Ultimately, this is what sealed Imre's fate. But....
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the court sees their blood covered, insanely distraught monarch scream at them "don't you know a man is dead!" and then he throws them out.
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That's actually a pretty good set up for some quite effective damage control. Imre suspects that a Haldane is in the wings, and that the MacRories are involved. His grief is unfeigned: which the Deryni present would have been able to detect.
The simple solution would have been to announce the following morning that an assassin claiming to serve a Haldane pretender sought to kill the king and that Cathan bravely threw himself in the way, saving the king. Cathan's known love of the king means that no one would find such an action surprising; all would find Imre's grief believable. Cathan's body is given full honours, and a new title awarded for his heroics.
Before Cathan's body is returned, the commander of his escort is warned - and ordered to Truth Read the speaker - that the king believes that Cathan was always the intended target, and that the claimed attack on the king was just a cover. Said commander is told that his primary task is to protect Cathan's sons, and to warn Camber that his family is in danger.
Of course, if Cathan's sons are killed, the title passes to Joram...and so the lands to the Michaelines.
And Camber and the Michaelines apparently have some sort of bad history...
At some point the court can announce that the Haldane pretender is being protected by some 'rogue' Michaelines(which he is), and leave crushing the Pretender to a grief stricken Camber.
My immediate response, without checking the books which sadly seem to have gone walkabout, is that this assumes that Imre is rational which I don't remember to be the case. Even without drink, and manipulation by Coel and Ariella, he is emotionally unstable and driven by impulse.
I also don't believe that Camber would be fooled.
Great discussion starter.
Thought provoking there
@whitelaughter . But as
@revanne stated, Imre would have to be rational to come up with that idea. And Imre is nothing but irrational impulses of the here and now. He is quite insane.
Revanne. I can tell you where you books have walked to😀
Quote from: revanne on February 16, 2019, 05:31:06 AM
My immediate response, without checking the books which sadly seem to have gone walkabout, is that this assumes that Imre is rational which I don't remember to be the case. Even without drink, and manipulation by Coel and Ariella, he is emotionally unstable and driven by impulse.
I also don't believe that Camber would be fooled.
Great discussion starter.
While I agree with the others that this idea isn't one that Imre could have come up with, it does sound like something that Ariella could have come up with, and, had she suggested it to her beloved brother, he may have gone along with it. Or would he? He was really, really devastated when he thought that his beloved Cathan had betrayed him, so I don't know if he would have been able to pull it off. Depends on how much control over him his sister had...
Thanks all for your comments.
I can't see Imre coming up with this either, but he and Ariella were 'indisposed' after the event, leaving the matter in the hand of their underlings. While Imre clearly got rid of many of his father's experts - Camber was one of them - somebody must have been keeping the castle running.
On a tangent, a problem fantasy has with fictional monarchs is that readers and writers spend a lot of time alone, while rulers never have a moment to themselves; everyone always wants to bend the ruler's ear. When a monarch couldn't even go to the toilet alone, privacy was an alien concept. This of course would have made my suggestion impractical; but would have made the initial killing impractical; and jumping forward in time, the stenrech would never have got near Kelson, but would have blocked by an ablative courtier.
A good Giggle goes out to Demercia for her little quip. Glad to see the books getting off the shelf and being shared.
As to the story line. I think this subject really depends on what order you read the books. Logically, if you went by Chronology and if these had been written chronologically, lots of "Coverup" stories and ideas could have been invented to keep the king's courtiers in the dark about what really happened that Twelfth Night. And in real life there are mysteries about Coverup killings durring the medieval period that may never be solved. (just look at the mystery of the disappearance of the two Princes from the Tower.) So yes, if this was the very beginning of the whole Deryni series, than Imre could have made up any mad story for what he did to his best friend. And likely gotten away with it. without causing such a tremendous upheaval as it did.
The thing of it is, the book "Camber of Culdi" is not the first book written. CoC has a set purpose from it's very conception. The book exists to explain to us how an Earl of Culdi could become Saint Camber, the Defender of Human and Deryni, the one whose seal in on the floor of the great Cathedral of St George, a seal which saved our young King Kelson at his coronation. This is a concept that is pivotal in the very first Deryni Book ever written, "Deryni Rising." It would become a conundrum if the history in CoC did not lead to the current events during King Kelson's reign.
(Even Dr Who had to avoid the Paradox of changing his own time line. per-say LOL)
Given that I read the books in order of publication, I remember being as heart-wrenched as Camber was over his eldest son's death. But I knew the history had to be that way. What I find interesting in this conversation is someone who has read the books in chronological order instead, and has come up with other plot-lines deviations. So this leads me to wonder if I would have felt the same way if I had read CoC first, too? I always enjoy a good "What If?"
