Talk:Battle of Vermilion

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Revision as of 12:24, 26 July 2012

Müller's Moniker

鉄壁 is what it is in Japanese kanji. Now strictly speaking it is "Iron Wall" not "Iron Shield". 壁 can mean wall or cliff, and is for example the character in the "Battle of Red Cliff" that occurs in Chinese history (and recounted in such things as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms). "Shield" is 盾, and is the character used in describing the nobles' "shield ships". When I did the translations for the fansub at Cornell, I translated as "Iron Wall" for the reasons above and also because of the possible reference to "Stonewall" Jackson. Somehow though CA chose "Iron Shield" and it remains a pet peeve of mine. Iracundus 08:52, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Yang's decision

I've always seen this as Yang's great controversial. Most in his fleet - including the great majority in his command staff - were for continuing the battle while they still had a chance of crippling the Empire. As Attenborough pretty much said, 'We're winning! No, we've WON!'

Its not 'betrayal' due to ill will. However, even Yang himself, when all was said and done, admitted to Frederica that his decision was foolish 'If it were anybody else, I'd call them a fool.' and pretty much says that its the only way he could live his life. The 'setting a precedent' was half-admitted later as a pretext. To put it simply, Yang didn't want to kill Lohengramm, and also didn't want the greater spotlight that such an act would give him. He also admitted that he betrayed the men who died under his command by doing this.

In order to follow his rather stubborn and sometimes unrealistic ideals for democracy, Yang was willing to risk it being extinguished. As Schenkopp once said, Yang always was a 'mass of contradictions'. FPA Forever 23:59, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Yang didn't want to set a precedent of the military ignoring the civilian government, which would have been all too much like the recent military coup, since Yang believed in the primacy of civilian government and control over the military. The disproportionately large and powerful military was already like a society within a society, and Yang was wary of the dangers if the military started deciding it knew best and could override the civilian government whenever it wished to.

That said, I am not sure the Alliance was truly salvageable by that stage anyway. Yang might have prolonged things for another few years, maybe a generation more, while the Empire fell into chaos. However with Trunicht still lurking around, I could see the situation being a replay of Dagon. Like Lin Pao, Yang would be raised up as a hero while simultaneously being sidelined when there was no crisis. The Alliance was in a sorry state by then with most of its military forces expended, and burdened with a crushing sovereign debt load. To rebuild its military would have required further ruinous military spending and strain on society, while a winding down of military spending to reduce the debt would have left the Alliance still vulnerable to the Empire. The key balancing factor of Fezzan was also no longer present since Rubinsky had chosen to deliberately upset the balance of power. Fezzan would have to be resurrected and resume its old role of restoring the balance of power, but the difficult was that its old neutrality was safeguarded by the military power of either side. The Alliance would no longer have the power to guarantee Fezzan's neutrality in case of renewed Imperial invasion. Iracundus 12:24, 26 July 2012 (UTC)