From Calinor to the Thalmor: a Socio-Animical History of Early 4E Summerset Literature (4E 1 – 4E 22) Vol.3

By Marcienne Blosh

The slayer among us (4E 21)

A year prior to the Thalmor takeover, Petril Broudo published The slayer among us, another novel about murderers, evil and insanity written in a despaired style. Those themes and treatments had become so prominent in the past 20 years that this novel and the ones that preceded it (like Calinor’s Tower, Ystalatu or The Illusionist) won the name of “manish novel” by the beginning of the second decade of the fourth era. First this name was attributed as a mockery, then as the official name of the genre and style displayed. But The slayer among us differs from the “manish novels” that preceded it in one key aspect: it showcases its socio-animical fear and disgust towards mankind in a nuanced and ambiguous way while pointing it’s unabashed contempt towards another collective.

The plot goes as follows: in an indeterminate city someone is murdering children. Nobody knows who is doing it and everyone accuses each other. Panic and chaos loom over the paranoiac populace. In order to restore order the guards double their efforts to catch the criminal. This increase in guard activity is quickly noted by the city’s thieves and criminal gangs, who find it more difficult to commit their crimes and heists. The local criminal bosses agree to set apart their differences and hunt the slayer themselves, in order to put a stop to the pressure of the guards. The criminals end up discovering the children slayer’s identity and capture him. They submit him to a mock trial where the slayer gives a blood-curling speech about how for him the murder of children is a necessity as opposed to a pleasure, and how he cannot avoid doing it:

“I cannot avoid it!“ he said with a broken voice “Do you really think you know what you are talking about? Have you not looked upon yourselves? Aren’t you criminals? Aren’t you right now standing high and haughty over spilled blood and terrorized citizens? You that have always had a choice, you that could have been doing different deeds and saying other words, dare to judge me? I have no control of myself, for it is my own essence that shouts and screams and bellows for mastery of that which is abominable. It is there wherever I go, as if it were watching me from above. It is myself, but at the same time it is not. Whatever I may do, it enforces its will on me. And after the monstrous deed is done, after the maternal present cries for the death of an infant future, I have to scream in silence, for I hear what I have done, and although my mind cannot conjure any memory of the deed, I cannot deny it to myself.”

Once the monologue ends, the guards burst in and detain all the criminals present in the room. The novel cuts to the trial, where the final verdict of the slayer is not stated and let to the reader’s imagination.

In “manish novels” finding the socio-animical representation of mankind is usually simple, one has to merely search for the most abject individual in the text. But in this case the monster at stake is treated in a slightly different light than in preceding novels. He is a slayer of children, true, but his speech raises the question about how much is he responsible of his actions. This is a most significant change from the vile and hatred we have been accustomed to in previous works. This novel shows a change in the vision that Summerset Altmer have towards humanity. It reverts to a more paternalistic approach, similar to the traditional perspectives on humankind found in pre-Oblivion Crisis Altmer thought. Traditionally mankind have been seen as wretched by nature, unable to transcend their wretchedness, but not guilty of something that is thrust upon them. This approach is still ridden with anti-human bias and pretensions of superiority, and had become the ideological justification of conquest in the First Aldmeri Dominion, but differs greatly from the more damning and aggressive view of human evil explored until now. I feel that what is witnessed in The slayer among us is a retraction, the “collective animus” of the Summerset Altmers starts to return to their traditional ideals before the Oblivion Crisis.

The crime of the slayer, the serial murder of children, deserves some analysis. It is very telling how such a heinous act is depicted in the killer’s monologue, “the maternal present cries for the death of an infant future”. The crime depicted in the novel is allegorical, it represents the murder of the future at the hands of mankind. Although this thesis is something that looks straight out of a Thalmor propagandist’s mouth, it actually ties well with the more traditional depiction of humankind as beings condemned by nature to be wretched and in need of guidance and control from elvenkind. With unrestrained mankind in control there is no future to be had, so they must be subsided to elvendom for the common good of both.

If the killer receives a morally grey and ambiguous treatment, there is another set of characters who do not get treated as well. The criminals of the story are depicted first and foremost as hypocrites. They consider themselves able to judge someone for blood crimes, when they live an existence based on murder and robbery. They cloak their intentions of maintaining their criminal activity with an aura of justice and vigilantism. To sum-up, they are organized criminals and murderers who persecute a lurking evil who is not as different as themselves, only separated from their prey by their non-enacted capacity of being able to not commit crimes. The criminals are a socio-animical stand-in for the Thalmor. They are starting to be seen not as the hero from Aurialia, a foretold figure who will end the threat that elvendom faces, but as violent mobsters with moral pretensions. Past the worst hardships after the Oblivion Crisis, the image that the “collective animus” of the Summerset Altmers had of humankind and the Thalmor was starting to dissipate and return to its ancestral position. One cannot discard that the Thalmor takeover of the next year was due to a perception that the times were starting to change for the worse, and this was the key moment of reaping the fruits sowed by the Altmer collective soul.

The murder of divinity (4E 22)

Few pieces of internal Thalmor propaganda have reached us outside the Dominion. The murder of divinity is one of them. Composed anonymously, it is one of the earliest published novels after the Thalmor takeover of 4E 22, and is probably directed at the lower strata of their own society. The argument and themes of the novel will seem extremely familiar to the reader, as they are those of the “manish novel”, a continuation of the post-Oblivion Crisis literary trends.

