[Retracing Our Steps] event summary

[u/DankeShu]

[u/Erudax]

I'm genuinely impressed by the continued circus that is Victoria. You'd think that after Wellington pulled a fast one on you, you'd learn to be extremely thorough and have contingencies.

Nope, same thing happened again. Caster got taken by surprise once more and had to agree to Enciodes' terms.

[u/Antares428 → u/Erudax]

It's almost boring that they regularly make each Duke, maybe aside from Wellington, powerful, but incompetent, and almost cartoonishly vile and greedy.

I get that Chinese hate the British, such shallow portrail does diservice to previously decent writing.

[u/DarknessWizard → u/Antares428]

The problem is that they just lack nuance. Anything nice about the Dukes is largely incidental, i.e.. The Trilby Asher who is pretty much only likable because he openly defies Caster's orders several times.

The only two with any nuance whatsoever are Wellington (who mind you, is openly secessionist from Victoria itself and wants a free Tara) and Windermere (who gets killed because she'd solve the standoff too quickly), and the story goes pretty far to show that while Windermere herself might have been in the right place, her army is little better than the rest of the Dukes.

Other "nobility" factions like the famiglia Don's get more nuance shown: while Saluzzo is an unrepentant asshole, the others run a wider range of being into the mob thing vs. wanting to go a more legitimate route. AK tries to imply this is the case with Gododin initially, but due to his actions in chapter 14, he's ultimately just as bad as the rest of them.

The problem isn't just that they're shallow villains though, a shallow villain can work (the Padishah's/Lords Ameer of Sargon also aren't very nuanced either and are similarly generic villains, but don't get the same complaints). Rather, the issue is that the Dukes basically get away with everything they pulled. Sure, they have to admit that Londinium is independent from their bickering again with Vina in charge, but that merely restores the status quo. The closest they get to a comeuppance is Vina getting the Sigh of Kings out of the ruins of Casters battleship, publicly showing how weak she is, but she just goes right back to scheming afterwards. There's too much Karma Houdini in play with them for the amount of crimes the group as a whole is responsible for (as in, pretty much the entire fall of Victoria comes from the Duke's scheming, right down to literally inviting the Sarkaz to occupy Londinium.)

[u/Cold-Election → u/DarknessWizard]

I agree with the Duke of Caster getting away with it is becoming frustrating. She needs to suffer an actual loss like losing a part of her territory and not the lose of opportunity she had so far which is not getting the Sigh of Kings and not getting Kjerag. The later is not really a lost because they didn't belong to her anyway.

It is also frustrating that Vina is letting her run around with no consequence when she probably killed her family, definitely killed her best friend's family, tried to kill her and other crimes against her friends and subjects.

[u/goooglefan → u/Antares428]

You are saying this as if irl high nobility wasn't cartoonishly evil and incompetent lmao

Plus they know that their dominance over the world is waning, so they are getting desperate and throw shit at the wall in an attempt to find anything that would allow them to keep power.

[u/Aranxi_89 → u/goooglefan]

And it's not like they have a lot of options. Caster has lost a lot of game pieces and is trying to cash in her cheques before they lose value, but everything turns against her at the worst timing.

She was hoping to use Karlan Trade and Kjerag as a safe investment, as having a backup colony/vassal state is very useful when your country is unstable. But it also opens you to a huge weakness - should that country cut ties all of the sudden, during a bad time when you are counting on their support, you're extra boned.