Character Study of the Week: Isis Marik
Who: Isis Marik
What: Heir to the Free Worlds League
???
When: 3034 - ?? ?? ??
Weapon of Choice: None by technicality
The second of three requests by Wrangler, this week’s subject is a nice follow on from the previous due to some interesting factors.
Isis Marik is introduced to us at the same time as a great many other young heirs, at the Outreach conference in the second Blood of Kerensky trilogy book, Blood Legacy.
It is here that the major powers come together under the auspices of Wolf’s Dragoons to strategize and deal makers in order to combat the newly invading Clans, as well as be educated about them.
The latter largely falls to, as we see it, the young nobles of the FedCom, Draconis Combine, St Ives, Capellan Confederation and the Rasalhague Republic. All but St Ives and the Confederation face immediate threat of the Clans, St Ives is strongly allied to one that does, and Sun-Tzu is there to be a jerk.
Seriously. While there is some wisdom in educating as many of the heirs as possible and Sun-Tzu is there because he has received at least a token military education his sole purpose in the training sessions from a writing perspective is to be continuously antagonistic.
There’s some ill feeling between the FedCom and Combine factions already, but working past that is a plot point, leaving Sun-Tzu free to just simply be a jerk.
Why wax on about this? It leads to the obvious question of where is Isis?
It speaks of several things. First off it speaks of the League’s general disinterest in the issue of the Clans. They’re on the opposite side of things watching hated enemies get stomped, why get involved? This is a future plot point.
Secondly it speaks of Isis’ relative lack of importance. No one cares if she’s there or not. Not the heirs, not the Dragoons, not the readers really, bigger fish are in play.
Next it would be an indicator that despite being heir to what is, realistically, a military position, she has no significant military training. I may be wrong, but this is something about her that has been largely glossed over and would also speak of a long term plan on the part of someone (go on, guess who) for her to not be an heir.
Finally it’s another aspect of side-lining the Free Worlds League, though at this early stage it is quite reasonable since, as I said, all action is on the other side of the known universe.
Strange as it may seem she genuinely loved Sun-Tzu, which could have led to an interesting dynamic with Victor and Omi’s relationship at the time. However such was not to be, and we’ll get to the bones of why later, but in and of itself the love speaks a great deal about Isis, namely that she is somewhat idealistic and even perhaps a decent human being.
But it’s pretty obvious from the beginning that it’s a one sided romance. Sun-Tzu’s political motivations are obvious, as is Isis’ glances his way at the Outreach conference.
The latter has to be obvious because there isn’t much time or space for long, elaborate courting procedures between the two.
Thomas’ gains are more nebulous, strengthening a tenuous alliance with a historical enemy that is, by treaty, an ally of convenience and necessity.
More accurately for Thomas he’s getting her out of the way, the reasons why become obvious later, but immediately still make sense since, well, Isis is illegitimate and Thomas puts quite a bit of effort into producing legitimate heirs, which from the outside seems quite logical in a cold, dynastic sense.
Naturally it all ends in tears as Sun-Tzu grows tired of the lengthy engagement, something that is Thomas’ doing apparently, and Thomas grows increasingly indifferent towards his purported daughter as a slew of new, young heirs are produced.
Isis becomes increasingly irrelevant, her last real use in the alliance being as a catspaw against the St Ives Compact, and while her life is genuinely in danger Sun-Tzu sees opportunity in her death, capture or eventual survival, in that order.
And as coldly delivered as it is Sun-Tzu makes a string of very good points when dumping Isis, all of which feed into the way she’s been written, or the way she hasn’t been written, really. In fact he is hardly being cruel, he is being bluntly open and honest with her, possibly the first person to do so in a very long time if at all.
He quite accurately tells her to leave Sian, lists a string of places she could go, acknowledging as she realises that she has no place at any of them, and so she takes the metaphorical third option and holes up with Victor and Omi.
She bonds with people, grows, develops real friendships, and nearly gets killed saving Omi and realises that no one will ever try to kill her because she’s not important enough.
