So it was far from universal. And I do take Glaedr as a more reliable source on this than Brom.
Still calling retcon here. At the risk of falling into a meta-analysis rabbit hole, I highly doubt that 15-year-old Paolini had both the foresight and wherewithal to purposefully inject a discrepancy between the actual in-world facts and a given character's telling/understanding of those facts so that certain little details could be challenged/corrected by another character two books later.
Speaking personally, I sure has hell didn't have the wherewithal as a teenage writer to pull of an unreliable narrator or even pull off a nuanced handling character biases and how they warp the truth. My good characters always told it like it was and definitely weren't biased in any way and their information was complete and correct, and the bad guys just straight up suppressed information, so it was never a matter of interpretation and nuance and unpacking bias, it was just having vs not having the information.
More generally, I think it comes from a lack of critical thinking. Because even if every single one of the Riders and dragons did everything good, which is extremely unlikely, it would still have been a dictature. That is because there was no accountability, and no means of exerting control over them. Sure, elves and humans might become Riders, but they can only become so via an entirely opaque process, and the human Riders, at least, go through some kind of indoctrination process.
All in all, the concept of such a group might seem good from a distance, but it collapses before critical thought.
Very good point. Even with good critical thinking skills, the teenage naivety/immaturity angle can still contribute to the creation of some pretty unrealistic geopolitical situations and attitudes due to your mental model for human behavior being incomplete/underdeveloped due to lack of life experience and projecting all your naive, idealistic teenage thinking onto your characters. I know because that was me as a teen writer.
In regards to the Riders and how they're chosen/created, when I read the first two books in high school, the means of how a Rider is made didn't really bother me because when you're that age, you think you have it all figured out and know what you want but still don't really understand long term consequences, so the idea of being a kid getting to touch a dragon egg and maybe the dragon chooses you is cool and awesome. But now, as a jaded and cynical adult, the first thing that crosses my mind is that a ten-year-old has no fucking business entering into what is effectively an eternal contract and be stripped of all their agency. And the dragons being forced into the same eternal contract as soon as they're born is even more fucked up. Everyone should be of legal age before trying out to be part of this order, both the rider hopefuls AND dragons.
But you don't think of those potential pitfalls as a teen writer, you just think about how cool it would be if there was a benevolent UN-like organization that actually had the power and means to enforce peace and make the world a better place. As an adult writer, you dismiss all that out of hand because lol - the riders would never be like the UN, they'd be like medieval Catholic Church except an order of magnitude more powerful and influential because they have motherfucking dragons.
(Note to self: Someday write a medieval alt-historical novel in which the Church has motherfucking dragons. I think if that were the case everyone would be Catholic. EVERYONE.)
The main problem is that the Varden's goals have nothing to do with what the people of the Empire actually seem to want, and the Varden are too wrapped up in themselves to see.
This could have been really interesting if it had been acknowledged and addressed as part of the story. Like, Eragon coming in with his farmboy background/perspective telling the Varden that their tactics aren't helping people or making their lives better or winning them over to the cause and the Varden adjusts their strategy and regains sight of their original mission or something and Eragon becomes a true champion of the people. Except that doesn't happen but Eragon calls himself the champion of the people anyway.
In my story, most of the principal characters are royalty or nobility, and so when the wars and conquests start, they're not terribly concerned with the common folk beyond minimizing civilian casualties, but they also NEVER purport to be "champions of the people" because they absolutely aren't and they know this. They're just fighting for power and if all goes well, the lives of the common folk won't change much or at all.
As for the Varden using magic to improve the people's lives, yeah, they could have done such things, but Galby could have too. The Varden could have also researched Elva's "blessing" and designed new spells to make specialized super soldiers but they didn't do that either. Galby kind of did but he was very unimaginative about it. I think the Varden not using magic in better ways is a symptom of a poorly designed magic system and not having it spiral out of control more than it did in the story with the wards and the AL name-slaving and oaths and the mindrape etc.
It helps that it is there if you read between the lines, of course.