The argument is as follows: when a wealthy landowner is murdered, Justiciar Riscalo is sent to investigate the murder. The crime was committed in the rural manor of the victim, by way of tying him up and tearing out his heart. The victim was what the novel calls a “negotiantist” who had organized a conference at his estate to “show mankind the necessity and beauty of the Dominion and the values it stands for”. At that conference where invited all sorts of stereotypical humans, who were at the manor at the moment of the crime. The novel doesn’t spare details cruelly defining the guests, with sentences such as “Bastardine cried with envy, for she felt, upon seeing the Justiciar’s magnificent detecting skills, that she was cursed by mediocrity.” or “Falsus went to the pen where the chickens were and slew them all, afterwards he uttered <<Sorry, I was a legionnaire, murdering is my vocation>>” or “Lying-Tongue verbally spitted on the Justiciar that in his native lands when a kid mimics speech too soon they sacrifice him to Talos” or “When the scimitar was taken from Fakar he threw a mighty tantrum”. In the end it turns out all the guests were in it together, they all wanted to make the elves pay by what the Aedra did to Lorkhan, and they are all guilty. Then they all get gruesomely executed. End of the story.

I am not going to analyse the portrayal of the different types of humankind on this one. The reason for that is that this book is devoted to analyse the “collective animus” of Summerset Altmers, not the Thalmor’s conscious lies. The objective of the portrayal of the guests is quite clear, they are consciously trying to dehumanize mankind. I will neither make guesses about if the “negotiantists” are a real faction inside the Thalmor or a narrative fiction, as other historians have done with exceeding speculation. What is interesting of this work of propaganda is not what it says, but how it says it. The murder of divinity has a very special way of using definitions and displays odd choices of verbs. It is already noticeable in the aforementioned fragments with expressions such as “uttered” and “verbally spit” instead of a more common “said” or “explained” or “mimics speech” instead of “learns to speak”. The following fragment showcases perfectly the lexical particularities of the novel:

Riscalo ordered everyone to meet in the courtyard, and everyone trudged their way there. When they arrived, they were made to stand in a circle with Riscalo in the middle. Riscalo ordered his legs to move up and down the interior of the circle, all the while making one of his hands beat a set of arrows again the other. He said:

“Let us discern. Recount the preterit events where your hides were involved”

After the words had exited from Riscalo’s mind and landed on the human’s ears, Falsus started to move his lips and make sounds with his throat.

“If my brain doesn’t betray me, I was in my room uttering my maruhkian prayers and beating my chest as is the custom among my people, when I heard a scream. I ran to the source and I saw…”

After understanding that, Riscalo made it so one of the arrows he was keeping in motion landed in the hand that was serving as a metaphorical anvil. Through the might of his will he transferred moving power to the arrow and as a result it flew until gracefully landing on Falsus’ greasy throat.

“You are wrong!” said Riscalo “Your body couldn’t have been in your room. If that were the case, I would have perceived it after noting the sonorous expression of pain.” After those words were thrown the Justiciar’s auxiliars healed Falsus so he could vomit his arguments again.

The novel is written in its entirety in the style of the above fragment, so you have to be a pretty dedicated Thalmor or a foolish enough historian to go through it. The use of confusing imagery where a mere simple word would have sufficed seems to be mere pedantry, and maybe pedantry for pedantry’s sake was the intention of the author. But in the choice of words and expressions lies a socio-animical statement. There is an unintentional patron in the use of language: when speaking of Riscalo intellective vocabulary is used (ordered, understanding, made it so, might of his will, transferred, etc.) while physical one is avoided. But when dealing with the guests physical language is the norm (brain, uttering, vomit, make sounds with throat, etc.) and the intellective one is avoided. Why such a patron?

The adjudication of physicality to humankind is an expression of the refusal of said attribute. There is a clear ideological preference of mind and soul over body and matter. Such a dichotomy can be tied to the mythical origins of the Altmer and their claim of being descended from divine entities, as opposed to mortal ones. They see themselves more as the children of ideas than the children of flesh. Although this idea has been always present in Altmer culture, here it appears radicalized. It is now not only an origin but also a destination. The incarnation of the soul is demonized and refused. There is in the use of language a yearning for purity, a call for the uncoiling of the primordial soul from the corrupting flesh. Whether the hate for humankind derives from this desire, or this yearning is a justification for the contempt towards mankind, we may never know for certain.

Conclusions

All the novels that have been treated in this volumes have similar characteristics. Crime and horror make continuous appearances, showcasing a bleak view of reality. There are similar themes of searching for responsibility and the guilty parties. At the same time these guilty parties hide themselves or use a proxy to commit their atrocities. The guilty tend to be powerful, cunning and relentless, needing active prosecution to be neutralized. Fear is palpable in the narration. Under the moral superiority displayed by the protagonists lies an almost ancestral fear of humankind. The set of novels here analysed displays not only anger but despair towards the situation and challenges that Summerset Altmers faced after the Oblivion Crisis. Instead of confronting the situation head-on, the socio-animical reaction is to pin down the blame on mankind and materialize any social or ideological anxiety through it.

It is difficult to say if the Thalmor willed themselves into the “collective animus” of the Summerset Altmer, or if on the contrary the “collective animus” of the Summerset Altmer willed the Thalmor into power. What comes first, the cause or the prosecutor? Did the Thalmor ideology poison the thought of the Altmer, or did the Altmer brew the Thalmorian poison? We may never know for certain. What is certain is that the “collective animus” was a key mechanism by which the Thalmor were able to get into power, and that their ability to profit from it cannot be overstated.

Fiction provides a mirror by which to look not only the author but the society that has brought it up. Except in the last example, the writers of these novels were not Thalmor, but the society that created both these artists and those dictators was the same. They unknowingly were the prophets of a macabre prophecy, fleshing out with their ink foul socio-animical thoughts.