It’s an interesting bridge she builds though, Victor has few close friends, Omi has question marks, Isis fits in with them due to a large number of social rank factors and due to her lack of personification earlier fits the buddy role quite easily.
So when Omi dies she’s a natural choice for kicking Victor out of his self-indulgent wallowing in much the same way Galen Cox did when they thought Kai was dead.
From there their relationship grew and romance developed, off screen since there really hasn’t been much written about Victor outside of major events during the Jihad and it is somewhat perfunctory, we know she and Victor have children together, why go into details? That’s the stuff of novels and none are being written about him in that time and we’ve seen it happen before.
Exactly what she gets up to during the Republic Age is unknown. Aside from raising children she most likely got up to something, and presumably died, while a support character her influence in the life of a much large character would necessitate some mention, for the longevity alone one would hope.
Of course what we don’t know is the interesting conversation that most likely happened at some point where Isis and Victor discus her prior knowledge of Thomas Halas’ genetic truth. Not inevitable, Victor doesn’t have to reveal that he knew, unfortunately Victor is rather dim and would likely have broached the subject at some point. Considering what her true father was up to it’s hard to see how things could have become more difficult for her regardless.
If we were given a view into this period of her life we would likely see a continuation of the same steep learning curve she was already on. It has to be acknowledged that Isis was put in a position to grow up quickly, something of a necessity for an otherwise vapid, naive character thrust into elevated plot levels previously beyond her.
In truth she, like many other Mariks, was underutilised and thus never fully fleshed out or challenged as say many a Liao, Steiner, Davion or Kurita.
If she had received proper seasoning in the fiction then she possibly would have at least understood the minefield she walked into with Sun-Tzu during their last conversation.
But in a way he succinctly summed her up, for all that Isis could look the part of a good noble, a future Capellan wife or even a future Captain-General she lacked the necessary . . . everything really.
No military talent, no diplomatic skill, no political seasoning. She may have been educated in all of these and more however she never really shows any of it.
A brief burst of self-defence, a bit of positioning at state events, but nothing of consequence.
In fact the most important things she does is exist, thereby providing evidence to Victor that Thomas Marik is not Thomas Marik, get engaged to Sun-Tzu, which gives him an odd sort of alliance with said Thomas Marik which never bears the weight such a marriage should, and give birth to Victor’s children.
Looking at that list it’s far less impressive than what Omi managed to do, she at least had a few diplomatic victories under her belt.
Isis is, unfortunately, something of a flat character.
This isn’t to say she’s boring or unimportant, or that she isn’t given personality or development, but compared to so many others in similar positions it’s minimal.
Just the period from the Jihad to the founding of the Republic begs certain questions. Did he and Victor ever love each other to the same degree as their previous loves? Did she feel the need to redeem her family, or was this a reason to shun the limelight? This isn’t even a partial list because there is so much of her life left blank.
The truth is Isis is important to the plot as a device, and as a support character, and is used quite well in those capacities by existing without doing anything of consequence. Very little of what she did after giving Victor support was important to the progression of the plot. Any focus on her would have distracted from unfolding events, in good part just because the Jihad is presented to us in sourcebooks rather than novels.
Could she have done something genuinely important? Yes, but it’s a crowded setting as it is, and unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned in other articles about Marik characters, too much action in and around that faction risks uncovering what’s going on with the Blakists too soon.
As it is Isis’ parentage reveals quite a bit already, stirring the pot, hinting at conspiracies to come. Again, very useful, but to have her haring off on adventures of her own taxes the attention of the original novel line, taxes the real world authors behind the scenes people as well, and would inevitably, because of the level she exists at, lead to some sort of uncovering.
So outside of Battlecorps fiction Isis simply can’t grow, it’s outside of the capacity required of her.
Is Isis then a wasted character? Certainly she has potential to be more than what she is, which is basically an accessory to other characters.
The truth is in any setting, be it a novel, a series or a universe at large, not every character introduced and playing a part can be fully developed, Isis is a grand example of that.
While she does provide solid service as a character she is always going to seem somewhat underdone compared to ingrained veterans of the Battletech Universe.
Next week: Anastasia Kerensky
