Her eyes narrow at the mention of the Doctor, and then she reaches for the bottle to take a long sip of the tequila, contemplating the impression you give other people versus how you perceive yourself. She knows some of Koschei's doubts about his sense of self. In some ways, he had hitched his own star to Amata's near the beginning of his current life. He even has the uniform of her House stashed away in his closet her in the Barge; she'd seen it rummaging around before she came to meet up with Bianca. She wonders if he'd put it on, when he's needed something to feel more stable in the midst of the Barge's rapid changes, or if just having it helps.
"I'm ex-royalty, actually. Born into a cadet branch of the Imperial House of Kaitos, but then succession broke down while I was off world doing graduate work at university. I scrambled to the top of the heap to end the civil war and gave the social order another sharp kick so I could climb back down. The Houses aren't dismantled, just organized into part of a parliamentary system without an inherited monarchy. That was the sensible compromise," she says, wryly. She hasn't gone looking for confirmation during her travels, but she imagines there will be more reforms over the next few generations before Kaitos fully integrates with galactic society.
"As far as legitimacy goes in that context, there were other people with claims as good as mine. I'd had the temerity to marry some foreigner of no particular political note, which was fine when I was so far from the throne and planning on mostly staying off world as a diplomat, but harder to ignore as a potential Empress. But I knew we couldn't go backward, to the social rigidity that made sense when we were a resource-poor planet out of contact with the rest of the galaxy. I'd seen the technological wonders the rest of humanity had. Keeping those from our people would be cruel. And futile in the long run. I guess I saw myself as rooted in a wider reality. And that made my responsibility something different from everything I'd been taught as a child. Which makes legitimacy a...process, I suppose. Of working out what that responsibility is. But then I oh so conveniently gave most of those responsibilities away. So I could live a life less bound by tradition, out of the public eye. They do say the grass is always greener on the other side," she concludes, ruefully.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-04-28 09:27 pm (UTC)"I'm ex-royalty, actually. Born into a cadet branch of the Imperial House of Kaitos, but then succession broke down while I was off world doing graduate work at university. I scrambled to the top of the heap to end the civil war and gave the social order another sharp kick so I could climb back down. The Houses aren't dismantled, just organized into part of a parliamentary system without an inherited monarchy. That was the sensible compromise," she says, wryly. She hasn't gone looking for confirmation during her travels, but she imagines there will be more reforms over the next few generations before Kaitos fully integrates with galactic society.
"As far as legitimacy goes in that context, there were other people with claims as good as mine. I'd had the temerity to marry some foreigner of no particular political note, which was fine when I was so far from the throne and planning on mostly staying off world as a diplomat, but harder to ignore as a potential Empress. But I knew we couldn't go backward, to the social rigidity that made sense when we were a resource-poor planet out of contact with the rest of the galaxy. I'd seen the technological wonders the rest of humanity had. Keeping those from our people would be cruel. And futile in the long run. I guess I saw myself as rooted in a wider reality. And that made my responsibility something different from everything I'd been taught as a child. Which makes legitimacy a...process, I suppose. Of working out what that responsibility is. But then I oh so conveniently gave most of those responsibilities away. So I could live a life less bound by tradition, out of the public eye. They do say the grass is always greener on the other side," she concludes, ruefully.