The Draka/YMMV: Difference between revisions

* [[Complete Monster]]: The Draka, obviously, but even amongst those monsters Yolande Ingolfsson takes it [[Up to Eleven]], and combines it with [[Psycho Lesbian]] and [[Karma Houdini]]. Let's see:

** Around the same time she captures Fred's sister Marya, turns her into a serf as well as a concubine, and forces her to have her lover's cloned child by repeatedly torturing her.

*** She is called out on this on several occasions ''[[Even Evil Has Standards|by other Draka]]'', including von Shrakenberg himself (who {{spoiler|dresses Yolande down not only for triggering the Final War over her blind lust for vengeance but also for leaking information about the Stone Dogs virus to Marya, a known Alliance agent}}) and ''her own brother'':

** It gets better. Later she serves in space and captures an Alliance spaceship with Fred's wife and children aboard. When she finds out who they are, she leaves them on the ship... [[High Octane Nightmare Fuel|with only the corpses to eat]]. {{spoiler|Fred's wife manages to sedate the kids and feed them with a soup ''[[I'm a Humanitarian|made from her own blood]]'', and vents the corpses into space. They're none the worse for wear, but the wife looks like she survived Auschwitz.}}

** [[It Gets Worse]]. Yolande learns who Marya is, and is distributing a computer virus throughout the Domination that would cripple them in the event of war. So, she leaks the info on the Stone Dogs to her and lets her escape. This forces the Draka to launch a first strike against the Alliance that results in the [[World War III|Final War]], which the Draka win. So, basically, Yolande is willing to risk ''[[Disproportionate Retribution|human extinction]]'' to get revenge for her girlfriend's death. Best thing? None of this ever get published, because she's the niece of the head of the Domination, who needs as many people as possible to form a stable government after the war. So she probably ended up as Archon or something.

** But it's not all bad: LeFarge and his family manage to escape to Samothrace, and 400 years later they return and are only ''[[Contractual Immortality|just]]'' defeated by the Draka on Earth. Not only do they have the lead on FTL and AI research, the Draka have accidentally engineered themselves to be less creative and focus on (militarily useless) genetic engineering. So Yolande either destroyed the Alliance on Earth, or unwittingly gave the Samothracians an advantage.

*** The Draka did appreciate fine art, especially Greco-Roman and Renaissance work. They systematically looted the Vatican specifically for its art collection.

* [[Villain Sue]]: Several readers have noted multiple instances of [[Plot Induced Stupidity]] acting in the favor of the Draka during their rise to power; as mentioned above, much of the point of the Draka is to have [[The Empire]] ''win'' "for a change". Still it's somewhat unlikely and Stirling shows complete favouritism.

*** Although the first link is made a bit suspect when early on it makes the error of claiming no significant eruption happened in Iceland 1783-86. SM Stirling gets it right since it was actually the most devastating eruption in Icelandic history and killed a third of the population. Considering the rest of the points, having a large proportion of the population settle somewhere else isn't so unrealistic-half the current population is a bit of a stretch though.

*** One review of the ''Wraeththu'' RPG described the Draka books as "handing them an I Win button."

*** Stirling in later years has become more willing to acknowledge the holes in his earlier work (the Draka series was one of his first professional sales). In the ''Drakas!'' anthology (which he edited) there is a rather ruthless deconstruction by another author of ''Marching Through Georgia'' in general and Eric von Shrakenberg in particular. One of the best stories in the book.

** However, that's what you get with alternate-universe fiction. Those many, many universes in which the Draka much more plausibly got their asses handed to them aren't the ones we end up hearing about.

*** Admittedly, the A-10 "Warthog" is almost that absurdly armored in real life.