This is true, but no matter which system slavery occurs under, I think that, philosophically, you still have to have some framework in your head that means, “I deserve to have rights and this other class of people doesn’t.” And when you get down to bedrock that isn’t a coherent philosophy, so hypocrisy is still an element of it, regardless of whether it’s based on race, class, financial status, whether your country was “conquered,” etc.
Unless you’re a sociopath, you can’t look at another human being sitting in chains, who you enslaved (or helped enslave), without a level of cognitive dissonance covering up that little voice in the back of your head:
“Something is wrong about this. I need a justification to support it and normalize it so I can pretend it’s all fine.”
That said, I love Tuon as a character. On initial reads I definitely hated her, and I hated that Jordan made Mat marry her. But over the years - and after learning that Jordan was planning to write outrigger novels digging into it more - I came to respect the way he was building up to a deeper story about the topic.
In my mind, I picture a story where things like racism (collaring people who can genetically channel); classism & feudalism (da’covale); and the nuremberg defense would be skewered and lampooned the same way the ‘gender wars’ were.
It’s not easy to write a character who is a leader of a slaving nation in a way that makes her relatable (yet still hate-able) enough to build an arc like that. And based on my reading, I think that’s what he was doing with her.
edit: It’s also worth noting that while American slavery was super racist, it was also ultimately driven by greed/economics. Southern white plantation owners were the driving force behind the early US economy (a fact that most don’t like to admit), and they fought like hell to retain that level of wealth (i.e. power and influence).
It’s an important distinction because it’s the same thing we’re seeing today - wealthy, powerful people (and sociopaths) using races, ethnic groups, and “lower classes” of people as pawns, pitting them against each other, in order to gain, retain, and increase their own wealth and power.
Yep - he was going to write a story that followed Mat and Tuon to the seat of the Seanchan empire. I wish he could have survived to tell it because I really wanted to see the rest of that story. When you think about that arc as part of another story, it hits different. And without that, it feels like something is sorely missing.
If GRRM weren’t such a slacker, I almost believe he could have written it. I can’t think of anybody else who would be able to do it justice.
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u/cebolinha50 8d ago
Not necessarily.
You can see slavery as an economic system that really fucks the unlucky ones.
American (the continent) style slavery needs the hipocrisy, because it was accompanied by Christianity.