Yup. It's there but definitely not intentional. But that's what makes it fun to work with.
no subject
Still calling retcon here. At the risk of falling into a meta-analysis rabbit hole, I highly doubt that 15-year-old Paolini had both the foresight and wherewithal to purposefully inject a discrepancy between the actual in-world facts and a given character's telling/understanding of those facts so that certain little details could be challenged/corrected by another character two books later.
Speaking personally, I sure has hell didn't have the wherewithal as a teenage writer to pull of an unreliable narrator or even pull off a nuanced handling character biases and how they warp the truth. My good characters always told it like it was and definitely weren't biased in any way and their information was complete and correct, and the bad guys just straight up suppressed information, so it was never a matter of interpretation and nuance and unpacking bias, it was just having vs not having the information.
More generally, I think it comes from a lack of critical thinking. Because even if every single one of the Riders and dragons did everything good, which is extremely unlikely, it would still have been a dictature. That is because there was no accountability, and no means of exerting control over them. Sure, elves and humans might become Riders, but they can only become so via an entirely opaque process, and the human Riders, at least, go through some kind of indoctrination process.
All in all, the concept of such a group might seem good from a distance, but it collapses before critical thought.
Very good point. Even with good critical thinking skills, the teenage naivety/immaturity angle can still contribute to the creation of some pretty unrealistic geopolitical situations and attitudes due to your mental model for human behavior being incomplete/underdeveloped due to lack of life experience and projecting all your naive, idealistic teenage thinking onto your characters. I know because that was me as a teen writer.
In regards to the Riders and how they're chosen/created, when I read the first two books in high school, the means of how a Rider is made didn't really bother me because when you're that age, you think you have it all figured out and know what you want but still don't really understand long term consequences, so the idea of being a kid getting to touch a dragon egg and maybe the dragon chooses you is cool and awesome. But now, as a jaded and cynical adult, the first thing that crosses my mind is that a ten-year-old has no fucking business entering into what is effectively an eternal contract and be stripped of all their agency. And the dragons being forced into the same eternal contract as soon as they're born is even more fucked up. Everyone should be of legal age before trying out to be part of this order, both the rider hopefuls AND dragons.
But you don't think of those potential pitfalls as a teen writer, you just think about how cool it would be if there was a benevolent UN-like organization that actually had the power and means to enforce peace and make the world a better place. As an adult writer, you dismiss all that out of hand because lol - the riders would never be like the UN, they'd be like medieval Catholic Church except an order of magnitude more powerful and influential because they have motherfucking dragons.
(Note to self: Someday write a medieval alt-historical novel in which the Church has motherfucking dragons. I think if that were the case everyone would be Catholic. EVERYONE.)
The main problem is that the Varden's goals have nothing to do with what the people of the Empire actually seem to want, and the Varden are too wrapped up in themselves to see.
This could have been really interesting if it had been acknowledged and addressed as part of the story. Like, Eragon coming in with his farmboy background/perspective telling the Varden that their tactics aren't helping people or making their lives better or winning them over to the cause and the Varden adjusts their strategy and regains sight of their original mission or something and Eragon becomes a true champion of the people. Except that doesn't happen but Eragon calls himself the champion of the people anyway.
In my story, most of the principal characters are royalty or nobility, and so when the wars and conquests start, they're not terribly concerned with the common folk beyond minimizing civilian casualties, but they also NEVER purport to be "champions of the people" because they absolutely aren't and they know this. They're just fighting for power and if all goes well, the lives of the common folk won't change much or at all.
As for the Varden using magic to improve the people's lives, yeah, they could have done such things, but Galby could have too. The Varden could have also researched Elva's "blessing" and designed new spells to make specialized super soldiers but they didn't do that either. Galby kind of did but he was very unimaginative about it. I think the Varden not using magic in better ways is a symptom of a poorly designed magic system and not having it spiral out of control more than it did in the story with the wards and the AL name-slaving and oaths and the mindrape etc.
It helps that it is there if you read between the lines, of course.
Yup. It's there but definitely not intentional. But that's what makes it fun to work with.