Teixcalaanli Contradictions

An all-devouring cosmic beast to some, a shining beacon of civilization to others; Arkady Martine's Teixcalaanli Empire is the most powerful force in the known galaxy and a center of technological development, poetry, and art. But this refined facade covers up a deeply troubled regime that is fundamentally at odds with itself... 

Transcript

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The following episode of Approaching White Speed contains no major spoilers for a memory called Empire or a Desolation Called Peace. In a way, human history can be subdivided by its empires. The grandest and most successful and most terrible of these empires can often serve as almost like these chapter markers in the grand story of humanity. They're street signs that designate the different phases that we've gone through as a species ever since we learned how to read and write. I mean, people dedicate their entire lives to studying these regimes and civilizations that haven't existed for hundreds or even thousands of years. I mean, think about the impact that the Roman Empire has had on Western consciousness even sixteen hundred years or so after its fall. It's a very fundamental aspect of how humanity organizes itself. And I think it's an equally fundamental staple of science fiction in general. I mean, empires are all over the place in the genre. I mean, even dating back to the 1940s when you had the Galactic Empire that Asimov made for his foundation books, or the Imperium and the Landsrad from the Dune books. You had the Galactic Empire from Star Wars, the Empire of Azad from the Culture, the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K, and the Imperial Raj of the Imperial Raj series. You know, they're a very fascinating way to sort of get the sense of what huge groups of people believe in. And they're an excellent tool for conveying world building and context and culture. They serve as these monuments for what your protagonists are fighting for or against. And just as is the case for real-life empires, I find myself very fascinated with fictional empires. There's a lot to delve into, and it's really fun sort of investigating the history and the goals and the culture of these civilizations. And the Takeskalonli Empire, which was created by Arkadi Martin for her two books, A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, give me a lot to chew on. It's the latest to join this, you know, all-star Hall of Fame lineup of fictional empires, and honestly, it gives the rest of them a run for their money. The Takeskalonli Empire is such a gorgeous and well-thought-out empire, even down to like its most minute aspects, such as its poetry or the way that its inhabitants get really freaked out if you smile at them because they consider showing teeth a sign of aggression. Arcade Martin puts so much attention to detail in this creation of hers that it feels so real, but so utterly alien at the same time. A huge element of the first book that features the Takeskalanli Empire, this being a memory called Empire, is the sheer overwhelming culture shock that our protagonist feels when interacting with this Empire. And the Takeskalanli Empire is so richly rendered that that same culture shock almost imparts itself upon you, the reader. The authenticity of the Texkalanli Empire owes itself in no small part to Arcadi Martin's background as a Byzantine historian and a city planner. I mean you could tell just in her writing that she knows what she's talking about when she's describing the inner workings and the sort of functions of the Texkalanli Empire, as well as in the design of the city, which is this sort of planet-spanning ecumenopolis, this Corusant-esque world that serves as the capital of the empire. And despite her being a scholar of the Byzantine Empire, which in real life was a sort of unofficial successor to the Roman Empire, the Texkalanli Empire never feels like a cut and paste clone of the Roman Empire. Very often in science fiction, a lot of these empires tend to be sort of the Roman Empire in space. I mean, that was the whole design philosophy behind the Galactic Empire that we see in Foundation. It was inspired by Asimov's readings of the book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and he wanted to make a version of that story that took place in space. The Texkalan Empire does incorporate a ton of elements from the Roman and Byzantine Empires, most notably in its sort of political structure. But there's also a huge amount of non-traditional influences in it as well. It's kind of a breath of fresh air in comparison to a lot of the other fictional empires I've discussed because it also takes a lot of notes from some very often neglected civilizations throughout history, most notably perhaps being a lot of Mesoamerican cultures. There's a lot of religious practices and rituals such as sun worship and blood oaths, and even the occasional blood sacrifice that really lend itself well to Aztec traditions. There's a lot of sun imagery in general throughout the Texkolanli Empire that can owe itself aesthetically to the Aztecs as well, and the Empire's naming conventions also take a lot of inspiration from the Mixtech civilization. The people of this empire, which are known as the Texkolan Litsum, don't really have ordinary first name last name setups. For example, our main protagonist Mahit Desmar has a more traditional naming structure because she is from outside the empire, but a Texkolan Leitzlim will have a name that is subdivided into a number and an object. And since they're very sort of romantic and poetic people, the Texkolan Leatslam try to give artistic flourishes to their name. A lot of them really love flowers and vegetation and plants, so you'll see a ton of names like twelve Azalea or three seagrass or nine hibiscus. But they can also get pretty wacky with their names as well. For example, there are people out there named Thirty-six All-Terrain Tundra Vehicle or Six Helicopter. And it's a nice source of comedy to see our characters sort of giggling incessantly at some of these names and their lack of artistic merit. The