First off apologies for the extreme lateness, well documented personal issues have had me down lately, but I'm fighting back and getting this out there is a key part of it, hopefully quality has not suffered too much in the process.
Character Study of the Week: Diana Pryde
Who: Diana
Aka Diana Pryde
What: MechWarrior, Jade Falcon Guards
Star Colonel, Jade Falcon Guards
When: 30?? (presumably circa 3030) – 22 January 3073
Weapon of Choice: Warhawk Prime
Nova A
Studded leather gloves
The second of two prominent freeborn warriors in Clan Jade Falcon, and like Horse this prominence is in part due to Aidan Pryde, unlike him Diana has managed to stake her own claim to fame, though it appears the Falcons and the Clans at large have chosen to largely forget her.
Much of that fame rests around her winning a Bloodname, but more on that later, in the eyes of the reader just as much is attained for being Aidan Pryde’s daughter.
This means nothing in the Clans, less than nothing in fact, whoever her parents she is Freeborn, lineage only matters if you came from a vat.
Which is rather nonsensical, but real or fictional cultures only have to make their own, sometimes convoluted, internal sense, contradictions are something only outsiders see.
And the reader is an outsider, remember that novels and stories with Clan protagonists are automatically novels and stories with alien protagonists, the culture, mind set and therefore approach to matters is just too different.
Technically speaking her claim to a Bloodname is valid, maternally she is of the Pryde bloodline, though Peri was never a warrior. In some respects it resembles the same claims of the first generation of warriors after Operation Klondike.
That being said it flies in the face of all Clan tradition, but that’s in keeping with her father’s ways. Not that many outside of her support circle will admit that either.
Which means that overall Diana is an awkward character within the setting. She is well executed so that label does not apply in the literary sense, or in, but she sees herself as more than Freeborn, mirroring the attitude of her father during his early career where he knew he was a Trueborn in disguise. Though few would agree with Diana on this distinction.
And like her father she keeps racking up successes, meaning victory which is all to Clans but victories that do not sit well with anyone in the Clans.
All the same it would be a mistake to think of her as a clone of Aidan, in the literary sense, in the biological sense she may as well be, but instead think of her as a continuation of Aidan.
Iconoclast, inadvertent revolutionary, someone who doesn’t quite belong but would still rather not be anywhere else.
Overall Diana is the kind of character who by her existence is a complication. It is seen in her first novel that she is certainly one for her father, Aidan, she comes into his life just as it has reached, what is for him at least, a form of stability. He has a command, a Bloodname, he is still looked down upon but he is in a position to take action and use his skills to their fullest.
Diana, presumably, would be a scandal of sorts. True, there was never any issue for Jamie Wolf’s father, but that was the more liberal Clan Wolf, and in this case it would be more of a ‘What has Aidan done now?’
Also she is a potential complication for Aidan personally, unlike many Jade Falcons he has built and maintained close personal ties, they are what drew him to Peri in the first place, and they are what kept him bound to Horse and Joanna.
How he would react to Diana’s parentage is something that hangs over the novel, he is far from the traditional trueborn and thus might take something more of an interest in her, especially since ever since their meeting they have both found an odd attachment to each other.
Would the rest of the Clan turn on him for this latest oddity? Would he do something iconoclastic? Would he be affected in any way by the news? Would he sacrifice himself at a critical moment for her because she was his daughter? Did he?
That latter is a question that is unanswered, Aidan was starting to move to defend her, whether he would have done so to the death without the sudden reveal is an evolution of the question. We will never know.
So in some respects Diana fails as a complication for Aidan. The reader expects something to come of it, but nothing really does, not for Aidan at least, and yet it does not feel like a loss. The Aidan/Diana relationship is very one-sided and focuses on Diana.
Had he been told sooner then Aidan would have been a factor, in this case not.
Is this a wasted plot thread? Possibly, again only in terms of Aidan. For Diana the relationship, never truly formed, affects her entire career. So not wasted entirely? A matter of opinion.
So the relationship is a complication for her while Diana is more of a complication for others. Just ask Ravil Pryde, even Marthe, Horse and Joanna. And more or less anyone who ever found her father a challenge.
In terms of ‘Mechs Diana is surprisingly diverse, well, we see her pilot an Assault and a Medium.
One of the first scenes of the grown, warrior qualified Diana is during a Trial of Possession for a Warhawk, which as far as I know she kept in the Prime configuration.
The Warhawk has, at the time, an aura of being one of the most potent Assault ‘Mechs in existence thanks to the targeting computer, and the fact it has four Clan PPCs. Realistically it is a murder machine, heat notwithstanding.
And oddly, though smaller, faster, more manoeuvrable, the Nova A is a downscaled version. Both designs have heat issues, though an intelligent pilot/player can manage these efficiently. This also means they require an eye towards manoeuvre that cooler running machines wouldn’t consider.
In short these are not brutish designs. The Warhawk is more durable and accurate, the Nova more manoeuvrable and faster, considering the nature of battles in Trials of Bloodright the Nova makes considerable sense, and since Diana faces off against Perigard Zalman who is in a Battle Cobra it puts her on an even footing.
Why bother with that? It avoids the scandal of a cheating Freebirth in a bigger ‘Mech pounding the snot out of a Steel Viper Khan. Battle Cobra vs. Nova? That’s an even enough match for the story.
Is it right, after all her achievements, Tukayyid survivor, Coventry veteran, Freeborn Bloodname winner, Incursion participant, Freeborn Star Colonel and lasting into the Jihad at least as long as many other prominent names, that she be more or less forgotten?
Short answer is no, she’s done too much, and we the readers are not about to forget her or anything she has done. In fact we may even sigh a little as she represents a direct assault on the long held Clan mind set of Freeborn being inferior just for being Freeborn. She did everything a Trueborn could, more in fact when you consider that statistically most Trueborn don’t make it to Warrior status and proportionally fewer still attain a Bloodname.
Unfortunately we have to contend with the setting being, well, reset. The Falcons are needed as short-sighted, bloody minded traditionalists, aggressive, unthinking, uncaring and so utterly impenetrable as to be a juggernaut culture.
Learning anything at all, least of all the lessons Diana exemplifies, flies in the face of that, so she is forgotten within the setting. We don’t even know if her genes were passed on, normally a given for a Bloodname winner.
So the long answer is ‘Huh?’ The traditionalist Jade Falcon answer to anything they don’t want to think about or otherwise consider.
Sadly this carries on to the manner of her death, in The Donner Bombing, one of many of a long list of notables right as her career should be proving quite a few long held Clan assumptions wrong, and just when she would have maximum opportunity for prominence.
Guess why she had to die.
Like many among the victims she was just too good not to be pivotal in a war where one man had to be more pivotal than anyone else. The need to put previous unknown Devlin Stone in the centre of prominence means that there has to be a drastic culling of any significant individuals already established.
Similarly, given that there has been a grand reset of sorts and the Jade Falcons have more or less chosen to forget anything that would have led to growth in order to preserve the faction character Diana has to die before she achieves things too important to ignore or side-line.
It’s brutally, horribly unfair. Such is the lot for Freeborns in the Clans. Similarly from a reader perspective it’s unfair, however the fiction is not required to be fair and is dictated by other concerns.
There are a myriad other ways she could have died, most of them of course involving glorious combat, she could even have gone on to become a Paladin for the Republic, the possibilities are quite limitless.
But the Jihad is brutal, uncompromising, and many of great potential fall before fulfilling it, this is another way of demonstrating that.
Whatever your feelings and however much the setting may have buried and forgotten her Diana Pryde made an impact upon the readers, which is everything that can be asked of a character.