We are told Rasalhagians are rebels always resisting the Draconis Combine. Such rebels they literally saved the Kurita dynasty. For the most part they get rich and fat. Look how Rasalhague expanded under the Combine wing. Like everything in BT about half a dozen people have agency and drive everyone else. It is notable it is the threat of the Fed Com that caused the FRR, not the resistance.
Yeah, they're rebellious. This is a consistent strain in the character of Rasalhague from 1987's
House Kurita (The Draconis Combine) onwards. They've also had an interesting history with the Combine, with good times and bad times. Perks, benefits, concessions on one hand; restrictions, hegemony, purges on the other. This set-up spanned over more than 700 years, and this rebellious nationalist strain along with it. All it shows is that the Bears aren't an exceptional case when it comes to empire-building; the Combine jumped through the same hoops centuries ago, for centuries, successfully, and ultimately failed, while Rasalhague reaped the rewards and kept their parochial nationalist interests at heart. This has happened in history time and time again. Why wouldn't, or couldn't, this happen to Clan Ghost Bear, given the right circumstances?
It might be narratively convenient for Clan Ghost Bear, to characterise Rasalhagians as simple, lascivious spheroid weathervanes, to be guided by betters with actual principles that matter; but there is an underlying national identity that exceeds the 'sheep to be sheared' attitude of many Spheroid societies.
This is why the Dominion fails, whilst being given the luxury in print of telling itself 'this works'.
Ghost Bear principles are forefront, embedded, sacrosanct. Foundational. The main characters.
Rasalhague principles are background, malleable, ephemeral. Opportunistically referenced, often ignored. Should be grateful to be here.
DD looks at the little people in a way few BT books do. It talks about people who had to exist but didn't get the spotlight. It talks about new organisations because they are new.
Whilst that look at the little people was definitely appreciated; for the most part they're provided with a selective weathervane outlook, a small Overton window, in which acceptable opinion is couched in Bear-friendly terms of 'On a scale of Bear to Wolf; how willing are you to report your neighbour to the Watch, for the glory of the ilClan?'. The newspaper clips alone read like state media from the Bear homeworlds. Outside of that small window, everything else is an extremist position for the Ghost Bear quartet, the paragon protagonists, to clutch their pearls at. Meanwhile the Ghost Bear touman gets to old-fashioned, uniform Clan bloodletting over small differences.
I did like a lot of the spotlight on some of the 'little people' and their new organisations, some good and well-thought-out reasons for and against, but their arcs are conveniently wrapped up in just enough time to ensure no lasting political harm or consequences come to Clan Ghost Bear. It feels like they were introduced to infuse a false sense of jeopardy before putting them back in their boxes. I'd rather that potential was explored.
A lot of Dominions Divided feels like making drama out of shifting deck chairs on the Titanic, with an impending iceberg (Luthien) approaching, with a lot of narrative potential, that, on present course, is just going to scrape the paint and move on, the ship simply thankful for the terror to have passed before going back to business as usual.
Why drag up Motstand or Motpart again? New problems require new solutions.
Why single out these two organisations, when no-one brought them up? I'd like to see more new organisations and players in this space; Vårt Land has potential. Is it, to be blunt (not intended to be disrespectful), that ultimately, having real tangible Rasalhagian political opposition to Clan Ghost Bear, in general, isn't in your interest, as a long-time Ghost Bear fan?
The way I read this is; you'd rather contend with 'new problems' of 'independence' from Clan Wolf's Star League, because that's something more acceptable to the Ghost Bear wheelhouse, with prescribed 'new solutions' that carry no narrative threat to Clan Ghost Bear, ultimately.
After these two literal decades of listlessness in the franchise, when we're already seeing so much change in the setting, in Tamar Rising, Empire Alone, and presumably IlKhan's Eyes Only in the future; Dominions Divided feels like (please, forgive me) a few seconds onward from a freezeframe of the 2000's, purposefully. DD does provide a lot of potential threads for a new dynamic playground, but it feels like they're at risk of never coming into play, because of an outlook that comes down to; this is the Bear's sandbox, for Bears.
