WaT: why I liked the Jasnah/Taravangian/Fen talk

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Or, rather, a few of the reasons why I liked the exact thing that Nitpicking didn't like (If I talked about all the things I liked about the overall talk, we'd be here forever.), and think it's more believable and realistic for Queen Fen NOT to have assassination contingencies.

 

Spoiler

While fiction often portrays monarchial transitions of power as instant (to the point that Terry Pratchett has a joke about the metaphysics of faster-than-light movement of kingship in one of his books) or at least quick, this is more descriptive of modernity's constitutional figurehead monarchies, or of prime ministers or presidents, or other systems where no one individual is as load-bearing as Fen or Jasnah or Gavilar are/were.  The equivalent destabilization effect for a system like the United States Government would be the loss of the president, the majority of the members of the supreme court, and most of congress. 

Heck, even with the United States President having a much more standardized and uncontested system of succession than most historical monarchies managed in practice, and the President having much more limited and constrained power, the unexpected death of the commander in chief can be incredibly damaging and destabilizing (the assassination of Abraham Lincoln before he could implement his plans for Reconstruction being the obvious example).  

In real life, it was only in the last few hundred years that one would naturally say something like "the king is dead, long live the king" with both halves of that in the same breath.  In reality, it was often months or sometimes years between funeral and coronation, and the first few years of reigning for most monarchs tended to be spent establishing and solidifying their position. 
A lot of this is because fealty does not instantly transfer, and the seemingly symbolic swearing of fealty is in fact a functional necessity which requires negotiation.  Loyalty, oaths, interpersonal relationships between rulers and their vassals, these aren't just aspirational ideals for a feudal system, these are the structural backbone, the forms of political power and influence, the crucial resources that the pragmatic and ambitious seek in a monarchical system where the vassals' holdings (land, potential armies, et cetera) put together are greater than the monarch... the feudal monarch stays in power by being able to draw upon his or her own power AND the power of his or her loyal vassals.  This changed greatly once increased bureaucracy and centralization started giving monarchs alternative structures of control and power, and when royal armies got big enough and their logistics got good enough that the nobility were no longer a credible threat (The Kholin monarchy is at this point of military and political dominance; Roshar's other monarchies, as far as I can tell, do not seem to be).  In other words, "the king is dead, long live the king" represents the point where a new monarch no longer needs that middle step where refusal and resistance are possible.

If the transition of power takes significant time, it represents a period of vulnerability for the kingdom.  Imagine the scenario I said before (the loss of the president, most of the Supreme Court, and the majority of Congress).  While the Vice President could very quickly become President and appoint replacements to the Supreme Court, it would take time to elect new members of congress, and during that time the checks and balances that are supposed to exist through congress's functions aren't really working because congress isn't really in a functional state.  If we try to get rid of this period of vulnerability by having  the dead representatives replaced through emergency appointment rather than election, then things are REALLY bad because the citizenry has been removed from the process.

Spoilered for boring context.

The equivalent to Jasnah isn't "President has plans to assassinate president of allied nation and has people in place to do so", it's "President has plans to kill most of the governing body of allied nation and has people in place to do so".  I don't think it's unrealistic for Jasnah and Taravangian to be the only ones to operate in this kind of way.  I don't think it's at all naïve for Fen to be surprised and shocked, or to not have equivalent plans.

The reason why kingdoms and nations don't usually do that kind of stuff isn't "idealism", it's "in the long term, the utility of having the option is less than the utility we'd lose if someone found out and used that information against us", so they all look at each other and silently agree not to do that.

The short version is:  Jasnah, Taravangian (pre-ascension), and Fen are all monarchs, but Jasnah and pre-ascension Taravangian run the kind of monarchies that are robust to assassination (Jasnah's early modern centralization/bureaucracy/military-dominance and Taravangian's small city-state mean that Kharbranth and Alethela will probably have very quick power transitions (Jah Keved might not, but Taravangian's only concerned with Kharbranth)) and have little to no internal checks on power except the ones they choose to have, while Fen seems to be part of a system with an entirely different risk-reward-ratio for dishonorable behavior and assassination.  Within this system, Fen can easily be as calculating and shrewd as Jasnah or Taravangian without ever considering assassination because in her context that decision is counterproductive and she stands the most to lose from a world where such things happen and the least to gain from it.

The really short version is:  I think Fen played her cards very well, it's just that Jasnah and Taravangian showed up to the game with pistols in their boots and bulletproof vests under their shirts.

Apologies for this post being so long, I lack the skill to make it short.

Edited December 22, 2025 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Frustration]

Once again @Aliroz-The-Confused I have to say: Based.

 

Also I feel like it was completely within the character of Queen Fen to refuse outright the idea of assassination out of her character, Fen is all bark and no bite. She likes to argue, but she has no desire for blood.

Edited December 23, 2025 by Frustration

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

For the record, I loved Nitpicking's hypothetical alternative scenario.  It would have been a classic Sanderson twist to have the metaphorical "Jasnah and Taravangian showed up to the game with pistols in their boots and bulletproof vests under their shirts." be resolved with a metaphorical "but so did Queen Fen, and now Taravangian's making that shocked expression that bad guys make in old animé when the heroes pull out some unexpected surprise".  10/10 GET CHUMPED TARAVANGIAN.

I'm more arguing against the idea that what we got was unrealistic, so I made this a separate thread rather than kill the vibe of the original.

[Frustration]

20 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

For the record, I loved Nitpicking's hypothetical alternative scenario.  It would have been a classic Sanderson twist to have the metaphorical "Jasnah and Taravangian showed up to the game with pistols in their boots and bulletproof vests under their shirts." be resolved with a metaphorical "but so did Queen Fen, and now Taravangian's making that shocked expression that bad guys make in old animé when the heroes pull out some unexpected surprise".  10/10 GET CHUMPED TARAVANGIAN.

I'm more arguing against the idea that what we got was unrealistic, so I made this a separate thread rather than kill the vibe of the original.

I honestly respect that I thought about making a post there, but decided I wouldn't intrude.