Texkoanli Empire is very ancient and has had many centuries to sort of perfect its technology. Like I said before, the city, which is known more romantically by the Texkoanlitsum as the jewel of the world, is a planet that is covered almost entirely in dense metropolis. The palace complex, which houses his brilliance, the Emperor of all TeixKalan's sixth direction itself is the size of a city as you and I would know it today, and it's home to well over a hundred thousand people at any given time. And coordinating all this is an advanced AI known as the perfect algorithm. Now the perfect algorithm runs the economy and traffic flow of the city, but it's also the force behind the sunlit, which is the Takes Kalanli security force. On the outside, an individual sunlit officer looks like any other paramilitary police officer. They're a person wearing combat armor. But from our interactions with them throughout this series, you kind of get the sense that they're not all there mentally. They all move at the same time and they function in an almost too perfect cohesis. It's pretty obvious that they have implants that allow them to accomplish this and that the perfect algorithm may be assisting them in that capacity, but there's also reason to believe that it might go further than that, and that their minds might have been wiped wholesale and replaced by the perfect algorithm. We never really get any concrete answers as to whether the Sunlet is comprised of willing volunteers or less than willing volunteers. The Sunlit aren't the only ones who possess this sort of group cohesion technology, though. It's also being phased into the military sector with the intention of keeping everybody in a fleet on the same page at all times. This means that blind spots in the formation are a thing of the past, and that a fleet can suddenly execute these super complex and tight maneuvers effortlessly. And when you combine all this with the huge arsenal of planet-shattering weapons each of these fleets possess, you have a recipe for military that is a force to be reckoned with. There's a reason that the pervading attitude about the Taskalanli Empire amongst the people that have not yet been conquered and subjugated by it is that of fear. They have an extremely competent fighting force, and it is a hungry one. You'd think that all this would point to a very sort of warlike and brutal people, and while it's true that the Taskalanli culture is very heavily influenced by its military accomplishments and history, and Taskewan Litzim are very often laconic and stoic in nature, but when you zoom in and get right down to it, you'll find that the Tasquan Litsim are a very romantic and artistically inclined bunch. You know, where we have, for our large-scale entertainment, movie theaters and rock and roll and rap concerts and sporting events, the Texkalan Leitzim are utter fanatics about slam poetry. Their poetry is easily the most recognizable part of their society, and it's so prominent and influential that it's even permeated into other cultures that are not Takeskolan, such as the culture that Mahit Desmar comes from. And it's such a force in the Texkolanli consciousness that, similar to literature in the real world, it's been able to inspire political and social movements and change the course of history. The people of the empire are so invested in this kind of expression that our main characters have actually been able to weaponize it at one point in the story. I suppose it's not difficult for an empire that has such a rich artistic tradition to develop a bit of an ego problem, and that's exactly what the Takeskalanli Empire has done. Yes, for the most part they are technological geniuses, militarily they are unmatched, and they have produced some very beautiful and striking artwork and poetry, but this has kind of fed into the Takeskalanli idea of their own superiority. This high opinion of oneself is apparent just in the name of the empire itself. Arkadi Martin thought very deeply about the structure of the Teixkalanli language as well as its differences from the language that Mahit Desmar grew up with. And one of those elements that she discusses is the fact that the word Takeskalan means a lot of different things. It is the name of the empire, it is the name of their homeworld, and it is their word for the universe. And the implication there is that anything that is not takes kalan is not real, or at very least lesser. They categorically refuse to believe that any non-takeskalan leads them is capable of achieving the same levels of advancement and achievement and artistic merit that they have done. But here's the thing, all of these ideals of takes kalan supremacy and civilization are a total fantasy. First of all, they're a hyper expansionistic empire, with an extremely colonial attitude towards the rest of the galaxy, and are not afraid to swallow up any civilization that gets in the way of their continuously expanding sphere of influence. They've been described by non-Texkolan Leedslim as being this massive cosmic beast that just gobbles up civilizations. And the general Texkolanli elitism reinforces that they are completely in the right for doing so. There's also the fact that Texkalan society is extremely top-down. They have an extreme reverence and cult of personality regarding their emperor, and the emperor themselves is almost exclusively a person from a military background, and a newly coronated emperor is usually expected to conquer another civilization to cement their rule. Martial tradition permeates almost every aspect of the Texkalanli government, and you would think that this would have a pretty stabilizing effect on the empire, but the thing is, the empire is in a near constant state of conflict, either with other civilizations or with itself. Rebellions are apparently a dime a dozen in this empire, and the sheer level of politicking that goes on both within the government and within the military lends itself to an extremely unstable state of affairs. All it takes is one general who thinks that he has what it takes to be emperor to completely just light this pile of dynamite on fire. It's