[X] "Have you a tent of your own, Your Excellency? Let us speak there."
the point of having intermediaries is to let them intermediate, so let Stan and Frankie here hang as humanist Catholics going through hell. (Also would be perhaps not great to expand the radius of people risking TB from the good bishop in all the logistics of moving everyone and such, even if its overall pretty unlikely)
[X] "Have you a tent of your own, Your Excellency? Let us speak there."
Father might not be happy, but it's important to make our intermediary appear independent and capable of standing on their own as opposed to being summoned into the tents of whichever side demands.
The Lipkas return with a wagon laden with gold, silver, and even gemstones. Apparently, there was a major communication barrier – for their Tatar speech is different from the Crimean kind – and they had to work through Ruthenian slave-translators, whom the Lipkas themselves had trouble understanding
Sure, the Lipkas assimilated, but there is always the lingua franca of the islamic world - Arabic. Much like Latin in Europe, the knowledge of Arabic united the followers of Muhammad. Prayers are conducted in said language, the Quran is written in it and it can be easily used for communication as well. Any half-decent Lipka knows at least some practical Arabic and quite a few are pretty good at it, especially among the aristocracy.
Sure, the Lipkas assimilated, but there is always the lingua franca of the islamic world - Arabic. Much like Latin in Europe, the knowledge of Arabic united the followers of Muhammad. Prayers are conducted in said language, the Quran is written in it and it can be easily used for communication as well. Any half-decent Lipka knows at least some practical Arabic and quite a few are pretty good at it, especially among the aristocracy.
Ah, of course, silly me. I guess I thought of it as being a clerical language, while fully forgetting that, like, a quarter of SDN's dialogue is in Latin — at least when speaking to HRE people as Stach can't really speak German beyond a rudimentary level. So, duh, you can use your clerical language for everyday speech if it comes to it…
P.S. update today guaranteed!
XXXVIII-IV. November 8, 1575. Warszawa, Polish Crownlands.
"Have you a tent of your own, Your Excellency? Let us speak there," you say.
Bishop Krasiński nods. "Of course. I simply pray you stay far away from me, Your Serene Highness," he says with a wry smile. "My fellow churchmen do not fear my spreading of the consumption, even though some are old and sick already – so be it. But I won't let a young convalescent be stricken with such an illness."
There's that word again! "Convalescent" is the polite word for "cripple," isn't it? You try to strike down that thought, though; you know what you look like naked. You've seen your ribs, you've seen your cheekbones in the mirror. The Bishop is, sadly, correct, even if you were in a much worse way last month. You hate feeling fragile. Princes are not fragile. You were weak once, it's true – no, not once, more than once, that's the real truth: as a lonely little boy and then as a young man stricken with flux of the lungs, a head full of the scenes and sounds and smells of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day – weak, struggling, suffering, drinking, then flagellating yourself with bread and water and distance from your wife. But God and His Mother offered you sweet succor in the end. Mariana, too, was a great help, great-great-great, though it feels blasphemous to elevate a mere woman, a Ruthenian lady of middling status, the only woman you've ever truly known, onto such a pedestal. But you love her as you love God, may He forgive you for that, and may she love you back someday. You can make it. You will make it. Deo gratias. Ave Maria.
All this is but a flash in your mind. A brief cracking of a glass windowpane, a little shock through your ribcage, your spine. "Duly appreciated, Your Excellency," you say, "I am honored by your attentiveness to my condition." That's the right thing to say.
You're lifted back up into your sedan chair and carried to a little pavilion that, while certainly better than a lordling's tent, does not befit the station of the curate of the royal capital. This man is truly humble, you think, all he allows himself on his person are his rings, and all he allows for himself as a dwelling is one just a bit larger than a patch-jacket's. You admired him when he boldly affixed his seal to the Confederation, standing alone among the clergy, and you admire him now. It's a shame you're here to discuss politics, rather than theology or philosophy – a dying man carries a wisdom about him, you reckon, like Nostradamus when he reached out and touched your face a decade ago.
But, no, it must be business. Your seats are already set far apart from each other – it seems that the Bishop's attendants saw to that when they rushed ahead of the two of you.
Krasiński folds his hands. "Now – privacy! How may I help the one they call the Lithuanian Ajax?" he asks. "Though, I must confess, your detractors mock you as Achilles." He tries to chuckle, but it turns into a coughing fit.
You frown. "Let them talk," you say. "Ajax and Achilles? I'll take either as a compliment. Let them talk, let them talk," you repeat. You clear your throat; no time to dwell on it.
"Well, Your Excellency," you begin, making sure to initiate it all with a preamble of sorts…
[] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
[] "I believe we need a decisive victory for the Archduke – and soon – lest our Republic be plunged into chaos."
[] "I fear that Jan Zamoyski is a dangerous upstart; this 'Gracchus' wishes to turn his movement against senators such as ourselves, and he'll use Stefan Batory to do it."
[] "Although Batory is indeed an experienced statesman, we may find an awfully moldable, long-lived young king in the Archduke."
Oh, also, I know it's rather vain, and that the ranking system favors quests that are updated frequently, but:
This is the first time we've ever "charted" AFAIK! Hierarchy Problem (link in bio if you want Y2K-era US Marines vs Half-Life aliens) tends to get a lot of love in the rankings because I post short updates rapidly, but this really makes my heart sing because of how niche a PLC setting is in English-language writing, both academic and creative, and the fact that we're pushing 200 watchers and have over 100 recent viewers despite this being a novel-length, three-year-old quest with some mega giant hiatuses (hiatii?)
Not to mention, many of you have stuck with me all through this entire thing! You know who you are. When I started this quest, I was barely 20 years old, and knew nothing about Poland-Lithuania (although I had a base of general Ren-Early Modern knowledge) -- this was a passing fancy. Now, I'm 23, writing a bachelor's thesis on the PLC, and am plotting to learn Polish! Not to mention, I feel like I have honed my creative writing abilities immensely through this project.
This quest also helped me process my mental health and substance abuse issues, the culprit of many a hiatus; I admit that Staszek is a little Rolman, and Rolman is a little Staszek...
Basically, my point is this: I am immensly grateful for you all inspiring me to keep at this quest through thick and thin, because it's been genuinely life-changing for me, as strange as that feels to type out. Who knew this would get so meaningful to me?
So, thanks. Thanks! And thanks for allowing this moment of sentimentality.
[X] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
I like this option just because of the interesting potential debates over the two-edged sword of rarefying the power of the clergy as a body, in terms of the eternal quest of the episcopal hierarchy of the Church to actually actually regulate things like stop with the magic luck charms and witch trials for the greater community of faith, and perhaps placing humanist clerics in a more lawyer-y position to affect things than their actual control over dioceses... verses undermining all the hopes of humanist reforms via empowering the worst elements of the whole complex web of other wings of the Counter Reformation and/or getting a bloc of rabidly self-interested prelates protecting their privileges over any and everything else.
[X] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
Lord forbid my enemies call me Achilles instead of Ajax. Next they'll stoop to declaring me Adonis or Alexander
[X] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
[X] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
[X] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
I'm betting that our interlocutor is thinking about the future and what he can do to affect it. I doubt he'll be swayed by temporal benefits, but the Church is eternal.
I think they'll find that dying to a leg wound was a skill issue.
[X] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
[X] "Firstly, I would like us both to remember that the Archduke guaranteed both freedom of faith and the strengthening of the Holy Church's courts and synods at Stężyca, back in May."
