#sien-chorak

[jiubilant]

reman’s advisor and reman’s advisor’s advisor (circa 1E 2900ish)

[jiubilant]

been awhile since i posted about THE TWENTIETH-TO-LAST YEAR OF THE FIRST ERA. empress tavia and sien-chorak were friends

[jiubilant]

hey did anyone ask for your first impression on versidue shaie. can i hear that

first impression: the scheming advisor trying to usurp the throne is invariably my favorite character in any fantasy work so i skimmed 2920 for the first time like "i could not at knifepoint care about what sotha sil is doing. where's the muahaha guy and his eeheehee son." and then versidue and savirien muahaha'd and eeheehee'd their way to masterfully usurping the throne. i lost it

impression now: i interpret the 2920 books as texts rife with bias and versidue-shaie as a historical figure who's served for centuries as a convenient scapegoat for imperial historiographers. he didn't betray reman solely for power or petty revenge; he betrayed reman—initially with the intent to put reman's heir on the ruby throne, not himself—because reman was terrorizing his own people and feeding them en masse to a pointless endless war

favorite moment: "simply tell people what they want to hear in a way that gets them to do what you want them to do. what, like it's hard"

idea for a story: currently making progress on the one that tells the story of the emperor's favorite consort rijja blackmailing versidue-shaie into helping her extricate herself from reman's court (her willing complicity in shaie's plot to do away with reman being what townway later interprets as shaie ruthlessly framing her)

unpopular opinion: he would agree with me on this one. sien-chorak's paintings are good. she was just ahead of her time. they're abstract

favorite relationship: all of them lmao...his disastrous and tragic dynamics with his wife and son. his disastrous and tragic dynamic with reman's son (who looked to him as a mentor and parent). the nervewracking matador-and-bull thing that he and reman had going on for two decades. his cautious fondness of dinieras-ves (his preferred heir and one of his illegitimate grandsons) near the end of his rule, at which point he was wholly estranged from savirien-chorak and various pressures both political and interpersonal had him slipping dangerously towards acting like reman. i doubt that the story of the reman dynasty and the akaviri potentates would have been much happier if juilek had lived but his accidental death did destroy not just the lives of everyone who cared about him but their ability to care about each other

favorite headcanon: it's all headcanon with this guy

[jiubilant]

full tsaesci names are seldom used in anything but census documents but they consist of a [familiar given name, which is usually shorter than the formal given name and usually begins with the same letter] [the word ak, "of," + the name of the family's patron god or spirit] [formal given name]-[matronymic]. some examples of tsaesci characters' full names are

vaie ak ilni versidue-shaie

sa ak zisa sien-chorak

sae ak zisa savirien-chorak

diris ak ilni dinieras-ves

to respectfully address a tsaesci elder, superior, or stranger you'd use both their formal given name and its matronymic ("dinieras-ves"). the respectful address is almost always used in writing. if you're on friendly terms with the person you're addressing it's acceptable to call them by their formal given name only ("dinieras") or even to fondly shorten it ("dini"). it's only appropriate to address a person by their familiar name ("diris") if they are a close family member, intimate friend, or spouse—and even then the use of the familiar name is typically reserved for moments of great passion, affection, or import

[jiubilant]

sien-chorak is a canon character. it's just that no ingame text or indeed any source material at all mentions her

[jiubilant]

savirien was about six or seven when his mother sien-chorak was summoned back to tsaesci so he doesn't remember her very well or have much of an impression of her (he was brought up primarily by a nurse in his early years anyway). but i think in those six or seven years sien just let him do whatever the hell

[jiubilant]

she doesn't appear in townway's writing because a) townway wasn't interested in her and b) she'd been summoned back to akavir by the year 2920 but shaie's wife was named sien-chorak and she was a favored cousin of the tsaesci empress. shrewd and tactful diplomat. dabbled in poetry and painting on the side. a few of her atrocious watercolors are still on display in what was once versidue-shaie's summer palace in senchal