Sure, if there were any such vampires, which I kind of doubt considering my previous point and also because that’s probably the kind of thing the Volturi would notice and not appreciate.
Giriath
Karma: 67
Couldn’t this simply be resolved by false identities? I don’t think there have been a lot of vampires with academic ambitions in the Twilight verse because of the relatively uncivilized state their previous diet put them in; most were nomads prior to the new regime. The Golden Empire has many resources to create as many false identities as they want for any vampires who gets interested in academics with the new diet change.
I also don’t think it will take more than a human life time for the new regime to start directly influencing the human societies, or even publicly reveal themselves to all.
Uh, well I had made a few suggestions a ways back but I can’t remember all of them and as it’s my birthday I don’t currently have the time to search for them amongst all my comments and private messages.
Here’s a few though: tell us about when Bella met Allirea and Eleazar and managed to steal Allirea away and their subsequent journey up until they met with Elspeth and party again.
Tell us about how Bella reacts to Elspeth having been Chelsea’d, and if that is insufficient as an omake, what she is doing and thinking when and after Elspeth is abducted twice, and anything else you’d like to add pertaining to that time frame (e.g. Bella almost attacking Pera).
Tell us about the first major contact between the Golden Empire and human governments, and any subsequent contact you find interesting.
Tell us about the first direct public contact (televised or otherwise) between human society and the Golden Empire, preferably from the perspective of Bella’s past human acquaintances, like Angela, Mike, Ben, Jessica, Lauren e.t.c.
Tell us about the first official function Elspeth attends. Will she wear a crown? Will Jacob really get a title?
Tell us about Allirea’s experiences as personal bodyguard of the imperial family.
That’s all I have for now. :)
You mix up Grace and Gwyn in the scene in Jane’s room. It should be Grace following Elspeth, but halfway through you start writing Gwyn and continue doing that throughout the chapter. Good chapter!
Ch. 45 spoilers!
Huh, so that’s it for the Volturi. I wonder what the conflict will be from here on out. There’s bound to be some vampires who won’t be pleased with the new diet rules, and I’m also wondering what Bella will do with regards to humanity; will she let them in on the secret, or try to influence them without doing that?
I’d also like to see what she does with her parents. Renée and Phil may be interested in vampirization. And what will the wolves do? I hope Alicorn doesn’t cap it off soon, even if there’s no immediate threat to the current reign and the Cullen’s.
Chapter 44 spoilers!
Wow...that didn’t go anything like I had expected. Adelaide will have to have one hell of a trump card or suddenly have fallen in like with Bella’s ambitions (and I doubt those include her holding Elspeth hostage) to have some hope of getting out of this.
Maybe she does have someone powerful enough to make a difference working for her in the insurgency, like I speculated in my last comment, or some immense leverage over the entire group. Whatever it is, it will have to be big to ensure they won’t become a threat to her later on.
There is a character page here.
Somehow I don’t think things will go quite as planned. Infilitrate, break Volturi members; decide who lives, who dies and who rules the world. That sounds too easy, and I doubt Adelaide will make her move after the vampires who don’t particularly like her research have assumed a stable reign of the world.
Maybe she has someone working for her on the inside. There have been remarkably few protests about Bella running for Queen of the World, despite her ambitious future plans regarding vampire conduct. I’m quite sure no one has thought to have Maggie ask everyone in the insurgency whether they’ve ever had contact with Adelaide, and if they have, what relation they have and how that may affect the plan.
I suppose she has been listening in on most conversations and could point out any lies, but she herself may be suspect. IIRC, Gianna is still guarding Molly, who may be taken hostage should Adelaide gather some friends. Then we would have no way of knowing who is working for her, as Maggie would cover their lies.
We learned this chapter (43) that all wolves and puppies are present (as far as Elspeth remembers), so we can safely assume Adelaide is in the presence of one or more of Allirea’s siblings or her children. If she has one or more of Allirea’s children as a hostage, it may of course upset the plan. She knows of them, and also that Allirea is a big threat, so why wouldn’t she try to get some leverage on her? She may not be able to plan around her fading though.
Chapter 42 spoilers.
So, we’re finally getting close to the actual battle. Their current plan seems sound, but I really wonder what Adelaide is doing that might derail it, or what the Volturi themselves have done to counteract any attack; they’re not stupid, as Siobhan said.
