Fantasy Do you think history wants you to have lived? (EmperorNorton1 and Solivagante)

[Solivagante]

"But you're still asking them to be away from their home and family for months at a time, even if they can communicate-" Irina cut herself off and shook her head. "You're right that we should pay first and... discuss this over tea?" She was still a little disbelieving that Chana was actually willing to visit a cafe together; when she'd asked for places to read, she certainly hadn't imagined that the diplomat would come with her. Though given the other woman's concerns about her safety earlier, perhaps it made sense.

She let Chana approach the shopkeeper first, since she just had the one book - and besides, it seemed like it would be terribly imperial of her to insist on going first, and she didn't want Chana to think of her that way. Purely out of self-preservation, of course.

The three books were affordable enough to be covered by her pin money, though her little coin purse was considerably lighter when she returned it to the inner pocket of her coat. What was left was just a little bit more than she would need to get back to Henri's manor, assuming the hansom cost the same as it had on the way out. One obstacle, more or less avoided - but it meant that she would need to take Chana up on her offer to pay, to Irina's displeasure. Maybe I can repay her in some way later.

She thanked the shopkeeper, bobbing her head a little as if in a pantomime of a curtsy, and then turned back to Chana.

"I suppose I'll let you lead the way, then? And perhaps you could tell me more as we go?"

 

[EmperorNorton1]

Chana was the first one to pay, a little grateful that Irina let her go first, touching through her bag, and fishing a small handful of coins out, checking the price again on the book, before offering the store owner the price in a dozen one-sol coins, tucking the remaining few back into her bag, before politely thanking the man in lutecian, before stepping aside and waiting for Irina to complete her purchase. chana had learned the art of bartering from her brother but had forced herself to pick up the skill, and eventually, she developed a routine for it, even if some part of her was still the little girl who got sick to her stomach just talking to strangers.

when Irina politely ended her interaction with the man, Chana was already standing by the door, one foot bouncing ever so slightly, the book already stowed in her bag, the remaining sols tucked into it as well. She gave a little nod of promise to keep talking, opening the door for Irina, the small bell chiming softly as she let the other woman step out, before following, and gently closing the door rather than letting it swing shut.

"it- it should be on the Rue Saint Frances." Chana briefly muttered, before pulling a small piece of paper from her bag; unfolding it to reveal a map with several locations circled in black ink with messy Volhynian scrawl naming each highlighted building. She tapped briefly at one point, the little circled bookshop, before dragging her finger down the street. "three blocks north, one to the east" she uttered under her breath, beginning to walk in the mentioned direction, looking back after a few steps and slowing her normally pace slightly to ensure Katya followed.

"and to respond to your point, well, we all make sacrifices. and who says one's family can't come with?" chana almost immediately launched back into conversation.

 

[Solivagante]

Irina had to half-trot to keep up with Chana, and was both slightly out of breath and slightly grateful when the other woman slowed her brisk pace. As they walked, she tried to observe as much of the city around them as possible without obviously craning her neck. The streets were narrow, with tall wooden buildings overhead seeming to almost curve in and block out the sky; in some cases, they did seem a little wobbly, so it might have been more than just a trick of her perspective. There was refuse on the streets and it, well, reeked - she took careful breaths through her mouth as much as she could. But there were far more people, and far more sorts of people, here than in the broader manicured streets around the nobles' city manors.

"Sacrifices, though, that's my point," she said. "The Kolymans, and the other representatives of the outlying oblasts, have to give up much more to participate in your government than those who live closer to the capital do. They pay more of a cost to be part of your new Volhynia. And if there are times of shortage - drought or blight - how will the new government decide who gets resources? Surely people will want to care for their own first, even if it means others suffer. You cannot truly expect a large group to be able to make the same calculated choices for the greater good that an individual can."

They had to pause at the edge of a busy cross-street, and with so many people around them Irina sidestepped to stand closer to Chana, the edge of her coat sleeve just brushing the revolutionary's elbow. She wasn't afraid, just... uncertain, and a little overwhelmed, and acutely aware of how poorly dressed she was for this environment. A cart rolled past, one wheel bouncing into a pothole and splashing mud towards them, and Irina flinched even as the grime fell short of reaching them. Could I sneak into the laundry to clean a stain before anyone notices? She wasn't sure, and it wasn't a risk she wanted to take.

 

[EmperorNorton1]

it was cramped, it stank, and it felt like home. well, not quite home, but like the capital, where Chana had been living since the age of thirteen. larger cities, chock full of people, used to stress her out, always filling her with worry that she'd be lost among the thousands of faces, and would wind up separated from the last link between her and the little home that no longer stood. but now? chana was used to blending in amongst the faces, grateful for that fact. but Irina stuck out like a sore thumb, in her silk and lace. it wasn't nearly as gaudy as the ballgown that Katya had worn, but the excellent quality craftsmanship of every article, from her boots to her hat, reeked of wealth. it wouldn't take long before a passerby brushed against Irina, attempting to pickpocket the slumming noble.

