Second-order problem: You are to be thrown back in time, as Yvain stipulates, along with everyone else who has already posted a plan in this thread. The winner is the one who becomes emperor first. (My bet is on Alicorn.)
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I mean, I have all my teeth, seducing an emperor should be a snap.
(There were other wrinkles to my plan—I was going to become the emperor’s pen pal first as a male persona and present myself as said persona’s daughter offered to the emperor as a token of friendship and be “possessed of oracular powers”—but this only works if Puppeteer Empress-Consort is a win condition.)
(If Puppeteer Empress-Consort is a win condition I can cooperate with someone else who is also thrown back.)
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I mean, I have all my teeth, seducing an emperor should be a snap.
Don’t be so sure. You’ve got some pretty severe competition. For example, Procopius, in his bitter Secret History, claims of Theodora (consort to Emperor Justinian) that in her days as a dancing girl/prostitute (before capturing Justinian’s heart) she
“Often, even in the theater, in the sight of all the people, she removed her costume and stood nude in their midst, except for a girdle about the groin: not that she was abashed at revealing that, too, to the audience, but because there was a law against appearing altogether naked on the stage, without at least this much of a fig-leaf. Covered thus with a ribbon, she would sink down to the stage floor and recline on her back. Slaves to whom the duty was entrusted would then scatter grains of barley from above into the calyx of this passion flower, whence geese, trained for the purpose, would next pick the grains one by one with their bills and eat. When she rose, it was not with a blush, but she seemed rather to glory in the performance. For she was not only impudent herself, but endeavored to make everybody else as audacious. Often when she was alone with other actors, she would undress in their midst and arch her back provocatively, advertising like a peacock both to those who had experience of her and to those who had not yet had that privilege her trained suppleness.”
As far as I understand, you would look younger than your actual age to the average Roman, due to the vastly superior health care and nutrition that you’d enjoyed in modern times. So, you should be good on the age front.
Matters a little, A wife or a mistress of an emperor could hope only to survive some more. Her son might become the new emperor. He might, she could not.
By Yvain’s hypothesis, she possesses all human knowledge as of 2012. That makes her (along with all the other competitors) strongly superhuman. In my book, she wins simply because her declared strategy means she starts closer to the throne than anyone else.
Second-order problem: You are to be thrown back in time, as Yvain stipulates, along with everyone else who has already posted a plan in this thread. The winner is the one who becomes emperor first. (My bet is on Alicorn.)
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I mean, I have all my teeth, seducing an emperor should be a snap.
(There were other wrinkles to my plan—I was going to become the emperor’s pen pal first as a male persona and present myself as said persona’s daughter offered to the emperor as a token of friendship and be “possessed of oracular powers”—but this only works if Puppeteer Empress-Consort is a win condition.)
(If Puppeteer Empress-Consort is a win condition I can cooperate with someone else who is also thrown back.)
Just teach us all to polyhack and we can all win.
I’m not sure how that would work… unless I hacked everybody bi too...
I suppose we could have khafra do that hack.
I figured that being in love with half the people would be good enough, though.
I don’t think we’re looking at that kind of gender ratio.
Well, we’ll at least all be in love with you. Is that good enough?
Aww, I feel so counterfactually beloved.
Plenty of pretty young things will too. Some of them may even be patrician by birth.
Don’t be so sure. You’ve got some pretty severe competition. For example, Procopius, in his bitter Secret History, claims of Theodora (consort to Emperor Justinian) that in her days as a dancing girl/prostitute (before capturing Justinian’s heart) she
I don’t actually think seducing an emperor would be a snap, it just seems more doable for an early-twenties female than raising an army.
Early twenties? You realize that you’re almost a spinster, right?
Yeah, I’d have to figure out how to lie about my age or work around it.
As far as I understand, you would look younger than your actual age to the average Roman, due to the vastly superior health care and nutrition that you’d enjoyed in modern times. So, you should be good on the age front.
I doubt, 1000 at least, Roman women were constantly on the same mission, with little or no success for themselves.
But did they have all their teeth and oracular powers?
Matters a little, A wife or a mistress of an emperor could hope only to survive some more. Her son might become the new emperor. He might, she could not.
By Yvain’s hypothesis, she possesses all human knowledge as of 2012. That makes her (along with all the other competitors) strongly superhuman. In my book, she wins simply because her declared strategy means she starts closer to the throne than anyone else.