JRM wrote:It doesn’t matter who is responsible to the spectacle of the last chapter. If the Inner Circle wasn’t responsible, then they should have been, because in one form or another it is absolutely required.
My belief that the visitation was part of Operation Androcles based on the following description of the com conference where Caleb gave the okay to Nahrmahn.
“It was physically impossible to find a time at which all of the inner circle could have joined a com conference. That was why they were normally limited to the circle’s senior members, and quite often not all of them. Tonight, however, every member who possibly could be was present electronically, in a net which covered the circumference of Safehold, ...”
This was clearly a major announcement of future policy.
See, I'm torn....
on the one hand, I pretty much agree with you.
On the other hand, this PARTICULAR form of angelic revelation is NOT how i would have done things, and doesn't FEEL like the IC's style of work.
Breaking down the neccessary doctrinal revolution into some more discrete steps....
1. Get safehold used to the neccessity of constant national-scale innovation and development (mostly done)
2. Get safehold used to thinking critically, verifiably, scientifically, skeptically, honestly, and openly about past knowledge, science or commandmants: Well underway, but still mostly limited to the youngest generation of the Charisian empire. the College System and omnipresent ongoing adult education for professionals stills need to be widely distributed to the mainland.
3: avoid another world war, and related massive atrocities. Avoid loss of public faith in basic morality, honesty, fairness, and public trust. - Still uncertain. Things could get ugly if they're not very careful, or if they're unlucky.
4. Get Safeholdans used to the idea of continually updated, new and relevant, evidence and experiments regarding their foundation myths and doctrine. Not really started yet, except in the most preliminary of ways.
5. Get Safeholdans to SERIOUSLY QUESTION certain key elements of Early Safeholdan Religious History, and to widely accept that certain limited elements may, in fact, be wrong, for otherwise doctrinally acceptable reasons.
(Such as, say, "The Punishment of Schueler is actually an editing error. That document was actually recovered from one of Shan-Wei's lairs, misfiled, and mistakenly included in the revised Writ by an overly ambitious junior clerk...We Regret the Error.")
6. Get Safeholdans to start Accepting ACTUAL SCHISM AND HERESY. various small groups of religionists who consistently reliably believe something WAY DIFFERENT from what could ever plausibly be in the Writ. Such as, say, Judaism, Paganism, Universalism, Janeism, Shintoism.... Small minority sects who all right-thinking people think are completely crazy and following pure works of fiction, but the communities are still permited to live isolated, peaceful lives anyway. No stake-burning allowed.
7. Actually gradually get the majority of Safeholdans to slowly accept that their entire religion is, in fact, a work of fiction which happens to have copied some useful spiritual truths.
And the really important point to that Task List... If the Inner Circle ever gets caught telling a truly major, verifiable, pre-meditated, bald-faced doctrinal or spiritual lie... Their ability to ACHIEVE their entire task list PLUMMETS.
That's the one problem with the Schueler Appearance... Impersonating a major Archangel? Forging an entire Testimony in his name? Skipping straight past step 4 "minor new evidence about the History of Safehold has come to light, and should be investigated," all the way to Step 7, "Archangel Chiriro is a known liar, forger, and sadist, and Archangel Schueler was a willing patsy?"
That's WAY to big a jump, and too big a risk, and completely the wrong style for the Inner Circle to have attempted.
And the other hand, a MUCH SMALLER step in that general direction might have made sense...
If I were the Inner Circle, what I would have done is... built a shrine. A quiet, peaceful place in the middle of nowhere. Build a small, open-aired building out of Federation Tech, with an empty courtyard and a roofless shrine in the center of the building... and then hang a sign on it. "The Place of Revelation" or somesuch. Provide no explanation of what this shrine is, how it got there, what's it's reason of existence is... nothing.
But once a week, a religious document, written on impressive federation-tech materials, will dramatically fall from the sky and land on the altar.
The weekly document could be anything which is both true and constitutes new evidence. Journals. Memos. Committee notes. Archeological Surveys. Embarrassing secret histories. Histories of ancient Harchong or Vicarate misconduct. Anything you like, once a week, falling from the sky in a miraculous tomb. and always either verifiably true, highly plausible, or at least internally consistent and impossible to disprove. Sometimes covering events from a hundred years ago, sometimes a thousand.
And of course, someone would report the location of this miracle shrine to the church, and the location would need to be occupied, and studied, and monitored, and all the texts questioned, and all the texts would miraculously 'leak' a few weeks after they came out, and everyone would waste a lot of time trying to track where the tombs were appearing from, and how far they were falling before they landed on the shrine, and whether or not crosswinds could cause the falling tombs to miss....
something like THAT would make PERFECT sense. It looks like a miracle, it requires continous study and skepticism, it reveals new evidence, it's very public, it doesn't necessarily or automatically call into question major points of Church Doctrine, it gets people used to the idea that new, bizzare, and miraclous evidence walks among us everyday...
and 20-40 years LATER, THEN you can move on to the next major stage, where you actually start to drop major hints of Archangel deception or misconduct. AFTER you've built up a HUGE reservoir of trust, mystery, and polite skeptical inquiry.
Jumping straight to a revelation by Archangel Schueler... the basic methods and presentation style sort of make sense for the IC to use, by the STYLE and CONTENT of that message is WAY too revolutionary.