Magistos wrote:To completely go off the rails, we are assuming it is something rational.
You have a country in PTSD, at least the northern part, it seems to me. Someone alluded to a new leader taking things in a different direction. How do we know it isn't a demagogue of some sort and Siddermark hasn't gone completely reactionary? They could be going completely nationalistic and arming up to avoid ever having such horrors inflicted again.
I have NOTHING to back this up. I'm simply throwing out another idea. I do wait to be entertained by the answer, and have a crap ton of books to read before TFT hits my ereader on a bright, happy morning a few months hence.
That is possible but inconsistent with the ending of ASTOT, which mentioned a huge gulf between Siddarmark and the Church. It's also inconsistent with the observed behavior of Stohnahr's government, especially with their wariness of Charis' "spy network" and the future political maneuverings they all knew would commence once the war was over.
First, Charis did save their bacon so to speak and all too many reformist Siddarmarkians were grateful to Charis and un-trusting of the Church after the Sword of Schueler. And with so many Temple Loyalists being refugees, I don't see how the remaining Siddarmarkian population would be willing to somehow accept Rhobair II's reforms at face value in so short a period of time (we are now 4 years after the Jihad) even if a little over half were neither Temple Loyalist or Church of Charis.
Second, the Inner Circle had specifically commissioned the
King Haarahld-class of battleships to create the sort of naval threat that simply could not be ignored and that had to matched by a full embracing of industrialization in order to meet Charisian naval ships at sea with any chance of victory or at least survival. Siddarmark was mostly a land power before the Jihad but they really can't afford to go back to the status quo antebellum and trust that the Church will behave itself. Again, that sort of complacency takes a long time to develop. The same also applies to the question of air power that Charis was developing at the closing stages of the war, as only a drooling idiot would assume that Charis would stop there.