Nice try. “Democracy protects the rights of an individual. Tyranny protects only the select few and not very well.”
“Tyranny provides stability and rules. Follow the rules, and you will be safe,” she said.
“At the cost of personal freedoms,” I said.
“You would be surprised how many beings will gladly trade their freedom for safety.”
“Not me,” I told her.
This wasn’t the first time Caldenia and I had clashed over politics. I had seen a lot of the galaxy, and I’d witnessed the kind of horrors a tyrannical government brought. I would take chaos and freedom over stable shackles any day. Yes, it was messy and inefficient at times, but I could vote, I could run for office, I could criticize our government without fear of persecution, and that was priceless.
Caldenia shrugged. “As paradoxical as it is, authoritarian displays tend to stabilize the public. The citizens find a strong, frightening leader reassuring. The tyrant is a monster, but it is their monster, and they take pride in their power.”
“To be fair, the Supremacy practices a limited tyranny. The Parliament of the Supremacy is also an elected body,” Kosandion told me. “Sometimes they murder incompetent tyrants.”
Caldenia shrugged. “Well, one has to throw the rabble a bone, Dina.”
This was the strangest conversation. They were both talking to me without acknowledging the other person existed.
Resven returned and brought two people with him. They weren’t the same as the two who left. It must’ve been a team swap. We had given Resven, Miralitt, and Orata a lot of autonomy when it came to their own people, because they changed their staff depending on the situation, and none of us had time to approve every personnel member they brought over. We’d asked them to keep their personal team at three members or less.
“The ruling families of the Dominion and the Supremacy grew apart over the many centuries,” Kosandion said, “Yet each followed a similar method of selecting their rulers. At first, it was calculated marriages and natural birth, then a ruler with multiple partners and many children in hopes that one would prove suitable to govern, and finally genetic modification. A single heir bioengineered to lead the state and its people.”
Of which both people in front of me were prime examples.
“A century and a half ago, there was a biological attack on the Dominion’s ruling family,” Kosandion said.
Caldenia gave him a sharp look.
“The perpetrators were found and eliminated, but the damage had been done. A vicious hereditary disease ravaged the bloodline, threatening to permanently end generations of careful genetic selection. It wiped out three quarters of the family. For thirty years the ruling family struggled to carve it out of their genetic code, but it came back again and again. It killed the children and destroyed hundreds of embryos in the natural and artificial wombs.”
I had never heard of that. It was not in any of the Dominion or Supremacy documents.
“The bloodline of the Supremacy carried an immunity to that disease, attained through careful spousal selection and pure chance,” Kosandion continued. “The Supremacy benefited from a strong Dominion, which served as a buffer between it and the Hope Crushing Horde. A secret agreement was reached under the pretense of paying homage to the ancient unity of bloodlines. Caldira ka ret Magren, the Empress of the Supremacy, agreed to carry two heirs of Sovereign Rebastion to term. To ensure the full transference of immunity, no artificial womb would be used. The embryos would be implanted, one at a time, and she would carry her children to term within her body.”
“She loved her children before they were born and even more after. How could she not? A child who shares heartbeat with their mother…” Caldenia fell silent.
Sadness flickered in Kosandion’s eyes. There was more to this somehow.
Kosandion resumed his story.
“The creation of an heir is a complex process. The heir is not conceived but crafted. Whether the gestation takes place within the mother or within an artificial womb, the genetic makeup of the heir is radically different from their siblings. The heir’s purpose is to rule.”
Made sense.
“Raising the heir, providing them with education and guidance demands full attention from the parents. Even if the heir’s parents are in a committed and loving relationship, they delay having more children until the heir is on the cusp of adulthood. And those other children are not heirs, nor will they ever be. If the heir dies, another enhanced embryo carrying the desired set of genes will be created and in time, a new heir will be born.”
“It seems like a very lonely childhood,” I said.
“By design. The heir’s first priority is the nation,” Caldenia answered.
Kosandion nodded. “Too much attachment to one’s siblings can lead the ruler to make decisions based on emotion rather than logic.”
“The age gap also ensures that the other children will not compete for power. Although they will be no match for the heir, some do try despite their shortcomings.” Caldenia sounded harsh. “Unfortunately, when you raise a tyrant to exercise their power at will, rules go out the window, even if they’re sensible.”
“Caldira agreed to bear the heirs only if they could be raised together until the youngest reached ten years of age. The Dominion had no choice but to agree. Two heirs were born, a female and a male two years apart. They were raised together as brother and sister, and their mother doted on them both. They had the best education, they shared the greatest tutors, yet their curriculums differed drastically. The older, female child was raised to be the future Empress, while her younger brother was to become the Sovereign.”
“When they were twelve and ten,” Caldenia said, “they were torn apart with the expectation that they would never see each other again outside of the rare state function.”
Wow.
“Years passed,” Kosandion continued. “The female child became the Empress and eventually gave birth to an heir. Her daughter died when she was fifteen, assassinated by a separatist faction. A decade later she tried again. Her son lived into his thirties, insisted on personally leading a fleet into war, and died doing so.”
Oh. I didn’t know. Caldenia’s public file never mentioned family. Her face was devoid of all expression. She looked like a mannequin.
“Her brother became the Sovereign and lost three heirs. When his fourth heir was in adolescence, the Sovereign and his wife had two more children, conceived in the natural way, a boy and a girl. The heir was judged to be old enough to be permitted unlimited access to his siblings.”
“What about his aunt?” I asked. “Did he ever see her?”
“Four times,” Kosandion said. “First, she visited secretly when he was born. He doesn’t remember that visit for obvious reasons, but he was told about it. The second time was when he was three and very sick. She sat by his bed, held his hand, and swore to murder everyone in the room if he didn’t survive. The third was when he was twelve. She had come for the Ten Year Summit between the Dominion and the Supremacy, and late at night she met him for five minutes under heavy guard to tell him that she was proud of him and his accomplishments.”