fandomhigh | Mad Kings and Queens [Wednesday, June 4th, 2nd Period]

"Today we're working with someone many of you may be familiar with," Ghanima announced as the class assembled. "The inspiration for Bram Stoker's famous vampire, Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler may not have actually drunk blood, but he was certainly one of the most bloodthirsty rulers to have ever stalked through the annals of history."

"Raised to be a conventional prince, Vlad III was an exceptional warrior, horseman, and scholar: he was fluent in several languages, as well as the art of etiquette. His father had sworn to uphold an allegiance to fight the Turks, and was honored with membership in a secret society known as the Order of the Dragon, or the Dracul. Thus, Vlad gained his famous title, Drăculea, or "son of the Dragon." At the age of eleven, Vlad and his younger brother, Radu, were taken hostage and held at the palace of a Turkish sultan. Vlad and Radu lived under a constant threat of death or torture, and were often beaten and abused by their captors. The experience marked him for the rest of his life."

"Following the death of his father, and years of exile, Vlad returned to his homeland of Walachia and seized control of the throne. Determined to assert his power, he invited all the noble families of Walachia - the Boyar - to a banquet. Vlad suspected that many of them hand betrayed his father and brother, and once the feast was over, the old and infirm were impaled on wooden stakes. The younger and sturdier members of the party were enslaved, and put to work building him a castle. A short time later, he reportedly gathered up the beggars of the region and boarded them up in a great hall before setting it alight and burning them to death. His reasoning was reportedly 'I did this so no one would be poor in my realm.'

"Keep in mind that since the death of Vlad's grandfather (Mircea the Elder) in 1418, Walachia had fallen into a somewhat anarchical situation. A constant state of war had led to rampant crime, falling agricultural production, and the virtual disappearance of trade. Vlad used severe methods to restore some order, as he needed an economically stable country if he was to have any chance against his external enemies."

"The early part of Vlad’s reign was dominated by the idea of eliminating all possible threats to his power, mainly the rival nobility groups. This was done mainly by physical elimination, but also by reducing the economic role of the nobility: the key positions in the Prince’s Council, traditionally belonging to the country’s greatest boyars, were handed to obscure individuals, some of them of foreign origin, but who manifested loyalty towards Vlad. For the less important functions, Vlad also ignored the old boyars, preferring to knight and appoint men from the free peasantry. A key element of the power of the Walachian nobility was their connections in the Saxon-populated autonomous towns of Transylvania, so Vlad acted against these cities by eliminating their trade privileges in relation with Walachia and by organizing raids against them. In 1459, he had 30,000 of the German settlers (Saxons) and officials of the Transylvanian city of Kronstad who were transgressing his authority impaled."

"Vlad controlled his subjects with an iron-fist, and any who opposed his rule or committed even minor crimes could be subject to a gruesome and agonizing death. Adulterous wives, cheating merchants, even one poor woman who had sewn her husband's shirt too short -- all were killed hideously," she said. "Vlad's preferred method of execution was, as I mentioned earlier, to impale his victims. He turned this torture into an art form, arranging the stakes and victims into complex patterns and puzzles." Ghanima's eyes swept the classroom, carefully noting how the students were reacting before she continued. "'The wooden stakes were typically plunged vertically, from the anus to the mouth, and were smoothed and oiled at the tip to ease the passage through the body and avoid damaging vital organs. This ensured an agonizingly slow, yet effective, death. Rumor says that victims of noble birth were given longer stakes, as to be higher from the ground, and were often first invited to dine with Vlad, surrounded by rotting staked corpses."

"Of course, he did not limit himself to staking," she said calmly. "Vlad was reportedly partial to other forms of torture as well, and thought nothing of boiling people alive, skinning, scalping (also while living), and mutilating or roasting children and feeding them to their mothers. Reportedly, he managed to dispose of at least one-tenth of his citizenry during his reign."

"In 1462, when the Turks invaded Walachia, they were totally unprepared for the sight which met them on the outskirts of the capital city of Tirgoviste: rows upon rows of large stakes upon which the bodies of at least 20,000 men, women, and children hung. The horror was enough to make the invading army flee in terror."

"When the Turks invaded again, this time determined to destroy the Dracul, Vlad fled to his allies in Hungary where he was kept under house arrest for several years. His appetite for sadism did not diminish during his incarceration, and he turned to the only victims he could find - rats, mice, and birds. Vlad was reinstated as the King of Walachia upon his release from prison in 1468, and he reportedly died in 1476."

"There are several variants of Vlad the Impaler's death. Some sources say he was killed in battle against the Ottoman Empire near Bucharest in December of 1476. Others say he was assassinated by disloyal Boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field or during a hunt. Other accounts have Vlad falling in defeat, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal Moldavian bodyguards. Still other reports claim that Vlad, at the moment of victory, was struck down by one of his own men. There are accounts that Vlad's body was decapitated by the Turks and his head was sent to Istanbul and preserved in honey, where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that Kazıklı Bey was finally dead. However, Romanian historian and Vlad biographer Matei Cazacu disputes this, since the Turks tended to remove the scalp of their victims' heads rather than behead them." Ghanima smiled viciously at the assembled students. "After all, Vlad learned picked up that particular torture habit during his time as a hostage in the Turkish court. Clearly, an argument can be made in this case regarding nature versus nurture."

[OOC: ~~Please wait for~~ the OCD ~~to go~~ up. NOTE: Today's class is behind the cut-tag for impalement, violence, and lots of people dying. NOT FLUFFY.]

