Question: Sorry for the short question, but why, under Code of Heaven for the Tuatha de Danann, are murder and betrayal seen as offences to be punished? The Irish can't betray or kill?
Oh, they certainly can. They do, in fact, all the time, because they have bad tempers and a critical cultural failure to think about things before they do them.
But the point of Code of Heaven is that it's for punishing the things that a culture considers its most important and unforgivable sins, and for the Tuatha, betrayal and murder are some of those most unforgivable transgressions. Betraying a comrade, liege lord or family member is a heinous crime in Irish myth, one that is almost always followed by swift and painful retribution; Irish people absolutely can betray someone if they want to, but if they do they are breaking one of the most important unwritten laws of their ancient culture, and a Justice god who knows they've done so can punish them for it. Similarly, murder - straight-up, unprovoked murder, not killing on the battlefield, which is a different matter - is not okay in ancient Irish society, and someone who murders someone else (whether because they hate them, they want to take something they own, or for any other reason) has committed a crime by those standards and should be punished.
Code of Heaven is actually designed to let Scions who possess it punish people of other cultures who commit those crimes - it's meant to let you visit your own culture's brand of justice on those who don't necessarily belong to it, so that a horrified Scion of the Tuatha could punish an Aztec who had performed a human sacrifice even though that was not technically illegal for the Aztec to do. It doesn't really apply to your own people much, unless they happen to have fled to a neighboring culture in order to find somewhere that their behavior is not considered criminal, in which case Code of Heaven would allow you to hunt them down and kick their ass with Justice regardless of their current jurisdiction.
At its base, Code of Heaven is simply about being able to apply your own culture's morals to someone else who might not share them; it doesn't tell anyone what they can or can't do, simply represents what crimes a given culture's Scions can always punish thanks to their culture's abhorrence of them.
The Tuatha really should have vengeance as a virtue. I just don't know what to replace. Courage and Expression are massively in theme with the Tuatha, so Intellect or Piety?
ReplyDeleteIt is a really tough call. I think they have Piety because of their intensely crazy dedication to themselves - it doesn't matter if they're invading something they don't own or their leader is making bad choices, the Tuatha always come first and it's always about the Tuatha as a unit. It's definitely not a worship-the-gods kind of Piety, since they have one of the spottiest records of mortal worship of all pantheons.
DeleteIf I were going to replace one, it'd probably be Intellect. It's not that they don't value wisdom, but I usually feel like they value moxy and insane behavior more.
I sat down thinking about writing a reason for intellect, but in my memory, I can not think of an Irish tale with Learning. Expression covers the Bard pretty damn well and there are not many technological advances with the Irish, so Intellect does not really count, unless it also includes being incredibly witty, cause then we may have a basis.
DeleteVengeance with the Irish.. I do not see it very well. Sure, there is one or two tails, Morrigan being part of some, but I do not see Vengeance part of them. Now of days it seems so, but you never really hear many tales of vengeance with the old Irish. You were siblings fighting with each other, you were all family. To me it seems that way.
But since we are on this, I still claim Endurance should be one, mostly for how long the culture had survived even when the people were persecuted and that I have never heard a Tuatha cry uncle. It seems like they refuse to.
Though, if we go with my route, we are getting dangerously close to the Aesir. Not that its a bad thing, but each pantheon is suppose to be unique in how the people lived and in some ways the Irish were not that far away from the Vikings. But the sad thing is, with some cultures you can make a claim about many different virtues being associated with them. So it becomes tedious to choose the best and even then you are slightly bias in how it works.
I think Vengeance could be compelling; it's not just the Morrigan's determination to blow up Cu Chulainn, but also Lugh's incredibly vengeful destruction of the sons of Tuireann and Bres' decision to declare war after being kicked out of Ireland (although I suppose he's likely to have Dark Virtues, so that one's fuzzy).
DeleteEndurance I'm really not as sure about. They have certainly made an awesome feat of surviving Christianity - but so have tons of other ancient religions, and they can't all have Endurance. Virtues should be about what the culture values most itself, not what later history forces it to do or become. Then again, there are good examples of Tuatha possibly embodying Endurance, such as Cu Chulainn tying himself upright with his own guts to keep fighting (but then again, Cu Chulainn be crazy, so).
Yeah, Endurance would make them only one Virtue different from the Aesir (and the Nemetondevos, too, if you use them). I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - cultures with similar values certainly happen, and the Aesir/Tuatha/Nemetondevos are some of the ones that historically overlapped and interacted the most - but I'm still pondering.
I think Vengeance also shows up repeatedly in the entire concept of Face. When someone insults you, or satires you, or in any way makes you lose face you have to retaliate or lose face. The old irish could not let something like an insult stand. At best you would trade insults until your insulter declared you awesome again. At worst it would descend into an orgy of bloody violence.
DeleteWhile murder was definitely a sin, defending your face was a valid reason to kill someone if they insulted you too strongly.