"You talk of sacrifices as though you have ever had to give up anything-" Chana paused as a cart splashed mud in their vague direction, and Irina flinched close to her to avoid the spray that couldn't reach. "I- I guess you have had to give things up. that's my bad," Chana added, slightly more thoughtful, and working to keep her tone more controlled. any temper in an argument, shaming Irina, that wouldn't really work. "I shouldn't have been- well, you've given up independence, a life as a private citizen, and freedom to live, speak, express, and love freely, in order for a place in this world and for personal wealth. but that's not a willing sacrifice, nor is it a fair choice. you were just picked up off the streets and chosen to be a pawn. these officials would choose to make the journey to the capital, to represent local intention for a grand scheme of things. you talk about how the farthest oblasts, the areas with less representation will suffer when decisions are made. you presume that people in government are selfish, and how they'll value their own areas more. and honestly, that's a good point, Katya. that's why being a Red is almost as popular as being a Yellow. it's always important to be skeptical of any governing force. especially with the ones you've had."

sprinkle in praise, lead Irina across the street, pick flaws in an argument but admit points were good, and guide her down a block. chana had made a conversational map, and honestly, it was reliving that it was being followed as she practically pulled Katya across the street, weaving beside the occasional slower-moving cart. and despite efforts, her conversational pace only sped up, thank goodness they were speaking in Volhynian. "but, If an assembly that is proportionately representative of the population, and selected by the whole population cannot be trusted to make decisions on behalf of their constituents, people they know, then how can some random individual on his own, who will live his whole life in a palace, who will never know work with his hands in the fields, mines, and factories, who will never run the black fields of Kyivshchyna, unless if he joins his cossacks going hunting-"not the normal hunting of creatures, of course, but the butchering of religious minorities for sport. Chana spat the phrase but didn't dwell on it much after."-, who will never sleep under the foothills of the Bessarabian mountains. he will never know the sound the snow makes under his boots in Kolyma. He cannot live the life of everyone in the land. and who is to say he is the best fit to lead? Katya would make a kind ruler, I know this. the people would have little reason to hate you as an individual, I certainly don't. but the name Vasarov carries with it centuries of starvation and death. and the Volhynian people remember that. so we chose a new start." there was passion in Chana's voice. passion, weariness, her eyes meeting Irina's as she spoke of Katya, and of the people's choice, unconsciously making half an admission of Irina's ability to rule, if Irina would want to twist the words that way. but a ruler could never be truly kind, and the choice of the Volhynians came-

those brown eyes, tired, haunted, fierce, that had locked with Irina's and admitting sympathy with Katya, failed to notice the way she and Irina were walking just perhaps a bit too close to where the lamppost was. like a bit out of a farce or a children's fable, Chana smacked the side of her shoulder into it, muttering a pained oath, clutching the shoulder, and feeling an odd mix of embarrassment and the sudden desire to laugh hysterically, at a loss for words.

 

[Solivagante]

Listening to Chana talk about governing was... interesting. Words seemed to pour out of her, a flood of thoughts and emotion that was at once passionate and studious. Her Volhynian was almost too fast for Irina to follow; she spoke Lutecian more often these days, and in conversations with Maria she focused on keeping her pronunciation refined, formal. Chana's fluidity, and the traces of an accent Irina could't quite identify, made the language both more musical and harder to understand. Irina felt as if her mind were an under-wound clock, running just a few seconds slower it should, as she listened to the other woman.

The ideas got through well enough, or at least Irina was fairly sure she understood much of it. 'Being a Red' might be something to ask about, later, but the crux of Chana's argument seemed to center on this concept of the representative assembly making the voluntary sacrifice to leave their homes and... she would have to consider that idea more. She swallowed back a reflexive response at the question of who made the emperor fit to lead; the answer was the gods, of course, but that would get her nowhere with a nonbeliever.

Katya would make a kind ruler, I know this, rang oddly in her ears, and Irina frowned, certain she'd misheard, until the words were followed with an admission that Chana didn't hate her. Maybe she'd understood the first part correctly, too.

She didn't get much time to think on it, though, as Chana promptly walked straight into a lamppost. Reflexively but too late, Irina grabbed the other woman's elbow and pulled Chana towards her, as if that would do anything after the fact.