It would seem that Pera remembers enough of Bella to be quite irrationally afraid of her. :)
It’s amusing to see Siobhan become more and more exasperated with being the leader of this operation. I’m beginning to understand why she doesn’t want to be “Queen of the World”, even though she’s very qualified for the position. She has little ambition beyond being the chief vampire of Ireland, and quickly becomes bored with the people around her, when in a leadership position.
All that Bella-for-Queen! talk in the latest chapters again made me wonder how the state of vampire society and its influence on human society will be handled after the inevitable fall of Volturi rule. I don’t think Bella as she is now is most equipped to realize any ambitions, be it on the planning stage or in practice. She is perhaps most ambitious though, although I would argue how healthy they are, for both vampire and human society.
I think it would be very interesting if Alicorn didn’t stop with the fall of the Volturi and instead continued with the story until Bella’s ambitions are realized, or the societies of Earth are relatively stable (and human society is currently doing a good job at eliminating life on the planet...).
Vampires are far from eternal, and have a lot of self-interest in the survival of humanity, even if they can permanently survive on the blood of other creatures. A certain amount of population of either humans or vampires is needed to achieve goals such as harnessing solar energy to create matter, or interstellar travel. Both or either of which will be necessary to avoid extinction when the Sun dies, and to have access to more resources than the Earth can provide.
If the Big Bang is a pulsating phenomena, I wonder if it’s possible to alter it or outright stop its cycle. I imagine such a task would require massive amounts of resources applied by incredible technology, and would probably be the result of much of the universe’s sentient beings’ cooperation. Humanity is very primitive in that we do not apply scientific thinking (which has proved to produce results) to adapting in the most healthy way to a constantly changing environment.
I doubt we would claim ownership over anything other than our bodies if we did; instead cooperatively striving to understand ourselves and the environment so that we can best use it to be healthy, and ensure our race’s survival by reaching out into the stars.
One another note, the reactions of all Bella’s past acquaintances when she makes her come-back as Vampire Queen of The World ought to be amusing.
(Chapter 38 SPOILERS below)
Ah, was that a small moment of affection for her mother Elspeth had at the end there? It would be great if Elspeth came to enjoy her mother’s presence in different ways then she did before Chelsea robbed her of all relation she felt with her.
I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to feel very dependent on another person, so I think it would be a good thing if she developed independence and confidence in herself, and affection for those she believes deserves it.
That would probably be more difficult to do had her subconscious dispositions towards her mother not been erased; and nearly impossible to completely alter. Chelsea could definitely use her witchcraft to make people happier and healthier. Only first you’d have to research what makes people—both in general and in specific individuals—happier and healthier.
If the deprogramming of Chelsea’s witchcraft causes different behavorial reactions in its subjects, based on whatever original intent and emotion it has repressed and how relevant that is to the present, then the wolves will most likely be more willing to completely exterminate the Volturi than anyone else.
Under the influence of Chelsea, they have done and have things done to them that they by their original beliefs and behavior would consider extremely horrible, all of which will be very relevant to the present if Siobhan’s plan is carried out as discussed in chapter 38.
Forget stopping them from sounding any alarms or restraining Elspeth; the real problem may be stopping all their howling and any crazed attempts to race into the compound. I knew stacking all that unwilling manpower would eventually quite literally bite the Volturi in the ass.
Spoilers chapter 36!
Seeing all those future possibilities was very interesting. And all that just by deciding to do something, even if there was an uncommonly high amount of possibilities resulting from this particular decision. I wonder if they’ll tell Genevieve anything more, now that they’ve already established contact and what seems to be an alliance with Alice and Jasper.
If Alice and Jasper ever meet with Bella again, and I assume they will, that would make for a very interesting reunion to read from their own perspectives.
Wow, what a cliffhanger! And I was listening to Daft Punk’s TRON Legacy soundtrack when I read the chapter. Brushing your teeth is dramatic when listening to that score.
I though of many potential plots for future outtakes in this chapter, here’s one: How did the Cullen’s react when Elspeth ‘disappeared’, did they look for her long? Is there any tension between some of them now that they know Bella took her, and how did their reunion work, from their own perspectives?
I’m most interested in Rosalie, who displayed canonical possessiveness of Elspeth at the end of Luminosity, when it became apparent that she may become parentless.
