For all its prominent place within society, the Order of Eden Vital remains something of a mystery to the common populace, despite the open willingness of its members to discuss their organization and its history. That history is indeed a long one, for the earliest traces of the Order goes all the way back to the 13th century of the Common Era, in the southern regions of France. Despite its current religious denomination, Eden Vital did not originate as a religious order. During its infancy, the Order was instead a loose association of midwives that banded together for protection against reprisals should a birth they helped oversee go wrong. Their change into a religious order began when, due to their common practices in what passed for medical care at the time, midwives and nuns began congregating together in the various convents dedicated to the healing arts. The formal establishment of Eden Vital occurred sometime in the 14th century, in the earlier stage of the Hundred Years' War, and is attributed to a woman referred to by the Order's members as Saint Cecilia. It should be noted that this Cecilia is distinct from the Roman martyr canonized by the other Christian denominations, with the Catholic Church in particular outright refuting instead of merely being indifferent to the existence of this second Saint Cecilia.
The reason for this refutation likely stems from the Order's opposition to one of the Catholic Church's own saints, Joan of Arc. An ardent Catholic, Joan loathed any and all forms of heresy, and considered Eden Vital to be straying from the Christian path. She supported efforts by the Church to curb the Order's influence, and even threatened some of the Order's members with charges of heresy. While little direct historical evidence exists, a claim has long existed that Eden Vital helped orchestrate Joan's capture by the Burgundian forces at Compiègne. Shortly after the Hundred Years' War ended, Joan's supporters in the Catholic Church began a campaign of active incitement and harassment against Eden Vital. The Order was forced to retreat further and further north, eventually fleeing the continent outright and reestablishing themselves in the British Isles. Whatever the truth of their complicity in Joan's capture, Eden Vital soon entered into an alliance with the House of Tudor in resisting further continental encroachment upon English interests, including that of the Catholic Church. Eventually, the Order would supplant Catholicism as the officially sanctioned state religion of the United Kingdom.
-On Humble Origins: The Order of Eden Vital
End of Interlude I
So in Calculus I started the habit of doing snippets of history texts that were written from a future generation's perspective of the events of the story. I didn't do that for Meridian because I didn't think it necessary, but as I've done more and more world building for Eden Vital, I'm starting to realize that it may be necessary to do so. I don't want to bother doing it for every chapter though, having to come up with snippets was kind of time consuming, and I'm holding my cards closer to the chest with this story, so I have lesser need for the snippets to act as foreshadowing. As such I've decided to basically just do snippets at appropriate points in between chapters. The next one is not likely to drop until probably after my equivalent of the Lake Kawaguchi arc.
This snippet was already more or less done when I finished the previous chapter, but I withheld it mostly to give a chance for reviews to roll with any questions and the like, as this will be the last chance for me to answer them for a while.
Technically, the word is just projection. And Kirihara is doing it. It's actually something that a lot of Japanese leaders tend to do, both historically and in the modern day. Not that other leaders around the world don't do it, but there's a few specific quirks that settle into a sort of pattern in the language of the rhetoric that Japanese leaders fall into, certain specific appeals that are rooted in their cultural context. Now one of the reasons Kirihara can afford the luxury of this sort of mindset is because he isn't just barely scraping by a living like a significant chunk of the rest of the Japanese population. He's nice and comfortable in his Kyoto estate, waited on by plenty of servants and mostly insulated from the day to day struggles of his fellow Japanese. This sort of disconnect also has plenty of historical precedent worldwide, and in Japan's case was very much in play near the end of WWII when the Japanese political elite absolutely wanted to deny the inevitability of Allied victory even as their people were being starved into oblivion. So there are plenty of parallels that one can read between the lines to get a faint idea of where things are headed, and what sort of stratagem Lelouch is going to be employing to win over the populace.
Laura said to Laura while Laura was preparing some tea for Laura. Yes, I will be taking ample opportunity to troll all of you.
As an aside, while Lelouch's intention may be to sideline Suzaku from the frontlines, Suzaku being who he is, combined with Lloyd's enthusiasm about "field-testing" the Lancelot, is going to make pretzels out of that intention.
Seeing as no Japanese subject has yet become a full citizen, I'm not seeing any problems that Lelouch has to immediately deal with. I'll leave it to the other reviewers whom tend to like to pile on the reasoned speculation to work out as to why this is the case.