[She takes a quiet drink of her tea, and gives Iorveth a considering look over the rim of her cup. She hasn't yet explained this to anyone, and isn't certain how to frame it for someone who's never even heard of Earth, and is more ignorant of its ways than an American child.]
Another country intentionally plunged mine into war. A ploy. We were pawns between that power, America, and another - the Soviets. America had recently fought and lost a significant campaign and their powers were depleted. So they sought to draw the Soviets into a similar war, hoping to do the same to them lest it come to conflict between the both of them, and America should lose. They gave my people weapons, funding, training. And then set us up to be slaughtered by the Soviets. Our president was under the thumb of the Soviets, and invited them into our country to quash a rebel uprising, those who were angry at social and societal customs he was attempting to take away or re-write to suit himself. He had nearly a hundred thousand people quietly executed or exiled for opposing him. When we threatened his gates too greatly, he begged the Soviets for soldiers to put us down.
[She rolls her shoulders in an easy shrug. Though it's a personal story, there's nothing personal about the telling of it. It is a story, like any other, and no more especial for being hers.]
Over a hundred thousand Mujahideen were killed. And some one and a half million civilians, by the war's end. And for that, we had bought the lives of barely fifteen thousand Soviet boys. I was six when the conflict started, sixteen when it finished. There was little else for me but war, and by then I'd grown fond of it. One who had fought beside me became a freedom fighter. And America, the country that had put a gun in his hand and trained him, called him 'terrorist' for doing what he knew. To this day, they invade our land under the pretense of reform, to take our resources - oil and opium - and say they are making a positive difference in the lives of the Afghan people. And they turn a blind eye to the oppression and cruelty of their soldiers, all because it puts a profit in their coffers.
[She Really Really Really dislikes America, okay. And then she cocks her head, and, story concluded, addresses his second comment as well.]
Poison is considered a woman's weapon on Earth. Synonymous with cowardice, expecting the two to be the same. And I have never met a prince worthy of the trappings of the title.
... cw for anti-americanisms/terrorism references
[She takes a quiet drink of her tea, and gives Iorveth a considering look over the rim of her cup. She hasn't yet explained this to anyone, and isn't certain how to frame it for someone who's never even heard of Earth, and is more ignorant of its ways than an American child.]
Another country intentionally plunged mine into war. A ploy. We were pawns between that power, America, and another - the Soviets. America had recently fought and lost a significant campaign and their powers were depleted. So they sought to draw the Soviets into a similar war, hoping to do the same to them lest it come to conflict between the both of them, and America should lose. They gave my people weapons, funding, training. And then set us up to be slaughtered by the Soviets. Our president was under the thumb of the Soviets, and invited them into our country to quash a rebel uprising, those who were angry at social and societal customs he was attempting to take away or re-write to suit himself. He had nearly a hundred thousand people quietly executed or exiled for opposing him. When we threatened his gates too greatly, he begged the Soviets for soldiers to put us down.
[She rolls her shoulders in an easy shrug. Though it's a personal story, there's nothing personal about the telling of it. It is a story, like any other, and no more especial for being hers.]
Over a hundred thousand Mujahideen were killed. And some one and a half million civilians, by the war's end. And for that, we had bought the lives of barely fifteen thousand Soviet boys. I was six when the conflict started, sixteen when it finished. There was little else for me but war, and by then I'd grown fond of it. One who had fought beside me became a freedom fighter. And America, the country that had put a gun in his hand and trained him, called him 'terrorist' for doing what he knew. To this day, they invade our land under the pretense of reform, to take our resources - oil and opium - and say they are making a positive difference in the lives of the Afghan people. And they turn a blind eye to the oppression and cruelty of their soldiers, all because it puts a profit in their coffers.
[She Really Really Really dislikes America, okay. And then she cocks her head, and, story concluded, addresses his second comment as well.]
Poison is considered a woman's weapon on Earth. Synonymous with cowardice, expecting the two to be the same. And I have never met a prince worthy of the trappings of the title.