>>>Yeah. It looked like this was going to go according to plan after all.
>>
>>You know, for somebody who's trade is the Future, Skuld should know
>>better than to tempt fate with that train of thought :P
>
>Eh, what's the worst that could happen?
>
At least she didn't say it out loud. 8)

>>One thing that I wonder though, Vigdis said
>>that the wedding was also, in effect, declaring Utena a goddess, and
>>the marks of divinity Utena ends up having made me wonder if it wasn't
>>the literal truth. Is it too much to ask if this were the case? Or is
>>it just a honorary, you're one of us now type of thing and not having
>>the weight of it like when Corwin ascended?
>
>The latter; the marks on Utena's face were a gesture on Verthandi's
>part while she was doing Utena's makeup, not anything to do with the
>Celestial System itself. Though for certain administrative and
>diplomatic purposes, Utena is (or will be - the status of her marriage
>is a little nebulous right now, thanks to Frigg's insistence on a
>partial ceremony out of sight of most of the crowd) considered a
>dís (as minor Asgardian goddesses not part of the bands of the
>Ćsir and Vanir are known), but she's been accorded no (additional)
>supernatural power. She's not the goddess of anything, if you
>like, in the way that Thor is god of thunder or Derek is god of
>comedy.
>
I'm not sure Utena needs any additional powers.

>>Were they relying on the fact that the Earth Alliance would
>>hesitate more in potentially starting a shooting war or was the EA
>>that confident they could wave aside any treaties as bogus?
>
>As Gryphon said when he was briefing Utena and the rest, the
>assumption was always that there'd be the usual few weeks of
>diplomatic harrumphing and some kind of fake incident along the Polish
>border to establish casus belli. Nobody figured the EA would
>just roll out of bed one morning and say, "Welp! Time to reconquer
>Tau Ceti!"
>
>So no, there weren't any ships on station at the time. If the IPO
>stationed a ship everywhere they had an ally who might be attacked one
>day, they'd need quite a lot more ships. There were a few, both from
>the IPO and the WDF, hanging around the neighborhood through the
>"provisional government" phase, but once the new constitution was
>ratified and the elections taken care of, the immediate danger
>appeared to have passed. Gryphon suspected the EA might get up to
>some kind of shabby trick, but like I say, he figured there'd be
>handwaving first.
>
And the EA's planners may well have decided to attack now specificly because of the wedding. After all, they could be sure that many of the IPO's top personel (and the EA's biggest pains in the ass) would be far from Tau Ceti now, with their attention firmly focused on B6.

>Oh, oops. That's a mistake. Illustrious belongs to the
>Salusian Imperial Guards; she's the ship assigned to escort the royal
>envoy (HRH the Princess Jessica, Baroness d'Alkirk) to the wedding
>(and the one we saw early on in the movement, when Corwin was arriving
>at B6). Since Princess Jessica is a reserve member of the IPO and
>this is an IPO alert situation, she has the right - indeed, the
>obligation - to get involved. As a member of the imperial family, she
>also has the right to take command of any Guards assets around - like
>Illustrious - and bring them with her. Unlike the RSN, the
>Guards don't answer to the Ministry of War; anything they do is on the
>imperial family's personal dime, not that of the political entity that
>is the Empire of Salusia. This is perhaps a fiddly point, but it'll
>stand up in court. Technically, Illustrious's involvement
>isn't the Salusian government butting into a treaty situation in which
>it is not involved; it's Jess bringing along some bodyguards. ...
>Okay, about 1200 of them, but still. :)
>
Reminds me of an early scene in 300, King Leonidas says (paraphrased) 'I'm not mobilizing the army, I'm just going for a walk with 300 of my friends.'

>>You clearly are not on your A game.
>
>All very true... assuming, of course, that Nanami's following orders.
>At this juncture I couldn't possibly comment on that. :)
>
>--G.

Heh, that was actually my own thought. Akio said "Follow them. You know what to do." Just cause she knows what to do doesn't mean she actually does it. We already know that she hates Akio's guts, and she likes Corwin. Frankly, I figure her holding Nall at swordpoint might have been more to make sure he didn't attack her before Corwin arrived.