"Are you alright?" She had the urge to apologize - it wasn't her fault that Chana had walked into the pole, precisely, but maybe if she hadn't been distracted - but that impulse was one of the first things Maria had trained out of her. Never give ground to your lessers, your majesty. An apology from a ruler is an admission of weakness. Though that raised the question, then, of how a ruler could make amends for past wrongs... or the wrongs of her ancestors.

"You seem to have a great deal of faith in the virtues of the populace," she said carefully, casting a sidelong glance at Chana. Her hand was still wrapped around the revolutionary's elbow - she let go with a start, though she did not step away in case the woman was at all unsteady.

 

[EmperorNorton1]

Briefly stunned from the impact, then abruptly being jerked back a second too late left Chana reeling slightly, her shoulder beginning to throb as the flush of adrenalin briefly filled her brain with a giddy static. the ranting and raving while walking had to stop, it wasn't the first time something along the line happened, as Josef- as Rifka could attest, getting swept up in a passionate speech while walking never ended well.

Katya's warm hand on the crook of her arm dropped away, a few moments after the woman in question made a concerned ask about Chana's shoulder, though she hovered just beside her. it was... touching, really. and just a week before, this woman's captors had all lurched away, as though she were afflicted with leprosy and caked in feces. Poverty is not contagious by touch, though perhaps empathy was for some. and if the nobles couldn't quite kill Katya's touchy-feely side, all the better.

"I'm alright, I'm alright." the faintly muttered reply came as Chana rubbed her shoulder, the thinner cotton layers feeling lighter than perhaps they should have. no smudges or dirt on them, but the cooler fabric had always felt strange against her skin as opposed to the heavy texture of wool. "Need to watch where I'm going, it's no matter." Her cheeks felt oddly flushed, red heat turning them a different shade, Chana's eyes breaking from Irina to stare at her own shoulder, a little bit of fabric from her sleeve pinched between two fingers.

"Everyone believes in something. you have your gods, your divinely ordained place in the great chain of being. I have faith in the People." but maybe not as much faith in people the individual, but Irina didn't need to know that. besides, not believing in anything is impossible, even skeptics and cynics have something, or perhaps someone to believe in. "and, Affection is a conviction, to quote that great Lutecian author of Les Abased. Don't believe that we have no appreciation for culture." Maria's words from the ball still rang in Chana's ears. degenerate, abomination, and uncouth heathen are by no means new slurs, but that didn't mean that the words used did not hurt, that Chana didn't hold resentment. Resentment, spite, that too is a conviction, isnt it?

 

[Solivagante]

Chana seemed steady enough, and by the way she quickly broke eye contact, would probably be happier not to have a noble fussing over her. Irina shifted her weight a little, putting more space between them without taking a step. She'd give the other woman a little longer to regain her balance, let her decide when to resume their walk, and in the meantime continue the conversation as if the interruption had never happened.

"I suppose... though surely those are not the same kinds of belief?" But maybe they were. Irina knew the gods were real because she had seen and felt their influence, even wielded it in her own small, mortal way. By the same token, perhaps Chana's faith in people - or 'the people', because those words had held a particular weight when she spoke - also came from experience. After all, it had been the people who had toppled the Volhynian Empire, hadn't it? And yet, by that same token...

"Do you not fear the tyranny of the mob?" Irina had no memories of the attack on the Imperial Palace, of course, and even Maria hadn't witnessed it firsthand, but the image of a sea of torches illuminating faces upturned in anger still loomed in her mind. She had been told enough stories to feel she could picture it. "If there is a strong enough - ah-" The Volhynian word wouldn't come to her tongue, so she used the Lutecian term instead. "populiste movement, the people could unseat the government again, could they not?" In the same violent manner they did before, she did not add.

Even when Chana's ideas were at their most appealing, that was the sticking point Irina could not shake - that they were so damned fragile, nearly unenforceable against internal or external threats. For all Chana's anger at the world, her ideas seemed to rely on a sort of... optimism, almost naivete, that Irina simply couldn't share.

 

[EmperorNorton1]

Chana knew the strength of the people. what a troop, a band, a mob could do. the way boots marching in unison shook the ground and how it differed so deeply from feet pounding the pavement in one direction, yet to their own rhythm, a softer rumble. chana knew the way voices raised together sounded when the voices are filled with hate. how it feels to be part of the mob. how it feels to lead the people, and how it feels to stare down a mob hungry for your blood. and of course, that was something to be feared. individual people, they couldn't be trusted, not at first at least. chana knew that. mobs are the result of the most violent impulses every person -herself included- possessed.

