Putting it out there briefly before ep 51 comes out so i can come back to this.
I think some of what the Citadel is catching heat for (especially what Tefmet was saying using poor evidence) around binding, creating/breeding and conjuring Great Spirits is actually the work of the Saraz Imperium/Crown. I don’t think the Citadel is completely uninvolved or doesn’t itself do fucked up things to Great Spirits (see: the Great Bullfrog), but I’ve been thinking a lot about Morrow’s derrick, the way we saw the Crown move in Arc 2 during the raids, Tefmet’s evidence not actually fully pointing back to the Citadel, and especially most recently the wizard Keen and the introduction of the crown prince in Arc 4.
These guild mages (Morrow and Keen) are both involved in using spirits somehow. Morrow must have needed a huge amount of resources, magical and otherwise, to build the derrick - not to mention administrative sign off. We never learned who in the Crown was involved because of how things went down in Port Talon. Keen seems to have an understanding of witches and spirits, and specifically wants to trap Eursulon. We have a horrible idea of what happened to Ghost.
We also now know that there is at least some level of tension between the Citadel and the Crown, as evidenced by Steel’s call in episode 50. Clearly the Citadel depends to some extent on the administrative, logistical and civil management work of the Crown so that it can focus on war and academic progress. But, like the wizard Gray hinted, the real power of the Empire seems to be held by the Citadel, and that kind of unequal division doesn’t seem very stable. The Emperor may be a bit of a bozo (we’ll see) but he has a whole bunch of guild mages working for him - wizards who were drummed out of the Citadel, may be bitter and bear a grudge, or have a chip on their shoulder. They may well want to prove they don’t need the Citadel and are in fact better, by advancing their magic using spirits. More importantly, if I was the Crown, some part of me would always be worried that the Citadel could one day decide to overthrow me (especially given Antivoli/Accordati wizard history) and I would not want to be caught off guard with no defence and my opponent controlling the entire military. One thing to do, then, would be to secretly develop alternative forms of wizardry or use of magic.
My theory is that I wouldn’t be surprised if Prince Olfgang has a particular interest in/has been supporting wizards of the Crown in developing the (ab)use of spirits for their magic purposes. Maybe partly for the war effort, but also in relation to the threat of the Citadel. And from a meta perspective I think that’s why, narratively, Brennan has taken us to Sarazmir and highlighted the prince.
Lastly, I do still think the Citadel has been interfering/messing with the Lingua Arcana in ways that are having an impact on magic in Umora as a whole (for example, with the Axiom of Proliferation, and more I think that is yet to come about the aerith system etc). I think what keeps the Citadel and Crown together is their shared interest in maintaining control over the use of magic/the lingua arcana, so as to concentrate power.
Let’s see what happens in these last 4 episodes!! Ahhhhhh
