Ţara methuseluth: a perfect gene pool?
Jun. 23rd, 2008 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseAs much as I’m usually adamant that there’s justification enough to qualify Süleyman’s sexual preference it does occur to me that I tend to found that argument upon the fact that he has no visible progeny. Which leaves open the possibility that he may have fathered progeny who weren’t viable or, which is the option I’m going to explore today, that he’s… to put it politely, shooting blanks. While the idea of his fathering non-viable progeny or even offspring who do survive for a short space of time before their defects become fatal is highly intriguing and the latter of the two possibilities would in fact be useful in making the argument that he’s actually Radu’s father, I’ll leave that aside for the moment since it diverts somewhat away from the point.
If it’s possible that Süleyman’s lack of progeny isn’t for a lack of trying but rather due to his own sterility then that theory might actually be supported by the physical characteristics of the yeniçeri and of the Fortunas. Granted, there certainly isn’t enough information on genetic heritage available and most of the intrigue and action seems to take place in the portion of the Empire that the reader simply doesn’t see but considering Seth’s demanding nature and thus what’s likely to be the sort of loyalty she’d expect in her troops, if her demands of her civilian subjects are anything to go by, it’s possible that the yeniçeri have no other attachments than to their Empress and their regiment. That would make perfect sense of course since she needs to be the focus of their loyalty if they’re going to successfully defend her position as Empress but it does make me wonder. Because if there’s such a low birth rate among Methuselah, presumably with the nanites actively working to destroy any foreign growth in a female Methuselah’s body since to them undifferentiated cell growth be it cancer or a foetus is a danger to the host, it would stand to reason that Seth would want to actively keep all viable males active in the gene pool. Yet if her yeniçeri are fanatically loyal and are presumably required to see to their duty to the Empress at all times then it would appear at first glance that this would mean that a good number of viable and desirable breeding stock have seem removed from the system.
It’s possible that there are enough viable males within the gene pool already so that the loss of a few wouldn’t make much of a difference but with the low birth rate any extra help would presumably be useful. Unless the yeniçeri wouldn’t be any extra help at all. My theory being that in the process of attempting to breed the perfect Methuselah, what Seth has in fact done is breed a good many bloodlines to the point of extinction. If she’s been selecting for certain traits and not paying too much attention to one or two unpredicted abnormalities, and has been doing this with vast swathes of the population over the last nine hundred years then it’s entirely possible that what she’s done is create a few dominant inbred lines which she’s selected for desirable traits but who have ended up with a variety of defects due to extensive inbreeding recession. And if she’s been doing that neglectfully for such a long time, by the time she’s noticed the problem it may in fact have been too late because the Methuselah bloodlines are so similar and degenerated that even if she were to somehow manage to increase the birth rate all she’d be doing would be breeding more and more defective subjects. To suggest the Fortunas as an example, it’s plausible that what’s been happening to them is that they’ve been Awakening younger and younger with each inbred generation to the point where Ion may in fact be the last of his bloodline because his body may not have matured to the point where he’d be capable of fathering progeny. And at a tangent it’s precisely that inability to father progeny which may have justified keeping someone as unstable as Radu around since his bloodline may have been judged close enough to the main Fortuna line to qualify his progeny for the Ducal title.
Thus if Seth’s been breeding various bloodlines for desirable traits while somehow hugely overlooking the necessity of their viability it’s possible that both the highest ranked families have been bred to the point of incapacity. Mirka presumably just about managed a pregnancy, if Ion even is her grandson, but Ion may not succeed in fathering an heir himself and Süleyman, perhaps like the yeniçeri, may in fact be sterile. If Seth’s ideal woman is an adolescent female like herself then she may have been pleased with the Fortunas Awakening younger and younger with each successive generation. Thus if in contrast, her ideal man would really be quite muscular etc then she’d be breeding a similarly selected bloodline for those physical traits and perhaps, considering that Süleyman presumably had a sibling at some point, it didn’t entirely matter to Seth that Süleyman himself might be sterile. Unfortunately with the deaths of both Radu and Šahrzād, Seth’s actually lost both those bloodlines and the fruits of her labours unless the slight possibility is there that Ion is capable of fathering progeny.
Of course to take the matter further if Seth’s been breeding most of the high ranked families to this end then what she’s likely to end up with is the top third of her Council consisting of dying bloodlines that somehow need to be replaced, which might, at a leap, explain her interest in Astaroth. Though realistically if she is breeding Methuselah bloodlines into sterility and genetic defects it’s easy enough to see why she doesn’t want her terran population going anywhere, especially the males. And as long as the female terran population remains stable she can be guaranteed a reasonable enough mix of paternal DNA when she needs it since the terran breed faster and presumably without the caste restrictions among their own kind that the Methuselah are subject to.
All of which is to suggest that Seth may in fact be prone to mistakes rather similarly to Dietrich. Both are arguably geniuses and both, delighted by their own cleverness, tend to allow an entire scheme to hinge on far too many precarious points. In Dietrich’s case he seems to enjoy tipping his hand and pushing his ‘puppets’ that little bit too far and in Seth’s she likewise allows her ‘children’ to flounder for just that little bit too long, long enough for them to fail to save themselves or for her to do so either.
Perhaps with her knowledge Seth could have just spliced together the perfect Methuselah, though it’s possible that either she didn’t want to since it would strike too close to home in respect to her own creation or that she’d dismissed the idea since it might be far more dangerous to attempt to control her perfect Methuselah child if said child rebelled with all the enhanced abilities and knowledge that she’d have granted. Or perhaps she wasn’t actually given the knowledge of how to do so in the first place. You can pass an electric current through atoms and create organic molecules but you can’t actually give them life at the current time so it’s possible that whatever the technique that was used, it wasn’t shared with her because the last thing the Mars Project organisers wanted was the Nightlords producing their own army. Of course, that last point considered in reverse, perhaps it might even have been the rather tragic case that while Seth herself was the product of manipulated DNA she might in fact have simply been a naturally produced form that was only tweaked a little, something that she herself doesn’t realise and which fosters her discontent.