"True, I fear the Mob. I know the danger of mass anger when riled up by the guilty at the innocent." Chana admitted, venom on her tongue. Irina had not seen the scars that littered Chana's back and arms, the gash across the face perhaps the only physical souvenir that Katya was acquainted with. (the mental pain, the way Chana was left quick-to-anger, when stress wasn't properly drowned by the green fairy, Irina would never be close enough to Chana to see.). Katya had probably survived a mob of her own though, perhaps a mob of similar origin. "But we lead only with the consent of the government. you monarchs claim to be divinely ordained, but your power only comes because those under you do not try to reclaim the power. the difference is that they chose us, they have the right to continue to choose or not choose us. "

well, did they? chana knew the most recent election hadn't been the most democratic, although for necessary reasons. the bureau had selected nearly every individual on the ballot. and even though voting hours were long, and workers got the day off to vote, not nearly enough of the population had hit the polls. that would change, Chana was certain of it. there was an election in two years, and once this monarchist threat was done away with, choices would be much freer. no monarchists, no counter-revolutionaries. but a green or a red or some other shade of yellow could make it onto the ballot.

"I have no choice but to rely on the people. The Party works to lead them into a time where there will be no more need for mobs, or troops-" Chana pulled into herself on the admission, shoulders tensing, the more she dwelled upon mobs, the more memories clawed their way up. flashes of fire, echoes of screams. no, those were reserved for night terrors only. almost on habit, one hand reached up to try and rub the sleep from her eyes, only for Chana to catch herself, using the hand to smooth down her hair as she let out a heavily controlled breath lest a sob break through, or a hitch in breath.

"I suppose you'd know about not having choices better than I, with your current guardians."

 

[Solivagante]

The anger in Chana's voice surprised Irina somewhat; it sounded almost as if she herself had been hurt by an angry mob, but Irina's Volhynian history lessons had mentioned no such events, not until the revolution. Was it a lie, or another gap in her understanding of her people? Irina pursed her lips, trying to fit Chana's words into what she knew of the world and feeling, not for the first time, as if she were barely keeping up.

The revolutionary's needling about her guardians - her allies was almost a welcome distraction. That felt almost like naked manipulation, a bit of verbal sparring, and Irina took a steadying step back as she readied her riposte.

"It is not..." she paused, their given names feeling awkward in her mouth, "Maria and Henri who restrict my choices, but duty itself. The role of a monarch is to lead the nation, and with that comes responsibility and privilege in equal measure. The duty of rule requires accepting both."

The people belong to me, and I to them, she did not say. It felt too vulnerable to give voice to those thoughts here, on a crowded street. I am theirs, whether or not they know me yet. It was something Maria often reminded her of, when the task before them seemed insurmountable.

"And I am not sure it is true to say that the people chose your government, anyway. Who voted for you, Miss Teper? For all of your noble and interesting ideas, I doubt the people of Volhynia actually selected you, personally. You may speak of the 'consent of the governed' but would your government simply walk away if enough people asked? It seems to me that if that were true, you would not be so interested in me."

 

[EmperorNorton1]

"Who voted for you, Miss Teper?"

Well. quite frankly, no one. Chana was a civil servant, and the promotion to "ambassador's advisor" had been one decided by Sender, who in turn had his post handed to him by the commissar for international affairs, who was herself chosen by the General Secretary, the head of state. But Primer ___ was elected. if not by the ballot then by mass support not so much placing as keeping that faction in power. if the people were to revolt and oust them, the Yellows would surely step aside. they would. they... would. (Would they?) but it would never come to such a thing as this. the fighting was largely over but the Party had yet to enact a proper census. union and party membership lists could only get bureaucracy so far.

"I suppose, Katya, that you are right on some of that point. My party wants to step down from power as much as the royal house wanted to. That is governance. but the difference is that we would be willing to walk away, should the people demand it. The royal house, on the other hand..." Chana trailed off. It had taken a civil war, and millions of dead to fully uproot the tzars. "Rational self-interest, as the Laissez-faire Liberals would say. The party's platform is to hold power by defending citizens from Tzarist lies. "

Chana paused for a beat, then addressed Katya more directly, eyes and voice softening, genuine sympathy taking the place of restrained fervor. "I don't want anyone to be caught up like you have been. You should not hold yourself to an unfulfillable duty" Autonomy is hard to hold onto when one is swept up into a political movement, and even harder to grasp when the threads of magic and memory are unraveled and rewoven by lords with ulterior motives. "My dear friend was... in a similar position to you. That is why I am in Lutecia, not a seasoned diplomat."

"And perhaps," Chana gave a little shrug, tilting her head just slightly "I could introduce my friend to you, once you remember a little more." Rivka, not a diplomat, was acting bodyguard, with her ability to mimic accents and play the helpless blond waif far more useful than one might expect. not to mention her talent for (and the pair being heavily codependent on each other? irrelevant.)