#suzerain meta

[vice-president-galade]

now i know you don't have any strong opinions on petr vectern, but. howsabout that guy. for the bingo.

Is there a box for "a sad old drunk and a lousy lay?"

Overly long Petr rant under the cut! (This has turned into more of an essay than a bingo thing, fair warning!)

Here's the deal with Petr — Petr is a fantastically well-written, realistic character. I enjoy writing him! He gets lots of funny lines, he's more casual and modern than most of the cast, he comes off as likeable and always on the protagonist's side. He's also drinking heavily, showing up late for meetings, and oh yeah, having an affair with the president's secretary, who happens to be a foreign agent for an enemy government. The most obvious way to read him is as a tragic figure, a formerly capable politician and Anton's oldest friend, an aging playboy in a failing marriage who is desperately trying to patch over his insecurities with alcohol and sex with young women, whose terrible mistake leads to devastating scandal and the end of his career (and his life).

Then you go a little deeper -- you talk to his wife Evelyn, who tells you that Petr has a history of going after vulnerable women who aren't in a position to say no to a powerful man. Secretaries, waitstaff, campaign aides. You talk to Anton's wife, Monica, who's known him since university. She tells you she was the only woman in their circle back then who he didn't harass, because of her relationship with Anton. And yes, you talk to Lucian, who has also known Petr and Anton for twenty years, who says that Petr has always been like this, you've never been able to see him for who he truly is, and you still can't. And the picture gets darker. (Unfortunately, all three of these exchanges are easily missable, which I think is a huge oversight on the part of the writers.)

The problem is, the suzerain fandom (talking about the reddit fandom, suzblr is tiny and I'm not calling anyone out here) can't even take that first step, seeing Petr as a tragic character brought down by his own flaws, let alone seeing him as a (disturbingly likeable!) sexual predator taking advantage of his proximity to power. He's valuable because he's so loyal. They parrot Anton's excuses for him — he did what any man would do! (What a thing for him to say to Lucian.) His wife is lying about him because she's bitter! He's totally great in bed, Livia was just being a bitch to hurt him! There's no media literacy, nothing deeper than I like this character because he's funny and supports the protagonist, so he must be a good guy. Somehow "appropriately holding him accountable for the national security breach caused by his actions" is "scapegoating" him. The golden path is apparently to either take an equal share of the blame so he can have a last-second change of heart and go into treatment, or cover the whole thing up. Sorry, but he did all those things!

This is way longer than I intended it to be, so let me just finish up with a "so fucking doomed <3" He sure is when I'm running things!

[vice-president-galade]

Hi, got any theories why Lucian is who he is like in a dark way? Like bro was trying to not look pleased if u choose to kill off Petr and Livia.

Love your fics btw :)

Thank you so much! I’m so sorry I took so long to respond to this – I wanted to put some thought into it and then time got away from me. Hopefully you’re still interested in my answer! (And I have to give the biggest thank you to @poetikat for talking through this with me and helping me get my thoughts straight!)

So the thing with Lucian is that both on a character level and on a gameplay level, he adapts to match the Anton you’re playing as, because of his in-universe role in the administration and because he also serves as the main exposition character for the game. (You can’t have a Lucian who is ideologically opposed to Anton, it just doesn’t make sense – that’s why he’s not on the political alignment chart at the end.)

I see a lot of terrible takes on Lucian's character on reddit — mainly, that all he cares about is his own personal power. That’s not it at all. Lucian cares very deeply about what's best for Sordland — and in his mind, what's best for Sordland is having Lucian Galade close to power. When he's all in with Anton, he is all in, and he will be whatever the administration needs him to be. He can be a tireless crusader for the reforms, or he can be the right hand of a dictator. He views himself as Anton’s indispensable man and would never do anything to harm the administration, as long as he still has faith in Anton. His background, as we know, is in intelligence work in the last few years of the old kingdom, beginning at a young age (somewhere around 21), and involved making choices that could be considered “objectionable” – it’s pretty reasonable to infer that this involved killing people on behalf of the government, although he never says this explicitly. (Not to go off on a side rant, but there is ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION OF BEING INVOLVED IN THE BLACK BATTALION whatsoever.)

If you play a squeaky-clean reformist Anton, you’re never going to know that Lucian would smile at the idea of having Petr killed because it would never come up. Once you have a dictator Anton, or at least an Anton willing to go extrajudicial with the SSP…then Lucian’s line of thinking is going to be, well, if we’re going to be killing people anyway, why not this guy that I’ve despised for decades who seriously fucked up and put Anton in real danger, along with everyone else who works in the palace. From his perspective, while Petr has some limited political use, he’s been a millstone around Anton’s neck for years, and now – from doing the same kind of thing he always does – he’s breached national security and betrayed the administration, betrayed Lucian’s friend. (That “Anton, would you do the same to your so-called best friend?” line is entirely sincere – on a personal level, Lucian is furious on Anton’s behalf.)

I’m going to quote @poetikat from our conversation because she put it absolutely perfectly – “so reformer anton may never know that lucian would take a split second of vindictive pleasure at the idea of petr being extrajudicially killed, but an authoritarian anton whose advisor has been leaning much more heavily on those old days of ruthlessness for the past few years would see it, and both lucians are equally true to the core of his character.”

As for Livia/Ilana, I’m pretty sure Lucian would be absolutely fine with having her killed under any circumstances, if he could be reasonably sure they could get away with it. He and Ilana are both spies, after all – this is how the game is played. She’s a covert enemy intelligence operative who got caught. If she disappears, the problem is solved – no one is going to come looking for her. He wouldn’t suggest this to a reformist/ACP Anton, and if you do decide to go through the court system and do things aboveboard, he respects that – if you make sure Petr takes the blame (as he should, because it’s entirely his fault).

Oh, look, I wrote a whole essay about this, what a shock! If anyone else has any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them.

[viablemess]

Back at it with the stupid generators for my stupid new microfandom addiction