Re: Shaddam's Heir Dilemna
Posted: 26 Jun 2010 10:20
So here's what I was talking about:
Family life of the Royal Creche is difficult for many people to understand, but
I shall try to give you a capsule view of it. My father had only one real
friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one of
the deadliest fighters in the Imperium. The Count, a dapper and ugly little man,
brought a new slave-concubine to my father one day and I was dispatched by my
mother to spy on the proceedings. All of us spied on my father as a matter of
self-protection. One of the slave-concubines permitted my father under the Bene
Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the
intrigues were constant and oppressive in their similarity. We became adept, my
mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death. It may seem a
dreadful thing to say, but I 'm not at all sure my father was innocent in all
these attempts. A Royal Family is not like other families. Here was a new slave-
concubine, then, red-haired like my father, willowy and graceful. She had a
dancer's muscles, and her training obviously had included neuro-enticement. My
father looked at her for a long time as she postured unclothed before him.
Finally he said: "She is too beautiful. We will save her as a gift. " You have
no idea how much consternation this restraint created in the Royal Creche.
Subtlety and self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats to us all.
-"In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
Family life of the Royal Creche is difficult for many people to understand, but
I shall try to give you a capsule view of it. My father had only one real
friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one of
the deadliest fighters in the Imperium. The Count, a dapper and ugly little man,
brought a new slave-concubine to my father one day and I was dispatched by my
mother to spy on the proceedings. All of us spied on my father as a matter of
self-protection. One of the slave-concubines permitted my father under the Bene
Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the
intrigues were constant and oppressive in their similarity. We became adept, my
mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death. It may seem a
dreadful thing to say, but I 'm not at all sure my father was innocent in all
these attempts. A Royal Family is not like other families. Here was a new slave-
concubine, then, red-haired like my father, willowy and graceful. She had a
dancer's muscles, and her training obviously had included neuro-enticement. My
father looked at her for a long time as she postured unclothed before him.
Finally he said: "She is too beautiful. We will save her as a gift. " You have
no idea how much consternation this restraint created in the Royal Creche.
Subtlety and self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats to us all.
-"In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan