Temeraire worldbuilding
May. 21st, 2023 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaSo, I have reread His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik (2006), as preparation for possibly writing a Temeraire fusion with Flight of the Heron. I thought, as I did the first time I read it, that it is great page-turny entertainment! Since it's the first book, it has that fun element of the reader discovering aspects of the worldbuilding along with the main character. Which the other books do have as well, by turning it into map exploration, but it's especially good here. I also like Laurence making social blunders among the aviators based on his previous expectations, but doing his best to repair them. I had forgotten that Granby disliked him at first! Aww, and the development of the bond between Laurence and Temeraire is great.
I had forgotten the essay-style worldbuilding at the end! The air sacs are of course made of pure handwavium, but that's fine--it's the suspension of disbelief needed to make the the whole premise work. I do appreciate that they stress the effect of breeding and food supply on size, and that wild dragons were much smaller! That makes a lot of sense to me.
I do wonder about how brooding worked in the wild? Dragon eggs can take years to hatch, which means that they would need to be kept warm through the winter. I can't imagine a single dragon could do that (because it also needs to hunt food) so brooding would almost require strong pair bonds when dragons mate. But I don't recall there being any such pair bonds in canon? Remind me if I've got it wrong. That or breeding has also prolonged time in the egg...but that's not the sort of thing that breeding often does, is it? I mean, dogs have changed a lot from wolves in various ways, but not the time of pregnancy.
Er, that was a tangent and not actually relevant for what I need. Since I want to write something set in the 1740's, I'm interested in dragons as they relate to the past of the Temeraire books. It seems the Romans conquered Scotland in this universe, since the covert at Loch Laggan (pretty far north in the Highlands) has Roman remains! I guess that could make sense, since the Romans are said to be the first (in Europe at least) to use dragons in warfare. We also hear of the use of dragons to defeat the Spanish Armada and that this is when the Longwings first got female captains, and of the various British breeding efforts. And that's pretty much it. Nothing about the role of dragons in the various civil wars, nothing about any potential cultural differences in the role of dragons in England and Scotland, nothing about dragons in the Highlands. I mean, in actual history, if you go back 100-150 years before the Napoleonic setting, the central government did not have full control of the Highlands. So would the dragons mean that the central government had an easier job of subduing the clans? Or did the clans have dragons of their own (probably territorial ones!) which made things more complicated? Obviously I prefer the latter option. But in that case the government covert at Loch Laggan might be a fairly recent thing.
Anyway, it seems like I can make things up pretty much as I like... : )
I had forgotten the essay-style worldbuilding at the end! The air sacs are of course made of pure handwavium, but that's fine--it's the suspension of disbelief needed to make the the whole premise work. I do appreciate that they stress the effect of breeding and food supply on size, and that wild dragons were much smaller! That makes a lot of sense to me.
I do wonder about how brooding worked in the wild? Dragon eggs can take years to hatch, which means that they would need to be kept warm through the winter. I can't imagine a single dragon could do that (because it also needs to hunt food) so brooding would almost require strong pair bonds when dragons mate. But I don't recall there being any such pair bonds in canon? Remind me if I've got it wrong. That or breeding has also prolonged time in the egg...but that's not the sort of thing that breeding often does, is it? I mean, dogs have changed a lot from wolves in various ways, but not the time of pregnancy.
Er, that was a tangent and not actually relevant for what I need. Since I want to write something set in the 1740's, I'm interested in dragons as they relate to the past of the Temeraire books. It seems the Romans conquered Scotland in this universe, since the covert at Loch Laggan (pretty far north in the Highlands) has Roman remains! I guess that could make sense, since the Romans are said to be the first (in Europe at least) to use dragons in warfare. We also hear of the use of dragons to defeat the Spanish Armada and that this is when the Longwings first got female captains, and of the various British breeding efforts. And that's pretty much it. Nothing about the role of dragons in the various civil wars, nothing about any potential cultural differences in the role of dragons in England and Scotland, nothing about dragons in the Highlands. I mean, in actual history, if you go back 100-150 years before the Napoleonic setting, the central government did not have full control of the Highlands. So would the dragons mean that the central government had an easier job of subduing the clans? Or did the clans have dragons of their own (probably territorial ones!) which made things more complicated? Obviously I prefer the latter option. But in that case the government covert at Loch Laggan might be a fairly recent thing.
Anyway, it seems like I can make things up pretty much as I like... : )
(no subject)
Date: 2023-05-22 10:22 am (UTC)I think you'd enjoy the book! It's a fun Age of Sail adventure with added dragons. : )