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"It was nothing," Alice said, her face not betraying any emotion. She hoped not, in any regard. He was the Enemy, now, and giving information to your enemies was rarely clever. "I had no right to be hurtful during a class discussion, regardless of what I may think about what you said."

"Wasn't like you hurt my feelings none," Reno said, frowning. "You wouldn't be the first one to call me out for bein' what I am."

Okay. This was already going swimmingly, wasn't it?

"But it ain't just what I do that set you off, is it? Somethin' about what I said?"

"There, now, I don't believe you're speaking the truth. You were quite upset with me by the end of our discussion," she said, hoping for a light bemused tone. "Though now I fancy you'll say I've called you a liar. After calling you a hypocrite last week, no less. I don't seem to be improving much at this assistant position. I offered to resign it, but she declined. Perhaps no one else volunteered."

"I volunteered," Reno mused with a shrug. "But you're better at this TA thing than I'd probably be."

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Okay. This was still going forward, at least. That was good.

"I don't get that- I mean, what about what I said makes me a hypocrite? I said people couldn't get to him through the military or whatever. Was there somethin' about that? Or am I just totally missin' the point, here?"

Edited 2008-06-04 17:27 (UTC)

Alice set her pen down and finally glanced up at him. Trying mostly to determine if he was joking, or really did require her to elaborate further.

"You sat before the entire class and bemoaned the lack of anyone willing to step forward and take on the responsibility of killing a mad ruler. How truly sad it is, that we live in a world that few are brave enough to stand tall against his forces and fight to depose such a one. Such sympathy doesn't become one whose duty it is to kill all who try. Perhaps more would be willing if there weren't trained assassins waiting in the wings. That makes your position a touch counterproductive, don't you suppose?"

"I weep for you", the Walrus said, "I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears, he sorted out those of the largest size.

The Walrus and a card guard; perhaps all the card guards were Walruses.

Edited 2008-06-04 17:38 (UTC)

Reno grimaced a little at that.

"Maybe, if someone stood up who wasn't bent on destroyin' all life on the Planet, I wouldn't have tried so hard."

But then again, maybe he would have. Or maybe it was just that everyone who cared enough to try had been absolutely freaking batshit.

"I can't quit. That don't mean my loyalty lies with the guy on top."

Turk. First and foremost, a Turk.

"Maybe no one stands up because they've seen what happened to those who went before," she said brusquely. "To walk into that willingly is not far from suicide. Therefore, those who would attempt it must have nothing left to lose. If you're looking for someone sane to depose a monarch, one with knife-wielding card guards surrounding her, you may be looking a very long time indeed. Anyone sane would realize they've no chance."

"I'm not a card-guard," Reno said, and frowned again. "And the ruler wasn't a her. Whoever it is you faced, I ain't that, Alice."

A pause.

"When we got the job, it was mostly clean. I mean, none of us joined up just to show blind freakin' fealty to ShinRa. And we've said 'no' before."

Almost got them all killed.

Almost all of them.

"One or another, there's not much difference to the dead," Alice said, turning back to her notebook. "Perhaps once the Queen was benevolent, when the cards joined her ranks. You had a choice. Had all of you laid your weapons down and led the charge against your mad king, there may have been some willing to step forward and join you. I offered the card guards a choice, as well, to join me or to die. They chose to die. Perhaps if they had joined me, fewer would have fallen, on both sides."

She was doodling again; complex, intricate patterns that might keep her from betraying emotion.

"One or another, there's not much difference to the dead," she repeated softly.

Ashes, ashes, it all falls down.

"Yeah... No difference to the dead at all," he agreed. "I'm not gonna make excuses. There ain't no excuse for most of the things I did. I just... I ain't gonna do them again. For all it's worth now."

"It must be worth something," Alice said; her doodles were slower, more involved as she considered his words. "If it makes no difference to the dead, it must matter to us, or we're not alive at all. Perhaps if someone like myself had offered you the choice, you would have taken it. Perhaps you wouldn't. We can't ever know for sure. You aren't a card guard any more than I'm ... someone trying to destroy your planet by killing all its inhabitants."

She did remember, she did listen, even when she seemed too thick-headed for that to be possible.

"Many fell, on both sides," she said, again. "I didn't want to fight, but I had no choice; stand against a mad, dark queen, or lie in a bed until I rotted, many years from now. At least fighting her meant victory or the release of death; that made it preferable to turning back. All of my allies died, violently, one by one, until I was alone. You aren't a card guard. I realize that, somewhere. The rest is ... more difficult."

"I don't expect it to be easy," Reno replied with a nod. "Most of us are dead, too. And it's just as much the fault of the people we worked under as it was our own and the people we stood up to. I... ain't seekin' forgiveness or whatever, Alice. I don't deserve it. Not by a long shot. I just want to make sure we're clear that, even if I'm prouder'n hell of what I am, there's not much to be proud of, lookin' at what I did."

His hands went into his pockets and he shrugged a little.

"Offer I made on your first day here, if you ever need anything? Still stands. But I ain't expectin' you to see me as anything but what you see me as. If that means I'm a card guard to you, then that's what I'm gonna be. Can't change your head any more'n I can change mine."

"Why?" Alice asked, tilting her head at him curiously. "Why are you offering me assistance, if I've only been unfairly rude to you?"

Reno grinned and shook his head.

"Call it a soft spot for newbies. You're a good kid, Alice. And bein' on your own sucks. You don't gotta be." A shrug. "And you gotta try harder than that to change my mind, anyhow."

Reno was stubborn.

Mad Kings and Queens [Wednesday, June 4th, 2nd Period]

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