Interesting concept Whitelaughter.
Quote from: whitelaughter on February 15, 2019, 11:32:34 PM
Ultimately, this is what sealed Imre's fate. But....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
the court sees their blood covered, insanely distraught monarch scream at them "don't you know a man is dead!" and then he throws them out.
------------------------------------------------------------------
That's actually a pretty good set up for some quite effective damage control. Imre suspects that a Haldane is in the wings, and that the MacRories are involved. His grief is unfeigned: which the Deryni present would have been able to detect.
The simple solution would have been to announce the following morning that an assassin claiming to serve a Haldane pretender sought to kill the king and that Cathan bravely threw himself in the way, saving the king. Cathan's known love of the king means that no one would find such an action surprising; all would find Imre's grief believable. Cathan's body is given full honours, and a new title awarded for his heroics.
Before Cathan's body is returned, the commander of his escort is warned - and ordered to Truth Read the speaker - that the king believes that Cathan was always the intended target, and that the claimed attack on the king was just a cover. Said commander is told that his primary task is to protect Cathan's sons, and to warn Camber that his family is in danger.
Of course, if Cathan's sons are killed, the title passes to Joram...and so the lands to the Michaelines.
And Camber and the Michaelines apparently have some sort of bad history...
At some point the court can announce that the Haldane pretender is being protected by some 'rogue' Michaelines(which he is), and leave crushing the Pretender to a grief stricken Camber.
Very good thoughts here.
Quote from: Bynw on February 16, 2019, 07:46:42 AMThought provoking there @whitelaughter . But as @revanne stated, Imre would have to be rational to come up with that idea. And Imre is nothing but irrational impulses of the here and now. He is quite insane.
I never thought of him as insane until very near the end. I saw him as a weak man trying futilely to appear strong-- something not helped by his drinking, or by Coel Howell.
Or his power hungry more than slightly psycho sister.
Or his power hungry more than slightly psycho sister.
Quote from: reiki deryni on March 26, 2023, 07:17:32 PMOr his power hungry more than slightly psycho sister.
Hmmm... I always thought of her as trying very hard to give Imre a backbone, which he could never really accomplish. I always thought she'd have done better as queen than he ever could as king.
imo I think she would have just been a stronger and worse despot, also neater.
Quote from: reiki deryni on March 27, 2023, 08:35:12 PMimo I think she would have just been a stronger and worse despot, also neater.
Stronger, yes. Worse? I'll disagree there. Neater-- oh very much yes.
Yet a lot of Imre's policies were thought of, suggested and endorsed by her.
I find Cathan's love for King Imre mystifying. It was certainly a love that was morally ambiguous, given that Imre was a tyrant and was effectively undermining Deryni and human community relations. Cathan's love seems to have been indifferent to the common good as was understood by his father, Camber of Culdi.
What was Cathan's idea of the common good of Gwynedd? What did he hope to accomplish by the love and loyalty that he gave to King Imre? I do not have any answer to these questions.
I suspect that by the time Cathan died, he was in a place of still loving the king he'd grown up with while not really liking or finding his actions comprehensible.
Sometimes it's like that; you love the history of your relationship (by which I mean anything from friendship to familial relationships, not the romantic/sexual specificity the term has acquired in contemporary English) more than you really love the person anymore, because they've changed or you've changed or you both have.
Quote from: DesertRose on April 02, 2023, 05:31:41 PMI suspect that by the time Cathan died, he was in a place of still loving the king he'd grown up with while not really liking or finding his actions comprehensible.
I wonder, DesertRose, if he was, somehow an enabler of Imre's actions. He had seen up close the actions of the young Prince for many years and had to, at a certain point, give his acquiescence. He was quiet to the faults of the King.
QuoteSometimes it's like that; you love the history of your relationship (by which I mean anything from friendship to familial relationships, not the romantic/sexual specificity the term has acquired in contemporary English) more than you really love the person anymore, because they've changed or you've changed or you both have.
This is an interesting idea. Cathan, like king Imre, is to be perceived as self-absorbed, not able to see himself as others, such as his father, Camber, sees him, for many years in his childhood. Cathan, like Imre, cannot, in the end, suffer contradiction. But all this changes when he gets older and perceives King Imre as a possible danger to himself and to his family. The comforting self-absorption of childhood cannot absorb personal danger and its accompanying fear.