?
German reunification took 11 months to complete, true. Romulan reunification involved two states separated for just over a year which were actively seeking reunification and were ruling populations which did not want to be separated, with the IRS having much the weaker claim to legitimacy even before Donatra was convincingly framed for crimes which undercut everything.
(We don't know how long it took to reintegrate the empire after Tal'Aura's declaration, either.)
None of these are insuperable problems.
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