happened many times before, and there's no reason to think that it won't happen many times to come. And as far as the Texkolan leads them, or even the people that have been conquered by Texkolan go, we never really see any indication, at least in the current version of the Empire that we see in the books, that they are oppressed or sort of ground underneath the heel of the Emperor. But who's to say that the next emperor isn't some megalomaniacal sociopath who just goes on a killing spree across the galaxy? The current reigning emperor of Texkalan, his brilliant Six Direction, can be a very ruthless dude at times. But he's actually considered to be one of the more moderate and peaceful emperors. It's mentioned several times that there have been some really evil people in charge of Takeskalan in the past, and they've been responsible for atrocities on massive scales. And no matter how moderate Six Direction may be, because of the way the Empire is organized from the ground up, whatever progress he makes during his lifetime could very well be undone by whoever his successor is. For all their talk about how civilized they are, it really seems like their entire society is just kind of being held together by a thread. They seem to jump from crisis after crisis, and it's honestly amazing that they haven't shattered altogether quite yet. And then you have the general Takeskalan treatment of people that they consider to be barbarians. Like I said before, they don't think that barbarians are capable of complex thought and sort of consider them to be one step above animals. And mind you, the people that they refer to as barbarians are human beings just like the Texkalan Leatsum, and I hope I don't have to explain to you why those kinds of mindsets are sort of backwards. Even the Texkalan Leatsum that don't have a negative opinion of barbarians have a sort of patronizing or sometimes even fetishizing attitude towards them. And again, this is pretty funny because despite them calling everybody else barbarians, the Texkalan Leedsum are the ones that are engaging in literal blood oaths and even occasionally blood sacrifices. So yeah, there's a pretty good argument to be made that the Texkalan Lee obsession with showing up the barbarians is society-wide projection on their part. But even if none of this were true, even if the Texkolan leads them were more acquiescing to barbarians, and even if there wasn't a whole lineage of psychotic emperors throughout Takeskalan history, the central fact of this empire is that it is a force of cultural erasure. Because how could a civilization that named the universe after itself not be? How can they accept the existence of something other than itself in a universe that was in their mind made for them? Just because Sixth Direction has had an abnormally tolerant reign doesn't mean that the Texkalanli Empire isn't slowly drowning out all of the other traditions and rituals and ways of life throughout the galaxy and substituting it with their own. Whether that's done by more peaceful means or force doesn't really change that. It's this overly romantic and self-contradicting nightmare that our protagonist Mahit Desmar is thrown into the deep end of. As the ambassador for Lisselle Station to the Texkalani Empire, it's Mahit's job to represent the interests of her people to an empire that sees them as nothing more than just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of puny little barbarian civilizations they need to put up with until eventually they get around to conquering them. And she needs to do it with the knowledge that her predecessor died under extremely suspicious circumstances, and she needs to deal with the fact that nobody will give her a straight answer as to how or why that happened. Mahi is a capable political operator, but she's also in the midst of people that have been doing what she does and better for their entire lives. And the state of the upper Echuans of Texqualan society is such that if there is even a hint of weakness, whether it be on the Emperor's part or any one of the different advisors and government officials that surround him, then everybody else will swarm in like sharks ready to take their pound of flesh. It's a very dangerous and very high-stakes political thriller that is reminiscent of the very best scenes from the show Game of Thrones. It's through the eyes of a relatively inexperienced outsider that we get to learn of this empire, and Mehit serves as this perfect vessel to sort of carry the reader's own disorientation with all these crazy alien and foreign terms that are being thrown their way and the strange cultural practices and rituals of the Taze Kolonli Empire. The intricate politicking and the banter and the occasional action scenes are super entertaining, but the main attraction of these books is the relationship between our characters and the Taze Kolanli Empire. Again, let's take Mahit, for example. She's been studying all her life for her role as ambassador to Texkalan. She was kind of almost in a way ostracized from the others in LaSalle Station for just how much appreciation and fascination she had for Texkalanli poetry and art. There's this super compelling internal war that is being waged within Mehi because, on one hand, the Texkalanli Empire is this colossal force that is bearing down upon Mehi and everybody she loves, but on the other, she's studied it all her life and is finally getting to see and experience the Empire firsthand, and is almost developing this kind of societal Stockholm syndrome for the Empire because of this. She's falling in love with this cosmic beast whose hugger she is trying to divert away from her and her people. The book itself is dedicated to anybody who has ever had to fall in love with a culture that is devouring their own, and that reality is more than apparent throughout every step of Mahit's journey. And it's ultimately this love, as repressed and unacknowledged as it may be by Mahit, that's put to the test when the time comes to make a stand for LaSelle Station, lest it be consumed and erased in the same manner that so many other civilizations have been before.