If it’s possible that Süleyman’s lack of progeny isn’t for a lack of trying but rather due to his own sterility then that theory might actually be supported by the physical characteristics of the yeniçeri and of the Fortunas. Granted, there certainly isn’t enough information on genetic heritage available and most of the intrigue and action seems to take place in the portion of the Empire that the reader simply doesn’t see but considering Seth’s demanding nature and thus what’s likely to be the sort of loyalty she’d expect in her troops, if her demands of her civilian subjects are anything to go by, it’s possible that the yeniçeri have no other attachments than to their Empress and their regiment. That would make perfect sense of course since she needs to be the focus of their loyalty if they’re going to successfully defend her position as Empress but it does make me wonder. Because if there’s such a low birth rate among Methuselah, presumably with the nanites actively working to destroy any foreign growth in a female Methuselah’s body since to them undifferentiated cell growth be it cancer or a foetus is a danger to the host, it would stand to reason that Seth would want to actively keep all viable males active in the gene pool. Yet if her yeniçeri are fanatically loyal and are presumably required to see to their duty to the Empress at all times then it would appear at first glance that this would mean that a good number of viable and desirable breeding stock have seem removed from the system.
It’s possible that there are enough viable males within the gene pool already so that the loss of a few wouldn’t make much of a difference but with the low birth rate any extra help would presumably be useful. Unless the yeniçeri wouldn’t be any extra help at all. My theory being that in the process of attempting to breed the perfect Methuselah, what Seth has in fact done is breed a good many bloodlines to the point of extinction. If she’s been selecting for certain traits and not paying too much attention to one or two unpredicted abnormalities, and has been doing this with vast swathes of the population over the last nine hundred years then it’s entirely possible that what she’s done is create a few dominant inbred lines which she’s selected for desirable traits but who have ended up with a variety of defects due to extensive inbreeding recession. And if she’s been doing that neglectfully for such a long time, by the time she’s noticed the problem it may in fact have been too late because the Methuselah bloodlines are so similar and degenerated that even if she were to somehow manage to increase the birth rate all she’d be doing would be breeding more and more defective subjects. To suggest the Fortunas as an example, it’s plausible that what’s been happening to them is that they’ve been Awakening younger and younger with each inbred generation to the point where Ion may in fact be the last of his bloodline because his body may not have matured to the point where he’d be capable of fathering progeny. And at a tangent it’s precisely that inability to father progeny which may have justified keeping someone as unstable as Radu around since his bloodline may have been judged close enough to the main Fortuna line to qualify his progeny for the Ducal title.
Thus if Seth’s been breeding various bloodlines for desirable traits while somehow hugely overlooking the necessity of their viability it’s possible that both the highest ranked families have been bred to the point of incapacity. Mirka presumably just about managed a pregnancy, if Ion even is her grandson, but Ion may not succeed in fathering an heir himself and Süleyman, perhaps like the yeniçeri, may in fact be sterile. If Seth’s ideal woman is an adolescent female like herself then she may have been pleased with the Fortunas Awakening younger and younger with each successive generation. Thus if in contrast, her ideal man would really be quite muscular etc then she’d be breeding a similarly selected bloodline for those physical traits and perhaps, considering that Süleyman presumably had a sibling at some point, it didn’t entirely matter to Seth that Süleyman himself might be sterile. Unfortunately with the deaths of both Radu and Šahrzād, Seth’s actually lost both those bloodlines and the fruits of her labours unless the slight possibility is there that Ion is capable of fathering progeny.
Of course to take the matter further if Seth’s been breeding most of the high ranked families to this end then what she’s likely to end up with is the top third of her Council consisting of dying bloodlines that somehow need to be replaced, which might, at a leap, explain her interest in Astaroth. Though realistically if she is breeding Methuselah bloodlines into sterility and genetic defects it’s easy enough to see why she doesn’t want her terran population going anywhere, especially the males. And as long as the female terran population remains stable she can be guaranteed a reasonable enough mix of paternal DNA when she needs it since the terran breed faster and presumably without the caste restrictions among their own kind that the Methuselah are subject to.
All of which is to suggest that Seth may in fact be prone to mistakes rather similarly to Dietrich. Both are arguably geniuses and both, delighted by their own cleverness, tend to allow an entire scheme to hinge on far too many precarious points. In Dietrich’s case he seems to enjoy tipping his hand and pushing his ‘puppets’ that little bit too far and in Seth’s she likewise allows her ‘children’ to flounder for just that little bit too long, long enough for them to fail to save themselves or for her to do so either.
Perhaps with her knowledge Seth could have just spliced together the perfect Methuselah, though it’s possible that either she didn’t want to since it would strike too close to home in respect to her own creation or that she’d dismissed the idea since it might be far more dangerous to attempt to control her perfect Methuselah child if said child rebelled with all the enhanced abilities and knowledge that she’d have granted. Or perhaps she wasn’t actually given the knowledge of how to do so in the first place. You can pass an electric current through atoms and create organic molecules but you can’t actually give them life at the current time so it’s possible that whatever the technique that was used, it wasn’t shared with her because the last thing the Mars Project organisers wanted was the Nightlords producing their own army. Of course, that last point considered in reverse, perhaps it might even have been the rather tragic case that while Seth herself was the product of manipulated DNA she might in fact have simply been a naturally produced form that was only tweaked a little, something that she herself doesn’t realise and which fosters her discontent.
