catfishncod wrote:This was the first thread I had to drop into after finishing TFT.
On whether the “Apparition of Schueler” was set up by actual Schueler or the IC: Occam’s Razor suggests Schueler. The location suggests Schueler had all the access necessary, and the IC would be unlikely to accuse an old lie (Chihiro’s deception) by creating an new one (a false Schueler). Establishing truth is going to be hard enough anyways.
I concur.
There are folks here who think it's a sneaky IC trick, but I can't agree. The risks are simply too great. One problem is that while the IC knows things the rest of Safehold doesn't, like where the Adams and Eves really came from and what the Angels and Archangels actually were, their knowledge of events on Safehold in the earliest days is mostly what was in Commodore Pei's downloads to Nimue, and there are gaps in that knowledge.
In particular, the War Against the Fallen and Chihiro taking over in its wake did not begin till two years after Kau Yung nuked Langhorne's HQ, and killing Langhorne and Bedard as well as himself, so all of that occurred after the downloads Commodore Pei created for Nimue.
There is too much the IC doesn't know and would have to make up, and that would bite them hard later.
<...>
So base assumption: Chihiro went overboard in the War of the Fallen, and Schueler didn’t like it — but couldn’t stop it. So he dropped time-delay actions hidden from Chihiro to undo his excesses. From the sound of the recording, bad-mouthing Shan-Wei and “the Fallen” was one of those excesses.
I also think Schueler disagreed with Chihiro. We are given to understand that Chihiro was essentially the new boss, after Langhorne and Bedard were killed. He was already Assistant Administrator (and we know he'd been working to undermine Langhorne for a while), so he was the designated successor. We get the impression Schueler was his second-in-command, and was the one who picked up on clues and warned Chihiro something was going on before the War Against the Fallen began.
But Schueler's brief as an Archangel was Justice, and I can see him becoming disenchanted with the direction Chihiro was going. Kohdy's diary talks about the Fallen who defeated him claiming
Chihiro had been altering Langhorne's Plan, and his evidence was convincing enough that Kohdy went to Zion to talk to Schueler about it. He died in Zion.
One thing we don't know is whether he actually got to speak to Schueler before he was killed, and what Schueler's reaction was. It might have been a key factor in his turning against Chihiro. But he may have realized he couldn't actually
stop Chihiro, and actively opposing him was a good way to get dead, so he would have to take more subtle and longer term actions.
Another thing we don't yet know was the Fallen's agenda. Whay were their motivations, and what would they have done if they'd
won? (The Fallen who told Kohdy Chihiro was was modifying Langhorne's plan gives the impression they thought Chihiro was going too far, and wanted to return to what Langhorne wanted.)
Absolute minimum we can expect from the Testimony of Schueler is a complete repudiation of the Book of Chihiro, with a more accurate history.
That will be fascinating, because most of what everyone thinks is the history of Safehold since Creation is in the book of Chihiro. If Chihiro outright lied in his book, everything everyone thought they knew about Safehold history is wrong. An interesting question is whether he will also state that Chihiro was the principal author of the Writ, working under Langhorne's direction, and that the Books of other Archangels were at least edited by Chihiro if not actually written by him, so
everything in the Writ becomes suspect.
I strongly suspect it will also contain passwords for the Key, though only the Wylsynns and the IC will recognize them for what they are.
I'm not sure I agree, but it's possible he would put stuff in specifically intended for the Wylsynns.
Shan-Wei & Co. will be rehabilitated as Archangels whose spheres were beyond humanity’s proper knowledge at Creation. Shan-Wei, for instance, can be described more accurately, as God’s handmaiden in crafting Safehold (I.e., Chief terraformer). Proctor is still Archangel of forbidden knowledge; but in this telling, he knows that and obeys “God’s Will” by removing to Alexandria.
The notion that Shan Wei was
not the Mother of Lies and source of evil will be mind-boggling to those who hear it.
It will be equivalent to an authority that can't simply be dismissed out of hand claiming the Bible got it
wrong, Satan was
notthe great enemy of God end embodiment of evil, another angel was the true bad guy, and Satan got blamed for stuff he didn't do.
The notion of Proctor as guardian of forbidden knowledge is a neat one. It opens the possibility that there was knowledge humanity simply wasn't ready for, and it wasn't
permanently forbidden - it was just being withheld till humanity had grown and matured enough to be capable of properly understanding and using it.
Chihiro is the bad guy of the Testament, that much is clear; though it may be portrayed with some sympathy. He disrupts the Plan, conducts the War, and lies about it all.
It's another variant of a comment Michael Staynair makes in an earlier book when Father Paityr is inducted into the Inner Circle. He comments that they knew what the Archangels
did, but did not and could not know what they were
thinking when they did it. They may have committed what we see as atrocities with the best of intentions, thinking they had no other choice if humanity is to survive. (Another poster commented they all had the worst case of PTSD you could imagine.)
Biggest question mark is whether Schueler wants to return to Langhorne’s Plan, or Shan-Wei’s, or chart a middle course between the two. The Testimony of Schueler will be more accurate factually, but it is the portrayal of motives and shading of characters that will really have the most impact, along with what Schueler says “God’s Plan” is.
And one of the questions, given Chihiro stirring the pot after Langhorne died, was how much of what Safehold turned into by the time Nimue awoke in her PICA was the result of the Chihiro Plan.
I can't quite see Schueler spilling the beans about where the Adams and Eves really came from and what the Archangels really were. That would simply be too traumatic for all concerned. The IC knows the truth must be told, but it will take a lot of preparation before it can be with any hope of success. My guess is Schueler is smart enough to recognize that. He'll start by trying to clear Shan Wei's name and calling Chihiro a liar. If he's going to support a plan, it will be Langhorne's, with the specification that it wasn't intended to be permanent, and greater truths would be revealed when humanity was ready for it.
But yes, most of the interesting stuff in the Safehold series comes down to motivations, and
why various characters behaved as they did.
Second biggest question mark: is that an AI who is speaking of Clyntahn and the Jihad, or a recording speaking about the War of the Fallen? There is a war being fought across history by proxy here, with institutions and automatic equipment and knowledge caches as well as by sentient entities in time and space. Whether Schueler left only dead drops or an interactive AI matters to whether there are two factions (Langhorne-Chihiro and Shan-wei-Nimue).... or *three*.
My guess is that the apparition appearing in his cathedral on the anniversary of his soul's return to God is Schueler, and there's a VR unit with a copy of his personality which awakened him. If the VR unit has access to information sources (like a tap into files collected by the Temple), he knows at least something about the Jihad and Clyntahn's psychoses, so he's referring to those events as terrible things done in his name but without his approval.
______
Dennis