Wow. I really got a better feel of how massive the attack on La Push was when I read the character listings of the wolves, imprints and puppies. I also didn’t know or remember that Victor and Maureen’s daughter Natalie Hanley died in the NYC capture.
I really like that there are stories like these where the Volturi’s actions are actually representative of their character. Meyer set them up as extremely powerful and bent on world domination, but only made them act when it was convenient to her love story. Unfortunately much of the canon-fanfiction follows in this vein. You can’t have such a powerful, experienced and greedy entity like the Volturi in a story and not have an all-out war; it’s just not consistent with their character.
So it looks as if Demetri is finally going to kick the bucket over the next few chapters? I hope they manage to kill him before he can contact Volterra with the news that there are a whole lot of more vampires in Denali than the traitors have reported.
This chapter further solidified my infatuation with Allirea. I’m not really sure why I like her so much—probably because I associate her with most of the sparse humorous moments in the series. I believe the killing of lifeforms can often be selective, and think that the more sentient should especially not be killed. Therefore I don’t approve of Allirea killing humans when she has many options to survive without doing so. But I also believe we are our consciousness and personality, and that that is shaped by the experiences our environment gives us. I don’t believe in punishment as a way to make things “better”. I think people can change to be happier and healthier (which is my definition of “good” and “right”) and to want that for other people, too, but punishing them for how their environment has shaped them is not the way to do that. I think you do that by exposing them to the beliefs you want them to endorse, and encourage them to inform themselves about it.
Still, I’m not naïve enough to think that everyone will be willing to commit to that change, or that there will always be an opportunity to introduce it. If someone is trying to hurt or even kill me and I’ve exhausted every other option, I’d probably hurt or kill them back. Maybe I won’t even have time to think about my options, or I do but I don’t because I’m not infallible to fear or greed and other emotions that may make me think and act differently than I otherwise would, once faced with an unusual situation.
In the case of Demetri arriving in the recent chapter, I’d probably approve of killing him. He would be a huge risk to extremely many lives in so many ways should they incapacitate him and try to help him change his ways.
I’ve been thinking about something for the past few days. One of Bella’s ambitions in Luminosity was to reveal the existence of vampires to humankind and offer their version of immortality as a way of preserving life. I would argue that our planet Earth has a limited amount of resources and though vampires require less nutritional intake than humans, it can only support so many before there’s a limited amount of species of which to feed from. This holds true even if they feed without killing; Earth is a limited space, even if its lifeforms manage to occupy nearly every crevice and still maintain the necessary resources for survival.
Of course, if humanity—especially turned vampire with the inherent thought-capacity boost—universally put their minds to colonizing other planets and galaxies in a search for resources, then perhaps we will succeed and ensure our species survival for a very long time.
Another possible problem that may arise if vampirism were to be revealed and made available is that all of humanity may want to be made vampire. Even if vampires feed from other species, or feed in a non-fatal way, there will eventually be no humans. This problem can of course be prevented if humans have children before they are made vampire, but then follows the problem of over-population.
If it were me, I would probably do my best to solve vampire issues first. I would ask myself and vampire society how to best ensure our (the vampires) survival and simultaneously be happy and healthy, and to think about this in a rational way. Hopefully it will be concluded that when there is a unity moving towards a goal, the more people that form that unity, the more likely it is that the goal be met. Vampires are made from humans, so making an enemy of them will be inconsistent to meeting that goal.
Once vampire society has reached a unity at that conclusion, I would introduce the same question to human society, and try to make them reach a unity with the same goal as the vampires have, then reveal vampirism and that we want the same thing and provide them with whatever information they want so they can decide whether to cooperate with us or not.
If vampirism should be revealed to the current state of humanity, it would simply be another resource in the game of the monetary economy, where gain and loss is not measured in how healthy and happy our species is, or even individuals.
Your portrayal of Allirea’s power is one of my favourite parts.
I agree! She’s a very quirky woman with a very interesting power that I very much enjoy, even if she does eat people and see herself as part of a ‘master’ race.
Aww...That’s some cliffhanger Alicorn! Any theories on who the two unexpected vampire visitors are, anyone?
Even if it isn’t strictly canon, I hardly think it’s a horrible thing. Your Chelsea makes for a more interesting character, even if she is extremely creepy and most likely at least partly responsible for over a million murders.
So Adelaide was always that disturbing.