[Dave: Some 1248 discussion here. Feel free to move on …]
> In 1248, there seem to be good/bad versions of every major race and culture.
OK, I totally grant you the whole “good Solomani” and “evil Solomani” empires. That is 100% true. But for the rest? I dunno. There was only one Vilani empire; it got uppity, then got crushed, then mellowed. So unless you are counting the single empire has transitioning from good to evil (or evil to good), I don’t see it. And, while there were two primary Zhodani pocket empires explicitly described, neither were good or evil. One was traditional and one was very different, but both were (at least supposed to be) nominally “good”. They were definitely not evil. And the Vargr were the Vargr. There have always been “hostile” Vargr and “friendly” Vargr. None of that is new and it should definitely be expected from the Vargr, regardless of setting.
On the Regency front, I can definitely see where you might get that idea about the Imperial Regency and the League of Deneb. And, yes, the IR was the “baddie” of the Spinward States. However, the League of Deneb was not necessarily particularly “good”, and the IR was not really evil. They were proud and misguided, angry and aggressive, but they were not truly evil. It was intended for the two states to contrast each other in some interesting ways. With the IR, you had a fairly monolithic approach with a fairly unified technology base. With Deneb, it was much more varied in both categories. Also, from a leadership perspective, Deneb was much nicer, as each world had the freedom to be organized as they saw fit. The IR was much more rigid and much less flexible. But, for the general population, the IR was probably better to live in. Since the Deneb worlds were free to run themselves, all sorts of totalitarian and nasty nonsense was able to flourish. With the IR, while the interstellar government was autocratic, the world governments were forced to be much more open. The average IR citizen probably lived a freer life (in a good way) than a typical Deneb citizen. So, while the two empires were intended to contrast each other, it was far from a “good” vs “evil” type contrast.
But you are absolutely correct on the Solomani. It was one “good” empire and one “evil” empire. If they had been given the time to produce a Terran sourcebook, then there likely would have been some additional nuance added to the story, with various other minor empires (of varying small sizes) introduced to add more flavor and character. But the emergence of Mongoose Traveller cut 1248 much shorter than desired.
Again, I certainly don't speak for Martin. However, I can speak for myself, so can explain anything you want out of the Spinward States or the sliver of Terran client states from the Freedom League book.
Mike West
> In 1248, there seem to be good/bad versions of every major race and culture.
OK, I totally grant you the whole “good Solomani” and “evil Solomani” empires. That is 100% true. But for the rest? I dunno. There was only one Vilani empire; it got uppity, then got crushed, then mellowed. So unless you are counting the single empire has transitioning from good to evil (or evil to good), I don’t see it. And, while there were two primary Zhodani pocket empires explicitly described, neither were good or evil. One was traditional and one was very different, but both were (at least supposed to be) nominally “good”. They were definitely not evil. And the Vargr were the Vargr. There have always been “hostile” Vargr and “friendly” Vargr. None of that is new and it should definitely be expected from the Vargr, regardless of setting.
On the Regency front, I can definitely see where you might get that idea about the Imperial Regency and the League of Deneb. And, yes, the IR was the “baddie” of the Spinward States. However, the League of Deneb was not necessarily particularly “good”, and the IR was not really evil. They were proud and misguided, angry and aggressive, but they were not truly evil. It was intended for the two states to contrast each other in some interesting ways. With the IR, you had a fairly monolithic approach with a fairly unified technology base. With Deneb, it was much more varied in both categories. Also, from a leadership perspective, Deneb was much nicer, as each world had the freedom to be organized as they saw fit. The IR was much more rigid and much less flexible. But, for the general population, the IR was probably better to live in. Since the Deneb worlds were free to run themselves, all sorts of totalitarian and nasty nonsense was able to flourish. With the IR, while the interstellar government was autocratic, the world governments were forced to be much more open. The average IR citizen probably lived a freer life (in a good way) than a typical Deneb citizen. So, while the two empires were intended to contrast each other, it was far from a “good” vs “evil” type contrast.
But you are absolutely correct on the Solomani. It was one “good” empire and one “evil” empire. If they had been given the time to produce a Terran sourcebook, then there likely would have been some additional nuance added to the story, with various other minor empires (of varying small sizes) introduced to add more flavor and character. But the emergence of Mongoose Traveller cut 1248 much shorter than desired.
Again, I certainly don't speak for Martin. However, I can speak for myself, so can explain anything you want out of the Spinward States or the sliver of Terran client states from the Freedom League book.
Mike West