Introduction

No expectations and no point to this, either. I'm just thinking out loud. By my wholly unscientific evaluation of posts and web sites, Aeryn is the most popular character on FS. ( UCSBdad dodges assorted brickbats from lovers of Zhaan, et al.) She is also the character about which the least is known, and the most is speculated about. This is after all the beginning of the series and we can't expect to know everything about everyone. However, the writers go out of their way to promote this. Did Aeryn have a dream in RiB? I don't know. I do know that everyone else aboard had one ( Pilot has a symbiotic relationship with Moya and can be included in Moya's dream about the pregnant Leviathan). Aeryn never gives anybody a straight answer. There's a name for writing like this. Subtlety. Right here on American TV. What do they think they are doing? Next we'll be having moral ambiguity...... Sorry. I seem to have lost control there for a second. Where is my Xanax? So who or what exactly is Aeryn Sun. Nobody cares if Rygel was the best or worst Dominar in Hyneerian history, or if Zhaan is really infallible on matters of faith and doctrine. But people really care about Aeryn, and her past life.

Which bring me to my next question. Who or what are the Peacekeepers? So far, based on their torture of Rygel and providing the muscle for the Delvian coup d'etat, and of course Captain "The lights are on but nobody's home" Crais, they come off as more the Mob than mercenaries. (UCSBdad makes vigorous apologies to any men of respect out there.) Mercenaries, using that term in the broadest way, have historically been members of regular military forces. Note the Foreign Legions, (French and Spanish), Ghurkas, colonial armies of all stripes, the International Brigades, the Swiss and Scots Guards of the French monarchy, etc. As such they fought for a lot of reasons, including ideological or nationalist motivations, caste pride, (the so called martial races of India that fought for the British Indian Army,) and so on. Out and out mercenaries who go to work for the highest bidder have not been the best of soldiers. Read Machiavelli on the Italian mercenaries of the Renaissance, or even Hemingway on mercenary pilots in the Spanish Civil War.

Aside from the occasional adrenaline junkie, if you are fighting for money, you do have to survive for there to be any point to what you have done. But Aeryn Sun is a 100% hard core Cadre if ever I saw one. To borrow a cliche from the Late Unpleasantness of some 30 years ago, "Lo, though she walks through the valley of the shadow of Death, she shall fear no evil, for she's the evilest motherf***** in the whole valley." All right, I know, she ain't human and therefore not subject to human failings, like wanting to live to spend her wages. But the writers are human and she should make sense to the rest of us humans. I really cannot see Aeryn as one of those people with tombstone eyes who can't live any other life, and the fact that she is changing proves she isn't. I think that proves....Oh, well. And she certainly has no interest in money. So are the Peacekeepers the Wild Geese or the Black and Tans? (Warning: old Liberal Arts major using obscure historical references.)

Did Aeryn really fit in with the Peacekeepers? Are the PK as bad a group as we've been led to believe? Is there a rogue element in the PKs? Tune in same time next week. I know I will.