![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feredarStory: Truth
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Riluke
Warnings: Oblique references to war and character death, discussion of stigma against outsiders and bastards.
If there is one thing I have learned, over my long career as a diplomat and spymaster, it is that the truth is usually relative.
Not always, to be fair. Some things are indisputable--the color of my cousin’s consort’s eyes, my nephew’s vast inheritance, the year and circumstances of my birth. But those are only the basic facts, which form the foundation for all other “truths” to come.
As for the rest? Everything that is built on those facts? That is all relative.
Lonura’s eyes, in Glass, mark her as unique, and only add to her beauty. But here, in the Islands, they would mark her as Unthreaded, or even if she wasn’t a mage, as someone with blood ties outside her people.
The empire my aunt built, finally realized in the person of my nephew, is a triumph in her eyes. But to the Grand Duke in Asendar, the crowns of Feredar and Glass united are a destructive force unmatched by any in living memory.
My bastardy, at home, makes me something lacking. But outside the desert, I am one of the most powerful women in the world--kin to its greatest monarch, a fixture at the court of one of its greatest economic powers; and I could never have become what I am if I weren’t a less-valuable not-princess.
Even the stark fact that I am next to worthless on the marriage market, since that same bastardy deprives me of what could have been my inheritance, is more of a blessing to me than anything else.
My point is this: what makes us who we are only starts from facts, and then moves through how we present ourselves--whether by preening and exaggerating our strengths or by hiding and magnifying our faults--to how others perceive us. And none of it is constant, except for that foundation.
So I don’t believe in Truth, and I don’t think that insisting or relying on it is necessarily an intrinsic good. And maybe that’s because I am a diplomat and a spy, and rely on far more manipulation than most would find comfortable. Or maybe it’s because I learned, long ago, that there are some truths, built on some facts, that do more harm than good.
And maybe it isn’t any more intrinsically good than believing in and searching for and serving some absolute truth, but, instead of choosing that, I have chosen to dedicate my adult life to shading and maneuvering perceptions and relative truths into something that benefits the people I love and the Crown I serve. And I will continue to do so as long as I live, because whether that choice is an intrinsically good one or not, my relative truth makes it so. And in the end, that’s the best choice that anyone can make.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Riluke
Warnings: Oblique references to war and character death, discussion of stigma against outsiders and bastards.
If there is one thing I have learned, over my long career as a diplomat and spymaster, it is that the truth is usually relative.
Not always, to be fair. Some things are indisputable--the color of my cousin’s consort’s eyes, my nephew’s vast inheritance, the year and circumstances of my birth. But those are only the basic facts, which form the foundation for all other “truths” to come.
As for the rest? Everything that is built on those facts? That is all relative.
Lonura’s eyes, in Glass, mark her as unique, and only add to her beauty. But here, in the Islands, they would mark her as Unthreaded, or even if she wasn’t a mage, as someone with blood ties outside her people.
The empire my aunt built, finally realized in the person of my nephew, is a triumph in her eyes. But to the Grand Duke in Asendar, the crowns of Feredar and Glass united are a destructive force unmatched by any in living memory.
My bastardy, at home, makes me something lacking. But outside the desert, I am one of the most powerful women in the world--kin to its greatest monarch, a fixture at the court of one of its greatest economic powers; and I could never have become what I am if I weren’t a less-valuable not-princess.
Even the stark fact that I am next to worthless on the marriage market, since that same bastardy deprives me of what could have been my inheritance, is more of a blessing to me than anything else.
My point is this: what makes us who we are only starts from facts, and then moves through how we present ourselves--whether by preening and exaggerating our strengths or by hiding and magnifying our faults--to how others perceive us. And none of it is constant, except for that foundation.
So I don’t believe in Truth, and I don’t think that insisting or relying on it is necessarily an intrinsic good. And maybe that’s because I am a diplomat and a spy, and rely on far more manipulation than most would find comfortable. Or maybe it’s because I learned, long ago, that there are some truths, built on some facts, that do more harm than good.
And maybe it isn’t any more intrinsically good than believing in and searching for and serving some absolute truth, but, instead of choosing that, I have chosen to dedicate my adult life to shading and maneuvering perceptions and relative truths into something that benefits the people I love and the Crown I serve. And I will continue to do so as long as I live, because whether that choice is an intrinsically good one or not, my relative truth makes it so. And in the end, that’s the best choice that anyone can make.